Lear’s Feminine Side

Lear is a man who struggles with emotion. From the beginning of the play he seems to not understand how to handle emotion. First of all, he tries to compare the love of his daughters and reward them accordingly. When his favorite daughter does not suck up to him like he expected her to, he lashes out in anger and banishes her. Then, on a roll, he banishes Kent, his confidant, and clings to his "evil" daughters for comfort. Why does he seem to be so immature and naïve? According to Kahn, Lear's inability to embrace femininity is the problem.

It is apparent that there seems to be no mother figure in Lear's family. He no longer has a wife and his daughters no longer have a mother. We, as the readers, know nothing about the mother or how family life was like with her. She may well have been a tyrant or in some way the cause of the present family contention. We can assume though, that because of her no longer being around we have a dysfunctional family in the Lear household. Goneril and Regan seem to be altogether heartless. Goneril herself not only plotted against her father, but against her husband and her doting sister. Lear prefers to ignore womanly feelings and instead chooses to be manly or angry. Then there is Cordelia.

Cordelia seems to be the only one that is feminine or motherly. Is this why she was Lear's favorite daughter? Because she complemented his masculinity and offered him a sense of security? And is this also another reason why he banished her? Maybe he felt that the only way to not be hurt by her supposed betrayal was to repress all chances for feminine feelings, like Kahn said, by banishing her, thus symbolically banishing the female influence.

All that we readers can really do is make guesses and form our own opinions about the impact the wife and the loss of the wife made on Lear's family. However, this is not the only reason Lear may seem to deny the woman side of himself. He is a king and a leader. This role requires him to be manly and powerful. It also requires him to be rational, though we know he is not. Lear knows his duty as King and, as a prideful man, he does not want to look weak or unable to properly fulfill his role.

After he learns of the betrayal of Goneril and Regan, he yells and curses them and then vows that they will not see him cry. However, as he is continually placed in humbling situations, and with the help of his Fool, he sees that it is he who is the fool. His pride and blind masculinity led to his humiliation and wrong decisions. He wronged Cordelia, the only true woman in his life. He accepts this fact and in turn begins to accept his feminine side. He even runs around at one point dressed up in nothing but nature, embracing femininity.

When Lear is reunited with Cordelia he begs her to forgive him and admits that he has been foolish. Then when Cordelia dies, his true colors come forth. He is a more balanced person. He is still a man and still acts like the king he is, but at the same time he is not afraid to show his sorrow and vulnerability. He learned that feminine qualities are okay. They are what make his beloved Cordelia so admirable and lovely and they are what help him to grow and make him more happy in the end. Kahn is right that Lear's problem was his suppression of female qualities and that his solution was learning to embrace said qualities. We can come up with no sure reasons as to why he was the way he was in the beginning, but does it matter?