The conflict of good and evil through the female characters

Question 1

Paragraph themes:

Answer 1

Paragraph one: Goneril and Regan as victims
Paragraph two: Cordelia
Paragraph three: Cordelia and R/G comparison

Question 2

Paragraph one: G/R

Answer 2

1) Bagliacca: The true victims of the play are Goneril, Regan

2) Patriarchal system – Women lower on the Great Chain of Being. Fear if they contravened their fathers wishes

3) “I love you more than space, time and liberty”
Hyperboles – magnanimity of love and despite being ‘nothing’ she does not want to come between “the dragon and its wrath”

4) “degenerate bastard” “unnatural hag”

5) “Hag” – 17th Century superstitions of Witchcraft (Demonology) when G/R oppose him villainised

6) “What does need one” if Lear is no longer king / reasonably and rational

7) Divine Right of Kings under pressure

Question 3

Paragraph 2: Cordelia

Answer 3

1) Tolstoy “Her refusal to quantify her love is done on purpose to irritate her father”

2) Yet Cordelia accrued her father’s wrath despite being a women as she knew that this opposes family love (storage) despite Lear’s rejection

3) “Love according to my bond”
- Bond family
“I cannot heave my heart into my mouth”
- Dynamic verb “heave” strenuous action that it would sicken her to speak falsely

4) Christianity – speaking truthfully as lying is a sin
“Nothing can come from nothing” – nothing can good can come from false words – G/R downfall

5) Regan turns physically violent when she makes Glouceter blind and tells him to “smell his way to Dover”

6) What happens when Great chain of being is perverted and the natural order is disposed

Question 4

Paragraph three: C/R/G

Answer 4

1) Kermode “Under the Fine clothes, there is nothing but greed and lust”

2) Albany “tigers not daughters” identifies with predacious animals
Primal nature dramatised in their ownership over Gloucester “my Gloucester”

3) Now Edmund has been elevated to that title becomes someone they could potentially marry
Direct contrast to “delicate cheek” and “heavenly eyes”
-Lexi of Heaven / C – embodiment of truth and good does not sin

4) “I am I am” ( direct biblical reference to John 8)

5) We should follow the teachings of Jesus and not stray with the materialism (Catholic church criticism?)

Question 5

Critics

Answer 5

1) Bagliacca: The true victims of the play are Goneril, Regan
2) Tolstoy: Her refusal to quantify her love is done on purpose to irritate her father
3) Kermode “Under the Fine clothes, there is nothing but greed and lust”