Paradise Lost and King Lear - Mirror Images of Gender Representation - Essay Example

?Paradise Lost and King Lear: Mirror Images of Gender Representation Introduction The issue of gender in Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost was thatthe female is weak-minded, narcissistic, prone to flattery and emotional. Meanwhile, the male is the seducer, the manipulator, if the character is Satan. If the character is Adam, the male is even-tempered, rational, compassionate and intelligent. These characters have parallels with Shakespeare’s King Lear, although the parallels are mirror images of one another. This is because the female character in Paradise Lost has a male doppelganger in Lear – the titular character, who is foolish, arrogant, narcissistic, vain, prone to flattery, weak-minded, and overly emotional. The seducers and the manipulators, the equivalent to Satan, are Goneril and Regan, both women. The even-tempered, rational, intelligent and compassionate character in Lear is Cordelia, also a woman. Therefore, the two works treat gender as mirror images of one another. This essay will explore this concept in further depth. 2. A Comparison of Gender in Paradise Lost and King Lear The first issue is the issue of flattery, which is present in both King Lear and Paradise Lost, although the flattery in Lear persuades the man, while the flattery in Paradise Lost is used upon, with great success, on the woman. Since the ability to flatter in both instances, and the need for Eve in Paradise Lost to hear flattery and succumb to it, and for Lear to hear flattery and succumb to it, leads to both of these characters’ ruination, this speaks to how each text treats the issue of gender. One could say that Shakespeare sees the male as being the fool, because Lear is a fool for believing his deceitful daughters, while Milton sees the woman as being the fool, as Eve’s act in succumbing to flattery was as foolish as Lear’s succumbing to flattery. One could even say that Shakespeare modeled the character of Lear upon Eve, because, just as Eve brought ruin unto the entire human race by believing what the serpent in the garden is telling her, Lear brought ruination unto his kingdom for believing what his daughters were telling him. Eve’s betrayal is the mirror image of Lear’s, in that Eve was seduced by Satan, who was portrayed as a man in Paradise Lost, and Lear was seduced by females. The book that featured Eve’s seduction was in Book IX. Milton makes it clear that Satan seduces Eve, not Adam, because Eve was considered the more persuadable of the two because of her lesser intellectual capabilities, and because she was considered to be weaker – “The Woman, opportune to all attempts…Her Husband, for I view far round, not nigh…Whole higher intellectual more I shun…And strength, of courage hautie, and of limb…Heroic built, though of terrestrial mould…Foe not informidable, exempt from wound” (Milton, 1976, p. 194). This shows the way that Milton portrays the genders is that women are considered clearly inferior, not just physically, but mentally. This is the reason why Eve was able to be seduced by the serpent. Milton then goes on to describe how the serpent was able to seduce her – by flattery. The serpent calls Eve sacred, wise and “Mother of Science” (p. 199). The serpent then goes on to call Eve “Goddess humane” (p. 200). These are the words that the serpent uses, and Eve is powerless to resist – “He ended, and his words replete with guile…Into her heart too easie entrance won” (p. 200). Eve was able to reason that the fruit might give her knowledge, as she called it “This intellectual fruit” (p. 201). Thus, Eve was portrayed as somebody who isn’t as smart or as strong as Adam, and was too easily tempted to eat the apple by a serpent who addressed her as a Goddess, and by calling her wise, sacred and the mother of science. While Milton clearly portrayed the female as being the weak willed sex who isn’t as intelligent as the male, Shakespeare portrayed the male as being the weak willed sex, and, because King Lear was frail and older, he wasn’t as hale and hearty as the women in the play, who were all younger. Valliant (2008) states that this was intentional – that King Lear and Gloucester, who both were older men, were foolish, while the fool, who was a younger man, was intelligent. Moreover, Shakespeare did not just make Lear a fool, he made most of the men weak, foolish, or both. As Hanly (1986) notes, Lear’s son in law Albany is “decent and weak,” and his son in law Cornwall is “weak and cowardly but vicious” (p. 212). Thus, Lear is foolish and Gloucester is foolish, and the other men in the play are considered weak. Gloucester is taken in by Edmund’s trickery, and Lear is taken in by the flattery of his daughters. The men are therefore given rough treatment through Shakespeare, as are Goneril and Regan, who were the females in the play. Goneril and Regan were the equivalent of the serpent in Paradise Lost, in that they knew just how to flatter the King to get what they want. When the King is announcing that he soon would be dividing up his kingdom, Lear asked his daughters to give him speeches so that he would know who would get the “largest bounty” (Shakespeare, 1986, p. 24). To this, Goneril tells the King that “Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter…As much as child e’er loved, or father found…” (p. 24). Not to be outdone, Regan tells him “I am made of that self metal as my sister…Only she comes too short…” (p. 24). Cordelia, on the other hand, tells her father that she has nothing to say, then states that “I cannot heave my heart into my mouth: I love your Majesty according to my bond; no more, no less” (p. 26). This simple speech is what leads Lear to banish Cordelia from the kingdom, and declare her to be his “sometime daughter” (p. 28). This, in turn, leads to the duplicity that follows, where Goneril and Regan proceed to mock their father, and, once Lear is made impotent by his loss of power, Lear ends up leaving the kingdom in a storm and goes mad. Thus, the gender portrayal in Lear is opposite of that of Paradise Lost – the wily and intelligent seducers are the females, while the foolish male succumbs to flattery. Furthermore, Eve and Lear are also parallel in that each engaged in narcissistic patterns that eventually were turned outward as each learned to love another. Parker (1987) states that Eve, in Book 4, shows her narcissism in the passage in which Eve sees a reflection of herself, and gazes upon it with pleasure – “As I bent down to look, just opposite…A shape within the watery gleam appeared Bending to look at me…I started back…It started back, but pleased I soon returned….” (Parker, 1987). That said, as Parker (1987) states, Eve’s narcissism was ultimately avoided, as she turned away from the love of her own self-reflection, and towards the love of another, Adam. In King Lear, the process is similar – Lear, in the beginning, was the ultimate of narcissists. He was so susceptible to the fawning and false flattery of his daughters, because he had a need to see himself reflected in their eyes as being good and wise. That he was unable to see how false they were shows how false of a reflection that was, but the fact remains that Lear’s narcissism is what drew him to his deceitful daughters and away from Cordelia. Like Eve, however, in the end, Lear was able to see more clearly and was disabused of the notion that Goneril and Regan were honest and good. He saw how false his reflection was in them. He saw the Cordelia was good, and he learned to love her again, when Cordelia helped him while he was still mad, and then when they were prisoners together. It was at this point that Lear finally saw Cordelia for what she was – a kind, loyal and generous daughter. He recognized her sacrifices as well – “Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia, the gods themselves throw incense…” (p. 258). This further shows that Milton treats the main female character as Shakespeare treats the main male character. Both Lear and Eve started out narcissistic – Eve was enraptured by her own reflection in the water, and Lear was desperate to see his reflection in his daughters’ eyes. Eve eventually abandoned her own reflection in favour of her love for Adam, although it could be argued that Eve’s narcissism is what eventually led to her undoing. As noted above, Eve reasoned that she could eat the fruit because it would give her knowledge, but, also, she was seduced by the serpent’s flattery of her. Therefore, the serpent played on Eve’s narcissistic tendencies, in that she wanted to have a good reflection of herself as well. However, Parker (1987) states that Eve’s narcissism was subjugated when she learned to love Adam. Lear’s narcissism was subjugated when he learned to love Cordelia again. In contrast to how Shakespeare treated the main male character, he treats the main female character, Cordelia as the opposite of Lear. Where Lear is a selfish, narcissistic fool, Cordelia is wise and kind. Even though she was banished by her father, she loved him enough that she helped him when he was mad, and helped him when they were imprisoned together. Arguably, the main character in Paradise Lost is Satan, who is not foolish, but deviously wise. Bloom (1987) states that Satan, as a character in the poem, is a rational being – a “sophistical Schoolmaster of Souls” whose “appeal is clearly all but universal”(p. 5). Milton’s Satan was shown to be a rational thinker with a subtle mind – not the terrifying epitome of evil that might be portrayed, but a intellectual persuader. The other male character in Paradise Lost is Adam, and he, too, is portrayed as intellectual, rational and wise, which is contrasted to Eve’s irrational vanity which induced her to eat the apple. For instance, in Book IX, Eve is clearly fretting about what she had done – asking “How are we happie, still in fear of harm?” (p, 190). Adam comforts her, stating that they were given free will and reason, and that, as such, they might “fall into deception unaware” (p. 191). Thus, even after Eve did the act of eating from the tree of knowledge, because she was easily flattered by Satan, she still was reacting from a place that wasn’t rational, but emotional. Adam was portrayed as the man with the answers. 3. Conclusion Shakespeare turned Milton’s Paradise Lost inside out with regards to how the genders are treated when writing King Lear. Milton portrayed the female as the fool, and the male as wise. Shakespeare was the opposite. In Shakespeare’s writing of King Lear, the old adage that there “no fool like an old fool” was brought to life in the personae of Lear and Gloucester. These were both foolish old men, and Lear, especially, was foolish, because he was easily seduced by empty words. Everybody in this particular play was contemptible, except, perhaps, Edgar and, of course, Cordelia. Cordelia is the character of the play that is the most memorable, for her love, honesty and loyalty was at the heart of the play. That Lear treated her with the contempt that he did showed Lear’s supreme foolishness and arrogance, and led to the series of events that saw Lear go mad, Gloucester get his eyes gouged out, and Lear’s kingdom in ruins. With Milton, it was the opposite – Eve was the foolish one this time, and she, too, was shown to be shortsighted and overly prone to flattery. Like Lear, she seemed to operate on emotion, not reason. Satan was comparable to Goneril and Regan, in that Satan knew just how to reason with Eve to get her to do his bidding. Adam was the other major male character in the poem, and he, unlike Eve, was shown to be sensible, rational and intelligent. He was also clear-headed and calm, which was contrasted to a somewhat hysterical Eve. Therefore, the poem Paradise Lost and King Lear treated gender matters as virtual mirror images of one another. References Milton, John. Paradise Lost. New York: Buccaneer Books, 1976. Print. Bloom, Harold. Critical Interpretations. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. Print. Hanly, Charles. “Lear and His Daughters.” International Review of Psycho-Analysis, 13 (1986): 211-220. Online. Parker, Patricia. “Eve, Evening and the Labor of Reading in Paradise Lost.” Critical Interpretations. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. Print. Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Ed. Alan Durband. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1986. Print. Valliant, George. “Does Wisdom Increase With Age?” Web. 28 March 2013. Online. Read More