Lear’s Three Daughters

By publicly professing her love to Lear, she convinced him that her love is true.  Once Lear divides his land and gives half to Goneril, she no longer needs him.  She is also the first to start disagreements with Lear.  In Act 1 scene 3, Goneril meets with Oswald, the steward of her household, to complain about Lear who has come to stay with her.  She even tells Oswald that she does not want to speak to Lear, and if he asks for her, tell him she is sick.  When Oswald hears Lear coming, she tells him to act cold towards him and his knights.

          “Put on what weary negligence you please,

        You and your fellows.  I’d have it come to question.

If he distaste it, let him to my sister,

Whose mind and mine I know in that are one,

Not to be overruled . . .”

                                        Act 1 Scene 3, lines 13-16

In this quote, not only does Goneril tell someone else that it is all right for them to disrespect her father, but she states that Regan’s and her minds are one and that they will not be overruled.

Much like Goneril, Regan is exceptionally greedy.  She, also, lies to Lear about loving him.  She lavishes him to receive power and land, even though she does not love him at all.  This is a clue as to how love is viewed in this play.  “Love, whether it be Lear’s for Cordelia, or Edgar’s for his father, Gloucester, and for his godfather, Love, is pragmatically a waste in this most tragic of all tragedies.”  After Regan received her power and land from her father she turns on him, just as Goneril has done.  Lear came to Regan for aid when he was caught in a storm, but she turned him away and rejoiced about the fact that he had been trapped outdoors in terrible whether.  Also like Goneril, Regan has a cruel nature.  But even though they have a cruel nature, you can also say that they are very persistent people who believe in getting what they want. “They have a goal which they seek to attain and everything they have to say is bent upon this.” Regan cheers when her husband, the Duke of Cornwall, puts out the Earl of Gloucester’s eyes.  When one of the servants tries to stop Cornwall, Regan kills him.  “Give me thy sword.  A peasant stand up thus?” (Act 3 Scene 7, line 5).  Regan is also envious and deceitful.  When her husband dies, she shows no remorse.  Thinking that Goneril has feelings for Edmund, she simply tries to marry him before her sister gets a chance to.  “. . . My Lord is dead; Edmund and I have talked; and more convenient is my hand than for your lady’s”  (Act 4 Scene 5, lines 30-32).

Both Regan and Goneril represent Lear’s greed and cruelty, which he demonstrates at the beginning of the play, when Cordelia refuses to declare her love for Lear.  Because of Lear’s selfishness, when Cordelia does not say the words that Lear wants to hear, he disowns her and does not give her any of his land.  “ . . . Be as well neighbored, pitied, and relieved, As though my sometime daughter.”  (Act 1 Scene 1, lines 121-122)  In this quote, Lear is wishing his former daughter well.  

Lear’s youngest daughter is Cordelia.  She is Lear’s the only daughter that truly loves him.  But her honesty costs her her inheritance of land.  

          “Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave

          My heart into my mouth.  I love your majesty

          According to my bond, no more no less.”

                                Act 1 Scene1, lines 93-95

In this quote, Cordelia says that she loves her father the way a daughter is supposed to, no more and no less, which is also a clue as to how love is viewed in this play.  When she will not profess her love, she shows that she has no greed for the land that her father was going to give her.  And when Lear disowns her, she is not bitter about, she just accepts it and marries the King of France.  

        Cordelia represents the softer side of Lear, which shows itself at the end of the play when he and Cordelia are imprisoned.  While in prison, the two think of happy ways to spend their time there, and Lear asks Cordelia for forgiveness.  He is determined to make up for the time he missed with her.  

          “No, no, no, no!  Come, let’s away to prison:

        We two alone will sing like birds I’th’ cage:

        When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down

        And ask thee forgiveness: so we’ll live,

        And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh

At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues

Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too . . .”

                                Act 5 Scene 3, lines 8-14

“In the last scene of King Lear, we pity the old king deeply when he brings in his daughter Cordelia’s body; a few moments later he says:

        ‘Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little.  Ha!’”

                                        Act 5 Scene 3, line 273

Not only does Cordelia posses Lear’s softer nature, she also obtained other characteristics of Lear.  “Lear is headstrong, he is he is independent, straightforward and to the point, honest, and unbending.  Cordelia seems to have these same traits.”At the very end when Cordelia dies, Lear comes out of the prison, with her body in his arms.  It is then that he realizes that she is the one who has loved him the most of all.  Because of the overwhelming sadness of loosing his daughter, Lear dies trying to revive her.

        When Lear turned over his land to Goneril and Regan, he also turned over the worst characteristics of himself, and then they used them against him.  Cordelia, on the other hand, remains the same throughout the play.  She does not let greed get the best of her, as her two older sisters did.  Even though Lear does not believe it at the point that he disowns her, by the end of the play Cordelia proves herself to her father to be the true daughter that she is.  

           

 

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