feminist reading of King Lear

“Come not between the dragon and his wrath,” King Lear exclaims angrily, when Kent tries to tell him that what he has decided upon his daughter, Cordelia, ordering her to cut family ties and leave is not just nor sensible a decision for him to make. King Lear is furious since his youngest daughter wouldn’t obey his wills, challenging himself with what he’d called, “pride,” in the act one, scene one. In patriarchal society, such as presented in the very work “King Lear,” Cordelia’s sincere heart towards her father is simply regarded as a source of her father’s wrath only because she wouldn’t obey her father’s will. What King Lear would want from her, that is, her duty as a daughter, is simply for her to find a husband and get married. Though Cordelia tries to convince her father of her intention and heart, she fails to do so, and it is as if her voice is muted against his father’s ears. It is to both Kent and France that her good cause is made known instead, while the King doesn’t change his mind about his daughter. They both acknowledge and insist that her heart is to be regarded for its goodness and thus be avoided unfair justification such as one that has been put upon her. What one can notice in this particular moment in King Lear is that a woman is shown to be obviously a person without much power or status to achieve anything out of her own wish, even if it means a good cause of any kind, and even if she may be a daughter of King. The word, “dowry” which is often used in this act one and scene one, seem to imply the sense that a woman is to be equipped or prepared with certain amount of wealth or its equivalency in order for her to have particular value as a potential bride for a man.