Those Conniving Sisters...

How do you understand the relationship between Cordelia and Lear? He seems to love her, and she him, but how? Why is she unable to speak when her very survival depends on her speaking? Why is he unable to hear her truth?
To take the same concept from another angle…. While her sisters’ speeches are excellent examples of verbal manipulation, the one person (Cordelia) who goes in honestly with Lear’s best interests at heart is punished because she doesn’t want (or know how to) “play the game.” Have you seen situations like this? Have you used your powers of manipulation to get what you want? Have you been the loser in a game like this?


Cordelia does indeed love her father, and Lear does indeed love her, but unfortunately Lear has a very skewed idea about love. He believes love is materialistic, that love is about who gets the biggest piece of the pie- in the sense that he gives his most loving daughter the biggest piece of his kingdom, but also that the daughters are in competition for who loves him the most. What Cordelia has realized is that this is not so. Because Cordelia loves him, she cannot lie to him and try to scheme him into giving her part of his kingdom. In fact, she loves him to the extent that she would rather him realize that her sisters are simply power hungry and lying to him to get to he kingdom than for herself to get a part of the kingdom as well. He, once again, is unable to hear her truth because he, like the sisters, is somewhat power-hungry. He does not like the idea of this form of honesty because in his eyes one should be able to state how much they love him and be done with it. I don’t believe I have ever personally experienced something like this, other than simply noticing people that will appear to care about an issue in order to appear a “better person” or maybe even just to put it on a college resume and end up pushing aside people that really do care about the issue because they are so concerned with their self image (think back that poem we read about the man who appeared on the surface to be this wonderfully wholesome man but in fact had done something very bad in the past, and maybe he treated people badly personally, but he was convinced everyone seemed to like him because he did good things). I believe this happens frequently, and it comes out of a similar desire for power and selfishness that the sisters are consumed with.