Gender Quotes - King Lear | King Lear - Summary, Themes & Characters - Novels PDF Download

LEAR

Hear, Nature, hear, dear goddess, hear!

Suspend thy purpose if thou didst intend

To make this creature fruitful.

Into her womb convey sterility.

Dry up in her the organs of increase,

And from her derogate body never spring

A babe to honor her! If she must teem,

Create her child of spleen, that it may live

And be a thwart disnatured torment to her.

Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,

With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,

Turn all her mother's pains and benefits

To laughter and contempt, that she may feel

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is

To have a thankless child!—Away, away! (1.4.289-303)

This has got to be one of the most bizarre speeches in the play. Here, King Lear is enraged by his daughter's betrayal of him that he curses her with "sterility" (the inability to produce children). If, however, the gods decide she will have children, Lear says he hopes she experiences a painful labor and has a "thankless child" to make her miserable for the rest of her life. Okay, Lear is clearly upset. But why does he lash out at his daughter's fertility like this?

LEAR

I'll tell thee. To Goneril. Life and death! I am 

   ashamed

That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus,

That these hot tears, which break from me perforce,

Should make thee worth them. Blasts and fogs upon 

   thee!

Th' untented woundings of a father's curse

Pierce every sense about thee! (1.4.311-318)

When Goneril reduces Lear's posse of knights (reducing any power Lear had left after he divided his kingdom), Lear accuses Goneril of "shaking [his] manhood." Without the kind of power and authority Lear once enjoyed as active king and family patriarch, he feels as though he's been stripped of his masculinity. Yowch.

GONERIL

No, no, my 

   lord,

This milky gentleness and course of yours,

Though I condemn not, yet, under pardon,

You are much more at task for want of wisdom

Than praised for harmful mildness. (1.4.362-367)

Goneril implies that her husband, Albany, is too mild-mannered when it comes to dealing with Lear. When she refers to Albany's "milky gentleness," she's basically implying he's a wimp for not being harder on Lear when the retired king challenged Goneril's authority. For Goneril, mildness and lack of killer instinct make one feminine. Of course, Goneril goes on to say she forgives her hubby for being a wimp, but she's really not happy about him being such a dummy (he lacks "wisdom").

Brain Snack: "Milky gentleness," as Goneril calls it, is associated with a woman's capacity to nurture children (i.e., breastfeed). In Shakespeare's play Macbeth, when Lady Macbeth accuses her husband of being a wimp (Macbeth's not hot about killing King Duncan and his wife isn't happy), Lady Macbeth accuses her husband of being "too full o' the milk of human kindness" (Macbeth, 1.5.1), which you can read all about in our guide to Macbeth.

KING LEAR

Now all the plagues that in the pendulous air

Hang fated o'er men's faults light on thy daughters!

KENT

He hath no daughters, sir.

KING LEAR

Death, traitor! Nothing could have subdued nature

To such a lowness but his unkind daughters. (3.4.73-77)

When Lear encounters Poor Tom (Edgar disguised as a poor, naked, beggar), he concludes that Poor Tom's terrible state must have been caused by Tom's "daughters." When the Fool points out that "Poor Tom" has no children, Lear insists that there's nothing in the world that could have reduced a man to such a lowly state… except "his unkind daughters." For Lear, it seems that all the problems of the world are caused by women.

EDGAR

Let not the creaking of shoes nor the rustling 

of silks betray thy poor heart to woman. Keep thy 

foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, (3.4.101-103)

Disguised as Poor Tom, Edgar warns Lear not to be seduced or "betray[ed" by women, to stay out of the brothels, and to keep his hands out of "plackets" (slits in the skirts of petticoats). "Foot," by the way, is Edgar's way of punning on the French word "foutre" (f*@k). 

Edgar's never been betrayed by any women in the play, so what's the deal with this nasty little diatribe against women? Does Edgar hate women as much as King Lear? Or, are we meant to read this passage as the insane ramblings of a (supposed) madman? In other words, is Shakespeare implying that this kind of attitude toward women is crazy?

LEAR

Down from the waist they are centaurs,

Though women all above. But to the girdle do the 

gods inherit; beneath is all the fiends'. There's hell, 

there's darkness, there's the sulphurous pit; burning, 

scalding, stench, consumption! Fie, fie, fie, pah, 

pah! (4.6.140-145)

Women, Lear claims, seem pretty normal from the "waist" up but, down below there's "hell" and "darkness" like a "sulphurous pit." Lear's sexist description of female anatomy calls to mind the symptoms of a very unpleasant venereal disease—"burning, scalding, stench," and so on. It seems that King Lear associates all women with a very unpleasant STD, especially his daughter, Goneril, whose name, as you may have guessed, sounds a whole lot like "gonorrhea."

EDGAR

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices

Make instruments to plague us.

The dark and vicious place where thee he got

Cost him his eyes. (5.3.204-207)

Here, Edgar has mortally wounded his evil brother Edmund. As if to explain, Edgar says "the gods are just" because they punish humans for their wrongdoings. This seems to suggest that Edmund deserved what he got (a stab to the guts) and it also suggests that Gloucester, Edmund's father, got what he deserved for having an affair with Edmund's mother. (Gloucester's eyes were plucked out after he was accused of treason and, he fathered a wicked child, Edmund, who betrayed him.)

What's significant about this passage is the way Edgar refers to the body of Edmund's mother as a "dark and vicious place where" Edmund was begot. It seems to imply that all the bad things in the world (like the wicked Edmund, for example), spring from the loins of women. Gloucester implies something similar at the play's beginning, which we discuss in the following passage (1.1).

GLOUCESTER

Sir, this young fellow's mother could [conceive], 

whereupon

she grew round-wombed, and had indeed, 

sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband 

for her bed. Do you smell a fault?

KENT

I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it

being so proper. (1.1.13-18)

This is an awfully strange way to open the play, don't you think? Just a few lines into King Lear, Gloucester begins to crack dirty jokes about the mother of his illegitimate child, Edmund. When he asks Kent if he "smell[s] a fault," he's referring to his son, who is standing right there. Gloucester's use of the term "fault" means a couple of things: 1) a sin—Edmund was conceived out of wedlock and, as we soon see, Edmund also turns out to be wicked ; 2) female genitals-Gloucester's implying that Edmund "smells" like his mother's vagina. 

So, why are we talking about this crude joke? Well, it turns out that, in King Lear, Edmund is frequently associated with the female body. At 5.3 (see passage above), Edgar associates Edmund with the "dark and vicious place" where Edmund was begot. This also echo's a statement Lear makes when he's angry at his daughters – below women's "waist[s]," "there's hell, there's darkness, there's the sulphurous pit (4.6.123-130). 

In other words, the female body is associated "sin" and "hell."