King Lear and the tragic: the use of "pity" and "fear" in the play

Fear and Pity

Lear is not a tragic hero in a traditional sense; we get Gloucester in the place of this traditional model. It seems to me that, by presenting the traditional model of tragedy alongside something other than this, Shakespeare explores the possibilities of the tragic.

For Aristotle, tragedy was defined in a way by the kind of response it evoked in the audience and in the chareacters themselves – pity and fear. These two words appear often in King Lear, as Shakespeare seems to explore the implications of pity and fear – the traditional description of the response to the tragic.

The first half of the play is full of fear. For example, a couple of quotations from I, iv.

Goneril: Sir,
I had thought, by making this well known unto you,
To have found a safe redress, but now grow fearful,
By what yourself, too, late have spoke and done (I, iv, 209 -- my italics)

And

Alb. Well, you may fear too far.
Gon. Safer than trust too far.
Let me still take away the harms I fear,
Not fear still to be taken. I know his heart.
What he hath utter'd I have writ my sister.
If she sustain him and his hundred knights,
When I have show'd th' unfitness-

Enter [Oswald the] Steward.

How now, Oswald?
What, have you writ that letter to my sister?
Osw. Yes, madam.
Gon. Take you some company, and away to horse!
Inform her full of my particular fear,
And thereto add such reasons of your own
As may compact it more. (I, iv, 334-346 -- my italics)

Does Goneril fear Lear too far? Is he in control of his knights or not? These people live in fear. Regan says at the end of Act II, “Wisdom bids fear.” In fact, there is a conspicuous lack of pity in them. In their world, pity is sinful: “Glou. Alack, alack, Edmund, I like not this unnatural dealing! When I desir'd their leave that I might pity him, they took from me the use of mine own house, charg'd me on pain of perpetual displeasure neither to speak of him, entreat for him, nor any way sustain him.” (III, iii, 1-8).

In their world, there’s a conjunction of pity and fools:

Gon. Milk-liver'd man!
That bear'st a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs;
Who hast not in thy brows an eye discerning
Thine honour from thy suffering; that not know'st
Fools do those villains pity who are punish'd
Ere they have done their mischief. Where's thy drum?
France spreads his banners in our noiseless land,
With plumed helm thy state begins to threat,
Whiles thou, a moral fool, sit'st still, and criest
'Alack, why does he so?' (IV, ii, 50-59 -- my italics)

By Act III, however, fear gives way to pity. “Fool. O nuncle, court holy water in a dry house is better than this rain water out o' door. Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters blessing! Here's a night pities nether wise men nor fools.” (III, ii, 10-14 -- my italics). Then this by Kent:

Kent. Alas, sir, are you here? Things that love night
Love not such nights as these. The wrathful skies
Gallow the very wanderers of the dark
And make them keep their caves. Since I was man,
Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,
Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never
Remember to have heard. Man's nature cannot carry
Th' affliction nor the fear. (III, ii, 42-49)

The basic question asked here is – how can man endure a life of all fear, and no pity?

When Lear does feel pity, or the related word “sorrow”, it’s seen as connected with life, the ability to endure, as Lear in part overcomes his mad egotism:

Lear. My wits begin to turn.
Come on, my boy. How dost, my boy? Art cold?
I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow?
The art of our necessities is strange,
That can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel.
Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart
That's sorry yet for thee. (III, ii, 67-73)

However, here Lear’s pity is the result of seeing everything as himself – “you’re cold, I’m cold myself….” If he sees everyone in terms of himself, he’s not capable of self-criticism.

As the idea of pity comes with increasing frequency, the idea of fear in the play is more closely defined. It had seemed to refer to the feelings the “bad” characters had of each other, and of Lear – a fear of their safety, their independence. For a character like Albany, the fear felt in this play is fear of a different order.

Alb. O Goneril,
You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
Blows in your face! I fear your disposition.
That nature which contemns it origin
Cannot be bordered certain in itself.
She that herself will sliver and disbranch
From her material sap, perforce must wither
And come to deadly use. (IV, ii, 30-37 -- my italics)

Two points need to be made: first, the severing of natural relationships, the denying of kinship, is something profoundly to be feared. This is a pervasive theme in the play (Lear and his daughters, Edmund and his father, Cornwall wanting to be Edmund’s father while Gloucester is still alive). It concerns the severing of natural marital relations as well:

Reg. Lady, I am not well; else I should answer
From a full-flowing stomach. General,
Take thou my soldiers, prisoners, patrimony;
Dispose of them, of me; the walls are thine.
Witness the world that I create thee here
My lord and master.
Gon. Mean you to enjoy him?
Alb. The let-alone lies not in your good will.
Edm. Nor in thine, lord.
Alb. Half-blooded fellow, yes.
Reg. [to Edmund] Let the drum strike, and prove my title thine.
Alb. Stay yet; hear reason. Edmund, I arrest thee
On capital treason; and, in thine attaint,
This gilded serpent [points to Goneril]. For your claim, fair
sister,
I bar it in the interest of my wife.
'Tis she is subcontracted to this lord,
And I, her husband, contradict your banes.
If you will marry, make your loves to me;
My lady is bespoke. (V, iii, 75-90)

Regan repeats and echoes I, i, with variations. It’s about unnatural marriages. Albany is the character who sees the horror of the violation of marriage – he understands the horror of this speech.

All of this seems right in Albany. But then, his view of Lear is Lear’s view of Lear:

Alb. Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile;
Filths savour but themselves. What have you done?
Tigers, not daughters, what have you perform'd?
A father, and a gracious aged man,
Whose reverence even the head-lugg'd bear would lick,
Most barbarous, most degenerate, have you madded.
Could my good brother suffer you to do it?
A man, a prince, by him so benefited!
If that the heavens do not their visible spirits
Send quickly down to tame these vile offences,
It will come,
Humanity must perforce prey on itself,
Like monsters of the deep- (IV, ii, 39-45)

This quotation leads to the second of the two points that needed to be made: wisdom and goodness are connected to the fear of the severing of such natural human relationships. If this is what defines wisdom and goodness, can Lear, then, be wise or good? (Rhetorical question!)

These discussions of the violation of natural bonds, and the fear such violations occasion, leads to a reemphasis on pity. Pity is connected with images of procreation, with natural renewal, with a recognition of “otherness”

Act IV, scene vi is important in this connection. At about line 207 a gentleman comments on “A sight most pitiful in the meanest wretch, past speaking of in a king.” Recall, when Lear feels pity, it’s pity of others being like him – Edgar as poor Tom must be pitied because he must have been betrayed by daughters. This gentleman’s pity is the opposite of Lear’s egotism.

Another example occurs around line 225 –

Edg. A most poor man, made tame to fortune's blows,
Who, by the art of known and feeling sorrows,
Am pregnant to good pity. Give me your hand;
I'll lead you to some biding.

This is an affirmation of the natural bond with Gloucester, his father. Pity is connected with conception (“pregnant”), and with goodness, which runs counter to the vile references to conception and children throughout the play, especially by Lear himself.

Pity, then has to do with renewal, and with goodness and the ability to recognize the suffering of others as separate from ourselves. This pity doesn’t extend to the “bad” characters, however. The response to them continues to be one of fear.

Look at V, iii, 225 or so

Edg. What means that bloody knife?
Gent. 'Tis hot, it smokes.
It came even from the heart of-O! she's dead!
Alb. Who dead? Speak, man.
Gent. Your lady, sir, your lady! and her sister
By her is poisoned; she hath confess'd it.
Edm. I was contracted to them both. All three
Now marry in an instant.

Enter Kent.

Edg. Here comes Kent.
Alb. Produce their bodies, be they alive or dead.
[Exit Gentleman.]
This judgement of the heavens, that makes us tremble
Touches us not with pity. (my italics)

Albany here gauges our response. We tremble at heaven’s judgment of Goneril and Regan and Cornwall (i.e. fear) but we don’t pity them. Pity is evoked only by characters deserving of it.

Why pity Lear, then – for he is pitied here.
a) his intentions were to avoid future strife?
b) because he’s not fully knowledgable of himself or others?

Why isn’t he feared? How does he differ from Goneril, Regan, Edmund etc?
a) Lear not consciously evil?

Shakespeare, in Hamlet, suggests that the words to describe the tragic effect of that play are not fear and pity, but woe and wonder. It’s clear that the wonder felt in this play is of the following kind, as Kent says – “the wonder is he hath endured so long.” We wonder at the extent of Lear’s suffering. The woe is “present business” – the death of Lear, Cordelia, Gloucester, the rule of the “gored” state.

Lear and tragic recognition

I want to compare Gloucester and Lear for a moment or two. We’ve seen that Shakespeare has them use similar language patterns in the play – “who yet is no dearer” does not really indicate that he loves either of his sons. So, a comparison of them in the play seems important and apt.

I’ll skip ahead in the “Gloucester” story to the section that I think is most important for my own darker purposes:

Glou. All dark and comfortless! Where's my son Edmund?
Edmund, enkindle all the sparks of nature
To quit this horrid act.
Reg. Out, treacherous villain!
Thou call'st on him that hates thee. It was he
That made the overture of thy treasons to us;
Who is too good to pity thee.
Glou. O my follies! Then Edgar was abus'd.
Kind gods, forgive me that, and prosper him! III, vii, 86-93

Here we have Gloucester at the moment of maximum suffering, and it is here at the moment during which he suffers most, that he learns the truth. This is the expected tragic recognition scene.

The question in this play The Tragedy of King Lear is where is the comparable scene for Lear. Does Lear ever come to the sort of full knowledge that allows him to see himself and others clearly as Gloucester does here (ironically in his physical blindness)? This is what is requisite for the tragic. Can it be found in the play?

Let’s look at another speech by Gloucester:

Glou. The King is mad. How stiff is my vile sense,
That I stand up, and have ingenious feeling
Of my huge sorrows! Better I were distract.
So should my thoughts be sever'd from my griefs,
And woes by wrong imaginations lose
The knowledge of themselves. IV, vii, 284-289

This defines the clear-sighted tragic hero, who comes to his clear-sightedness too late, who is horrified at his own “huge sorrows”, and at Lear’s. But Gloucester sees Lear’s madness as what comforts him, what keeps him from knowing. Does Lear develop such clear-sighted, sane, self knowledge, as Gloucester indicates is opposed to madness?

• Does Lear ever come to know how he has wronged Cordelia, the improper incestuous relationship he’d wanted?
• Does Lear ever come to know his responsibility in the Goneril and Regan part of the plot?
• Does Lear ever know himself?

From the first scene of the play, this last question is an issue – Regan says “he hath ever but slenderly known himself.” His lack of self knowledge is manifested in other ways here too – it’s translated into an inability to judge in many ways: Lear’s intention in I, i, is “that future strife may be prevented now.” But what does he do that could prevent future strife?

a) he proposes an unequal division of the kingdom
b) publicly humiliates his daughters – withholds their dowries
c) Clearly publicly favours Cordelia over his other two daughters
d) Banishes her, and Kent

His action is bad, and leads inevitably to the actions of the rest of the play. There’s an inevitability here that’s part of what separates the comic and the tragic in Shakespeare.

In the comedies, characters intend something, something else happens, characters make mistakes, misjudgments, but are given another chance to set things right, to make things turn out properly. In tragedies there is an inevitability to the actions and consequences, and the consequences are irreversible. Lear intends one thing, the consequences are other. Period. Macbeth can’t change the consequences of his action; even knowing them fully, he can’t avoid them.

Lear can’t judge well from the start, then. But does he learn?? Go through the play and see what his speeches reveal. 5 major scenarios where Lear comments on the action of the play:

1. Act 1 scenes 4 and 5 – concerning Goneril
2. Act 2 scene 4 – concerning Regan
3. Act 3 scenes 2, 4, and 6 – In the storm – the reason in madness bits
4. Act 4, scenes 6 and 7 – after the storm
5. Act 5, scene 3 – the attitude to Cordelia at the end of the play.

1. Concerning Goneril:

Woe that too late repents!-O, sir, are you come?
Is it your will? Speak, sir!-Prepare my horses.
Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,
More hideous when thou show'st thee in a child
Than the sea-monster!
Alb. Pray, sir, be patient.
Lear. [to Goneril] Detested kite, thou liest!
My train are men of choice and rarest parts,
That all particulars of duty know
And in the most exact regard support
The worships of their name.-O most small fault,
How ugly didst thou in Cordelia show!
Which, like an engine, wrench'd my frame of nature
From the fix'd place; drew from my heart all love
And added to the gall. O Lear, Lear, Lear!
Beat at this gate that let thy folly in [Strikes his head.]
And thy dear judgment out! (I, iv, 266-279)

Lear’s charge against Goneril is “ingratitude”. She’s not grateful for what he’s done. This impies, of course, that she should be grateful, that he’s been correct and bountiful to her. He repeats essentially the same charge a few lines later “that she may feel / How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is / To have a thankless child!” 294-296

In this same section, he says of Cordelia: “O most small fault, / How ugly didst thou in Cordelia show!” But is it fault at all that she shows?

Then later, in I, v, the following quotations: “So kind a father” “monster ingratitude”. It’s a vision of himself as blameless, as simply kind. That’s not the Lear I saw in I, i.

2. concerning Regan

Lear leaves Goneril, and goes for comfort and support from Regan. It’s easy to feel that Lear is in the right exclusively, it’s easy to identify and sympathize with him:

Regan. …Therefore I pray you
That to our sister you do make return;
Say you have wrong'd her, sir.
Lear. Ask her forgiveness?
Do you but mark how this becomes the house:
'Dear daughter, I confess that I am old. [Kneels.]
Age is unnecessary. On my knees I beg
That you'll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food.' (II, iv, 149-153)

Look at how Lear views the Goneril scenes we’ve just been looking at. He discounts the possibility of his having any sort of fault here. His vision of himself is of a king father who has simply grown old.

Then, the following from the same scene:

Lear. …Thou better know'st
The offices of nature, bond of childhood,
Effects of courtesy, dues of gratitude.
Thy half o' th' kingdom hast thou not forgot,
Wherein I thee endow'd. (II, iv, 176-179)

The first lines echo Cordelia’s answer to Lear in I, i. Her answer saw “bond” in terms of “love” “honour” and “duty” to obey. He sees “bond” as “courtesy” and “gratitude.” So for him it’s still the same complaint. I gave you half the kingdom; you should be grateful. I’ve done, that is, my duty according to my bond, no more no less. I suggested that he doesn’t see his bond with Cordelia properly – that it’s incestuous. Here, it’s clear he doesn’t see his bond with the other sisters properly either.

Lear’s final speech in II, iv is one of self reflection:

You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age; wretched in both.
If it he you that stirs these daughters' hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,
And let not women's weapons, water drops,
Stain my man's cheeks! No, you unnatural hags!
I will have such revenges on you both
That all the world shall-I will do such things-
What they are yet, I know not; but they shall be
The terrors of the earth! You think I'll weep.
No, I'll not weep. (II, iv, 271-282)

It’s still the same old Lear.

3. In the storm:

However, next come the storm scenes, the scenes of external storm and internal torment. This is most often viewed as the turning point, that Lear’s madness is purgative, that it allows him to see clearly – it’s the “reason in madness” idea, that in a state of madness, one sometimes reveals truth. IF something like this happens, it doesn’t do so very quickly! III, ii opens with a speech invoking the storm to wipe out ingratitude:

And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o' th' world,
Crack Nature's moulds, all germains spill at once,
That makes ingrateful man! (III, ii, 6-9)

It’s still ingratitude then – that’s what he sees the events of Acts I and II as displaying and meaning. Go on a few lines to around 17: “I tax not you, you elements, with inkindness, / I never gave you kingdom, called you children, / You owe me no subscription.” These lines suggest again his incapacity to see himself as in any way responsible. He has done everything properly in his view.
With this as the pervasive, unwavering version of the events of the play as seen by Lear, how are we to respond to the lines, “I am a man / More sinned against than sinning.”? This is often seen as Lear’s initial recognition of his own sinfulness. But it seems to me, given the pattern, it only means that they are sinners. It allows the possibility that he hasn’t sinned at all.
One possibility of seeing Lear coming into “knowledge” is in the following from III, iv, 32-33 – “O, I have ta’en / Too little care of this.” But surely the play is not about “this” (poor naked sufferers in the storm) in any major way. This isn’t a response to what we’ve seen in the first two acts of the play. So, if Lear does learn something here, it’s not what he needs to learn in the play. And in this very scene, when Lear refers to the important events in the play, it’s the same old story, the whole thing summed up just a few lines earlier – “filial ingratitude”, and then (around line 19) “O Regan, Goneril / Your kind old father, whose frank heart gave all -- / O, that way madness lies.” That final bit “that way madness lies” is correct. That is madness, viewing the play as Lear does here is madness, but it has been how he’s viewed it from the start. And he continues to as well: “unkind daughters/ discarded fathers”, “those pelican daughters” (Pelicans were thought to feed on their parents’ blood).

Lear’s view of himself as faultless in the play continues in III, vi. In the mock trial scene, Lear gives evidence against his daughters to Edgar and the Fool, concluding with the horrible image of dissecting Regan to see what has gone wrong with her.

4. After the storm

What about after the storm? Is any of the following really “knowing”

Ha! Goneril with a white beard? They flatter'd me like a dog,
and told me I had white hairs in my beard ere the black ones
were there. To say 'ay' and 'no' to everything I said! 'Ay' and
'no' too was no good divinity. When the rain came to wet me
once, and the wind to make me chatter; when the thunder would
not peace at my bidding; there I found 'em, there I smelt 'em
out. Go to, they are not men o' their words! They told me I was
everything. 'Tis a lie-I am not ague-proof. (IV, vi, 98-107)

How close to what really happened is this? When Lear says, very poignantly but without knowing he speaks to Gloucester “Gloucester’s bastard son / Was kinder to his father than my daughters” – this SURELY is not knowing!!

What sort of knowing is revealed in the speech to which Edgar responds “reason in madness”? This would seem to be a central speech:

Lear. What, art mad? A man may see how the world goes with no eyes.
Look with thine ears. See how yond justice rails upon yond
simple thief. Hark in thine ear. Change places and, handy-dandy,
which is the justice, which is the thief? Thou hast seen a
farmer's dog bark at a beggar?
Glou. Ay, sir.
Lear. And the creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold
the great image of authority: a dog's obeyed in office.
Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand!
Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back.
Thou hotly lusts to use her in that kind
For which thou whip'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener.
Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear;
Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
Arm it in rags, a pygmy's straw does pierce it.
None does offend, none-I say none! I'll able 'em.
Take that of me, my friend, who have the power
To seal th' accuser's lips. Get thee glass eyes
And, like a scurvy politician, seem
To see the things thou dost not. Now, now, now, now!
Pull off my boots. Harder, harder! So.
Edg. O, matter and impertinency mix'd!
Reason, in madness! (IV, vi, 152-175)

Read the speech by Lear. It’s about the inability to know, the inability to judge. Moreover, it’s a world where everyone is criminal. This speech can be many things, but it is NOT a speech demonstrating Lear knowing anything.

5. attitude to Cordelia at the end of the play…

Even when he’s reunited with Cordelia, it doesn’t seem to me that Lear has learned anything at all. He’s the same character:

Lear. Be your tears wet? Yes, faith. I pray weep not.
If you have poison for me, I will drink it.
I know you do not love me; for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong.
You have some cause, they have not.
Cor. No cause, no cause. (IV, vii, 70-75)

Can he be more mistaken, or mistaken in more ways? Is it true that Cordelia does not love Lear? Is it true that the sisters have “no cause” to have stopped loving Lear?

Lear hasn’t changed. Moreover, he’s the same character in the more disturbing context of the nature of the relationship he envisions between himself and Cordelia:

Lear. No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison.
We two alone will sing like birds i' th' cage.
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness. So we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too-
Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out-
And take upon 's the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies; and we'll wear out,
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones
That ebb and flow by th' moon.
Edm. Take them away.
Lear. Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,
The gods themselves throw incense. Have I caught thee?
He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven
And fire us hence like foxes. Wipe thine eyes.
The goodyears shall devour 'em, flesh and fell,
Ere they shall make us weep! We'll see 'em starv'd first.
Come. (V, iii, 8-25)

It’s a reaffirmation. Lear reasserts the desire he had in the first scene, to live with Cordelia, here by withdrawing with her from the world. And with that, we’re right back to Act I, Scene i. There is not development. Lear cannot, then, be called a tragic hero. No wonder Cordelia cries here!

King Lear: Father and Daughters...

What is there in the opening act to motivate the violence we see in the play? Is there anything to make the extreme violence of the play understandable? As something more than just accidents or chance, say, as Gloucester and Edgar sometimes feel?

A more specific version of the same questions – why do Goneril and Regan act as they do against their father? After all, they each get a third, then a half, of the kingdom.

Possibilities:
1. They’re not very nice
2. Power corrupts
3. Do they treat him badly? That’s how I treat my father….

None of these answers seems to me satisfactory – they don’t take into account the possibility of any responsibility on Lear’s part (I’ll get to this idea later).

Part of reading Act I, scene i is imagining what’s happening, and the stage directions are important, as attendants enter, one of whom carries a coronet. This is a small crown, usually the Queen’s, as distinguished from the King’s larger crown.

So, Lear, two married daughters and their husbands, Kent and Cordelia all enter the room in King Lear’s palace. But how is this significant? The situation implies the crown was meant for Cordelia. It seems as if Lear intends to make Cordelia his queen. But if this is true, it’s at least possible that something is unnatural in Lear’s attitude to Cordelia – in some ways the intended act is psychologically incestuous. He’ll put Cordelia in a position a wife should occupy, not a daughter. This is a strong charge against Lear, who, then, is not capable of a natural loving relationship of father/daughter, who wants, and psychologically demands, a husband-wife relationship.

Lear speaks of Cordelia’s dowry. France and Burgandy have been hanging about for a long time, awaiting her hand in marriage (“Long in our court have made their amorous sojourn”). Yet Lear keeps them off stage during this scene, when they should be getting the dowry. His intention, then, seems to be to reward Cordelia, to give her the Queen’s crown – he says later “I loved her most, and thought to set my rest / On her kind nursery.” So:

1. He’ll give Cordelia her dowry directly – it usually goes to the husband but they’re offstage (I’m here assuming that the division of the kingdom IS the dowries)
2. He wants to live with her
3. He loved her most
4. The prospective husbands have no part in all this.

It all points to a father unwilling to depart from his daughter, unwilling, perhaps, to let her marry – he wants to be in the place of her husband, and he tries to guarantee his place with her by rewarding her with the best part of the kingdom. In effect, he gives himself the dowry that ought to go with Cordelia's prospective husband. And if he’s successful in this “plan”, Cordelia as “queen” of England will not be able to marry either of the suitors who are after her – Burgandy and France. She could not move to Burgandy (part of France) nor France; she could not marry either man.

Lear’s opening speech – it must hinge on the meaning of darker purpose. He can’t refer to the division of the kingdom (Gloucester and Kent have just been talking about it, so it’s no “dark” secret), nor the dowries (the division itself is the dowries). Perhaps the darker purpose is dark even to himself? I’ve suggested how it’s dark with respect to Cordelia. And their speeches indicate something of this sort as well. When Cordelia finally speaks, it’s this:

Good my lord,
You have begot me, bred me, lov'd me; I
Return those duties back as are right fit,
Obey you, love you, and most honour you.
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, i)

The speech has a couple of purposes. It is a literary criticism of the speeches of her sisters. Connected with this is clearly the question of the proper way of looking at husband-wife, father-daughter relationships. Cordelia says that Goneril and Regan have been false – that the bond they say they owe to Lear they really owe to their husbands. It is important that this is the language (that is, the speeches of Goneril and Regan) that Lear wants to hear, where daughters conceive of their relationship with their father as they should conceive of their relationship with their husbands.

But looking at Cordelia’s speech more closely, I think you see that, while she can recognize the issue in her sisters’ speeches, she does not see that it’s there in her own. She uses the language of the marriage ceremony to describe her relationship with her father (“obey”, “love” and “most honour”) – and says that her relationship with her husband will be exactly the same – husband and father will share equally – that lord shall take “half my love with him, half my care and duty.” (For the sake of a normative comparison, see Desdemona’s speech to her father, Brabantio, about choosing her husband over her father.)

Look at some of the language used to describe Lear’s actions: Kent calls it “hideous rashness” and a “foul disease”. France says to Lear that “Your fore-vouched affection / [Has fallen] into taint….” The language describes the kind of relationship I’ve been pointing to. I think, then, that I do understand Lear’s darker purpose.

Knowing and Not Knowing in Jekyll and Hyde

Notes from class: Thursday, October 25

In thinking about The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and an earlier discussion we had about the book as a tragedy, it struck me that this book is in some ways similar to Oedipus Rex. In that play, there is a conflict between knowing and not knowing. Oedipus is put into a situation in which he has a great desire to acquire knowledge (discovering who killed the ex-King Laius will stop the town’s suffering). When characters begin to deduce that Oedipus himself is guilty, they begin counseling him against the acquisition of knowledge in this connection. They realize that, by his own edict, knowing this will be fatal to him. In Jekyll and Hyde, such a conflict is seen in the relationship between Lanyon and Jekyll/Hyde. For both Lanyon and Jekyll, coming to know what Jekyll discovers about the nature of humankind is fatal. They would have both been better not knowing.

A closer analogy, though, exists between this novel and a Christian idea about knowledge. In the following passage, Stevenson draws heavily upon the Biblical story of the temptation of Eve by the serpent:

"And now," said he, "to settle what remains. Will you be wise? will you be guided? will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand and to go forth from your house without further parley? or has the greed of curiosity too much command of you? Think before you answer, for it shall be done as you decide. As you decide, you shall be left as you were before, and neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense of service rendered to a man in mortal distress may be counted as a kind of riches of the soul. Or, if you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of knowledge and new avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you, here, in this room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted by a prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan."

"Sir," said I, affecting a coolness that I was far from truly possessing, "you speak enigmas, and you will perhaps not wonder that I hear you with no very strong impression of belief. But I have gone too far in the way of inexplicable services to pause before I see the end."

"It is well," replied my visitor. "Lanyon, you remember your vows: what follows is under the seal of our profession. And now, you who have so long been bound to the most narrow and material views, you who have denied the virtue of transcendental medicine, you who have derided your superiors -- behold!"

He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp. (p. 53)

Hyde, who is speaking to Lanyon in this excerpt, has been equated with Satan many times in the story to this point. He is the serpent to Lanyon’s Eve, and the terms of the two literary seductions are similar – a gain in knowledge and wisdom. Both “taste of the fruit”; both die as a direct result. The argument seems to be that there are some things that one shouldn’t know, and that Lanyon was wise in his earlier scientific disagreements with Jekyll, refusing to go with him into the realms of “transcendental medicine”.

The long passage just quoted has another important significance as well. At this point, even though Hyde is speaking, he is doing so from the perspective of Jekyll. Despite Jekyll’s explanation later that “Hyde was indifferent to Jekyll, or but remembered him as the mountain bandit remembers the cavern in which he conceals himself from pursuit” (p. 63), as Hyde speaks to Lanyon, it is with a full understanding and memory of the scientific dispute that has been simmering between them for years. Early in the story, Lanyon describes to Utterson his feelings about Jekyll:

"I suppose, Lanyon," said he, "you and I must be the two oldest friends that Henry Jekyll has?"

"I wish the friends were younger," chuckled Dr. Lanyon. "But I suppose we are. And what of that? I see little of him now."

"Indeed?" said Utterson. "I thought you had a bond of common interest."

"We had," was the reply. "But it is more than ten years since Henry Jekyll became too fanciful for me. He began to go wrong, wrong in mind; and though of course I continue to take an interest in him for old sake's sake, as they say, I see and I have seen devilish little of the man. Such unscientific balderdash," added the doctor, flushing suddenly purple, "would have estranged Damon and Pythias." (p. 12)

The sense of estrangement is, then, clear from Lanyon’s side. As for Jekyll -- just a few pages later he discusses his feelings for Lanyon with Utterson as well:

A close observer might have gathered that the topic was distasteful; but the doctor carried it off gaily. "My poor Utterson," said he, "you are unfortunate in such a client. I never saw a man so distressed as you were by my will; unless it were that hide-bound pedant, Lanyon, at what he called my scientific heresies. O, I know he's a good fellow -- you needn't frown -- an excellent fellow, and I always mean to see more of him; but a hide-bound pedant for all that; an ignorant, blatant pedant. I was never more disappointed in any man than Lanyon." (p. 19)

Jekyll speaks of a similar estrangement, then, though in stronger language. It is this background that underlies the sense of triumph as Hyde speaks to Lanyon about Jekyll’s discoveries, and that the knowledge he is about to reveal falls under the “seal of our profession” (p. 53). That profession is surely Jekyll’s, not Hyde’s, and the conflict with Lanyon concerns only Jekyll, not Hyde.

Why does Stevenson have Hyde speak so fully as Jekyll at this point? It seems to me there are two possible answers: he loses control of his characters with respect to what they should know, or, he is showing some kind of development in Hyde, who is becoming more fully Jekyll even as Jekyll is disappearing into thin air.

Jekyll and Hyde -- Ideas from class

I thought I’d put into writing the ideas we’ve been discussing for the last couple of classes. It seems to me that one of the things Stevenson is doing in this tale is looking at the ways it is possible to understand human behaviour. In doing so, he is shown to be a man of his times, as he demonstrates the conflict between a Darwinian and a Christian view of humanity.

In the following quotation, in fact, he presents a third possibility as well, though it’s not taken as seriously as the other two: "There is something more, if I could find a name for it. God bless me, the man seems hardly human! Something troglodytic, shall we say? or can it be the old story of Dr. Fell? or is it the mere radiance of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its clay continent? The last, I think; for, O my poor old Harry Jekyll, if ever I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is on that of your new friend." (p. 16) The quotation present three possible understandings of Enfield’s dislike of Hyde. The first is that Hyude is “hardly human”, “troglodytic” – that is, cave-man like or ape like. With this possibility, Enfield alludes to Darwin and his Origin of Species, conceiving of Hyde as a throwback, or a not-fully-evolved human being. This isn’t a moral judgment, but rather one of scientific classification. And if that, then it’s difficult to justify hatred based on such difference, isn’t it?

The second possible reason for his dislike of Hyde isn’t really a reason at all. In fact, it’s quite unreasonable by design. I don’t like him because I don’t like him, as the reference to Dr. Fell establishes: “I do not like thee Dr. Fell/The reason why I cannot tell/But this alone I know full well/I do not like thee Dr. Fell”.

The third reason is rather more complicated than it at first appears. Simply, Enfield reads “Satan’s signature” upon the face of Hyde, and, therefore, hates him as he would hate Satan; the reason must be, then, moral – hating the embodiment of evil (which is, in fact, how Jekyll himself refers to Hyde repeatedly). But it’s the language Stevenson uses to introduce the idea of Satan that complicates this simple moral judgment – and it’s a complication that seems to me fatal to it. References to “radiance” and “transfigures” are clearly to Christ’s transfiguration in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke in the Bible. In this story, Christ’s divinity illuminates his physical body (“clay continent”) such that his radiance shines forth to the apostles attending him – Peter, James and John. The allusion to Christ’s transfiguration in the description of the Satan-like Hyde is important, in that it tends to equate his culture’s most important symbols of good and evil. In doing so, Stevenson might be suggesting that moral judgments are not, then, justifiable – Christ might be considered indistinguishable from Satan if moral judgments don’t apply.

The idea that Stevenson wants to level any distinctions between “good” and “evil” is supported many times in the story. One way this occurs is in the profound doubt about “good” evident throughout the tale. When Enfield refers to Jekyll as “one of your fellows who do what they call good”, he places the idea of the good as being relative. The phrase “one of your fellows” makes this relativity the general condition of goodness. It comes down to personal opinion only, to personal whim. One can sense Stevenson working through the intricacies of this argument in the following paragraph: “I not only recognised my natural body from the mere aura and effulgence of certain of the powers that made up my spirit, but managed to compound a drug by which these powers should be dethroned from their supremacy, and a second form and countenance substituted, none the less natural to me because they were the expression, and bore the stamp of lower elements in my soul.” (p. 57) This presents a clear argument about the idea of moral judgment. Jekyll speaks of his “natural body” as having two equally natural “elements”. Neither better nor worse, but natural. His science concerns separating these elements – the two constituent parts of his being. It’s pure science (and math – division, I guess). But he can’t really stick to science in his description. Mixed up with the value-neutral phrases of science and math (“natural body”, “powers”, “form and countenance”, “elements”) are such words as “supremacy”, “lower”, implying value. He’ll continue throughout his narrative to conflate these two ways of looking at human life – and the two ways are not compatible. He will call Hyde “pure evil” in one paragraph, refer to his own “original evil” in another (of course, suggesting the Christian doctrine of original sin), and then he’ll say “I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both … I learned to dwell with pleasure … on the thought of the separation of these elements.” (p. 56) This is scientific self analysis, devoid of judgment. Jekyll cannot escape being a man of his times – the conflict between the scientific and the Christian is revealed repeatedly in his language.

With this understood, the pervasive logic of the book’s argument becomes clear. When Jekyll comments in his letter, “My devil had long been caged, he came out roaring” (p. 64), not only does he return to the language of moral judgment, but he also suggests that, if you control your vices and don’t act upon them, they will explode with more violence – that is, it’s bad to be good. In his letter, Jekyll states that “It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults, that made me what I was”, earlier describing “what [he] was” as a man “committed to a profound duplicity of life” (p. 55) It is his aspirations to be good, his constant practice of having “concealed” desires not in keeping with those aspirations, that lie at the heart of his failure. This failure is a moral one. However, when Jekyll casts his life in a scientific light, this is not failure at all, but simply the human condition more fully understood. Promptings toward socially acceptable behaviour are not “better” or “worse” than promptings towards behaviours that are not socially acceptable. Both are natural expressions of the basic human duality.

When Lanyon comes to understand that Jekyll’s science is “true” – that humans are comprised equally of two conflicting tendencies – he literally dies of the shock. Like Jekyll, Lanyon thought himself to be a scientist, but he had rejected Jekyll’s science on moral and religious grounds. His repeated references to “God” in his interjections shows that his habit of mind is still essentially Christian. In Lanyon, Stevenson suggests that the scientific and Christian cannot co-exist. I’ve tried to demonstrate that they still co-exist in Jekyll, but of course that co-existence is very limited, as Jekyll/Hyde die very quickly.

A Love Story, Sort of...

Tim, Linda, and Kathleen. A love story, sort of.
I find this aspect of the novel disturbing – certainly the presentation of the relationship between Tim (not Timmy) and Linda. Briefly, I’ll quote from the novel:

Linda was nine then, as I was, but we were in love. And it was real. When I write about her now, three decades later, it’s tempting to dismiss is as a crush, and infatuation of childhood, but I know for a fact that when we felt for each other was as deep and rich as love can ever get. It had all the shadings and complexities of mature adult love, and maybe more, because there were not yet words for it, and because it was not yet fixed to comparisons or chronologies or the ways by which adults measure such things.

I just loved her.

She had poise and great dignity. Her eyes, I remember, were deep brown like her hair, and she was slender and very quiet and fragile-looking.
Even then, at nine years old, I wanted to live inside her body. I wanted to meld into her bones – that kind of love. (p. 228 – I've bolded O’Brien’s italics)

Well, put together “all the shadings and complexities of mature adult love” with “I wanted to live inside her body. I wanted to meld into her bones”, and I know what that kind of love is. The language is plainly sexual. Freud would have no trouble with understanding that the feelings of two nine-year-olds could be sexual. However, what troubles me is not the sexual nature of the love of these two children, it’s that the adult Tim still has sexual feelings for the permanently nine-year old Linda. “Even then” at the start of the last paragraph I quoted implies, “still now”. He still wants to “live inside her body” etc. That is suggested, again, later in the same chapter:

And then it becomes 1990. I’m forty-three years old, and a writer now, still dreaming Linda alive in exactly the same way….” (p. 245)

His feelings haven’t changed – how could they, they were already those of sexual love when he was nine. They still are. For some reason, Tim O’Brien’s puts his narrator in a position of lusting after a nine-year old. The author has, I believe, lost control of his narration at this culminating point in the novel.
This next bit I’m less sure of. I’ll continue the quotation above from where I left off:

She’s not the embodied Linda; she’s mostly made up, with a new identity and a new name, like the man who never was. Her real name doesn’t matter. She was nine years old. I loved her and then she died….(p. 245)

The point here is that the “mostly made up”, newly named Linda can only refer to one character in the novel outside of Linda herself. His daughter Kathleen. She, significantly, has just turned ten years old when Tim takes her to Vietnam to the site of Kiowa’s death. He mentions her age, I believe, in order to make the connection with Linda, who died at nine, not making it to ten. Linda lives on in Kathleen. I was disturbed by the narrator’s feelings for the child Linda. I’m further disturbed that he has these feelings, still, and that Kathleen is the embodiment of Linda. What does this say about the father/daughter relationship envisioned?

The Things They Carried

Elroy Berdahl is the author, and Jesus.
When a writer says that such things as “words can’t express” or “language is inadequate” or “words were insufficient” (p. 51), it can only mean one of two things. He’s lying, or he doesn’t understand the nature of language and thought. In this case, “narrator” Tim makes the case for the inadequacy of language, but the author clearly disagrees. I can see that from his treatment of Elroy on page 49. Elroy, though not a talker, is nonetheless a master of language – his bedroom was “cluttered with books and newspapers”; he “kills” the narrator at Scrabble (a vocabulary game) while “barely concentrating”; and most centrally, “he had a way of compressing large thoughts into small, cryptic packets of language.” (pp. 49-50) That’s key, it seems to me. His ability to express “large thought” concisely, even cryptically, demonstrated the author’s trust in language and its capacity. The word “cryptic” is important. It means “coded” – that is difficult to understand, perhaps even requiring a key (certainly some effort). But the idea of encryption is that the “code” can be understood completely, that meaning is fully revealed for the talented decrypter. Thus, Elroy is put into the position of novelist, conveying large thoughts in this somewhat cryptic novel. Elroy is author. And in this chapter, he is the novelist fully in control of the narrator Tim, manipulating him by way of discussion, silence and action. He brings Tim obviously and forcefully to the most important crisis thus far in his life, forcing him to decide finally to jump and swim to Canada, or to go to war. He creates the circumstances that force the choice to be made.
Some of the language and imagery surrounding Elroy and his manipulation of Tim have echoes of Christ. Elroy is a fisherman, who takes Tim to the Canadian shore while ostensibly fishing. He views his activity with Tim as a kind of fishing too. When Tim doesn’t leap for Canada, Elroy comments “Ain’t biting” -- not about the fish, but Tim. Elroy is the fisher of souls – Christ here. It’s important to see this in order to understand what seems to be a random reference to Christ earlier, as Elroy sees an owl and comments as follows:

One evening, just at sunset, he pointed up at an owl circling over the violet-lighted forest to the west.
“Hey, O”Brien,” he said. “There’s Jesus.”
The man was sharp—he didn’t miss much. Those razor eyes. (p. 50)

I don’t think it’s random. It serves to introduce the Elroy/Christ association that becomes clear as he and Tim approach Canada in the fishing boat. IT’s also important in that it gives an additional gloss to the idea of his “cryptic” stories – Christ’s parables told “large thoughts into small cryptic packets of language” as well – perhaps they’re the pre-eminent example of this for English readers.