Lear's "Inner Woman"

Coppelia Kahn's take on Lear's femininity holds some very strong arguments. She mentions the absence of a mother in "King Lear." This argument brings to mind a passage found in the very first scene of the play when Cordelia declares her true love for her father (though in less flattering speech than her sisters). She says:

Why have my sisters husbands, if they say
They love you all? Haply, when I shall wed,
That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry
Half my love with him, half my care and duty:
Sure, i shall never marry like my sisters,
to love my father all.

I think this passage is significant to Kahn's argument for two reasons. The first is that in Lear's need to be fully loved by his daughters, he is assuming the position of not only a husband, but two parents. The second is that in requesting specifically the love of his daughters (and not too his sons-in-law), he is trying to fortify himself with a feminine love. Perhaps this is significant, because we know he lacks a wife (and a mistress is never mentioned), and through years of lonely parenting the love of his daughters fulfills the lost love of his wife. Kent's love offering ("Royal Lear...Loved as my father...") is clearly rejected, and an enraged Lear banishes him from the kingdom. To further support the "inner woman" argument, Lear's need for an exclusively feminine love might in madness be contorted to a need for female companionship. None of the characters who are faithful to him throughout the play, other than Cordelia, are female.

In scene 4 of Act I, Lear spouts curses at Goneril of which the modern day equivalent is: "I hope you have a child just like yourself." In the passage he calls upon mother nature to make Goneril sterile or give her a child which will make "cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks...that she may feel how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!" First, I find it interesting that Lear is asking a goddess to sympathize with him, a man to punish his daughter. Second, he next breaks into tears himself. To him parenthood has neutralized. He is not making a distinction between his role as father and Goneril's potential role as mother; he is just speaking of the relationship between any parent and child. His hope that her child will make her cry is soon reflected in his own crying. Even as Albany tries to question the king why he has just cursed Goneril, Lear basically ignores him and speaks again to Goneril in tears. He says, "I am ashamed that thou hast power to shake my manhood thus..." I do not question Lear genuinely being upset, but perhaps his demonstration of vulnerability was also a subconscious attempt to engage her female sympathies?

Something else I'd like to add (as a tangent to something mentioned briefly in class) is the fact that women were not in plays in Shakespeare's day. For me at least, even though Lear's character is meant to by played by a man, it is extra ironic that his character is pawning women who really have no say-so in the first scene of the play (for as we also discussed in class, Lear had already decided how he would divide the kingdom; Cordelia merely dissuaded him). In fact, for the theatregoer of the early 17th century, there truly is no woman's voice in the play. Any action, reaction, and emotion of the female characters in "King Lear" is assumed by men. So in a play centered around a male character who lears (lear: lesson; to learn. See http://www.encyclo.co.uk/define/Lear) to embrace his inner woman, this is exactly as the actors playing Cordelia, Goneril, and Regan must do.