2. Sisterhood, Shame, and Redemption in Cat’s Eye and King Lear

1.IntergenerationalDebts, Guilt, andShameinKingLear
One of the female characters whose afterlives persistently feature in ourcultural imagination is Cordelia.42 In King Lear, Cordelia does not accepther father’s gift; consequently, she refuses the debt of gratitude thather father asks her to acknowledge. Responding to Lear’s request with herrepeated ‘nothing,’ she becomes vulnerable to his power and wrath. Atthis point, Lear has not given away all his power; he is therefore able touse it to disempower, disinherit, and banish his youngest daughter. Lear’sshameless act thus becomes Cordelia’s shame, the shame of banishment.While Goneril and Regan dissembled in order to gain power, that powerwas given away voluntarily by Lear; and once the daughters hold power,they are able to use it to challenge their father or subdue any threat thatmight rob them of the gift.
The implicit responsibility for the passing-on of the inheritance to a futuregeneration thus rests not with Cordelia, but with Goneril and Regan.In accepting Lear’s power, Goneril and Regan exemplify what happenswhen daughters become not only ‘debtors’ but also ‘creditors’. When theyaccept their father’s inheritance, they incur a debt of gratitude and are expectedto pay something back in acknowledgment of that debt. But theyalso become ‘creditors,’ with a licence to exact payment themselves, in thatthey are trustees of the land and the kingdom, trustees whose new respon-sibilities involve not only law enforcement but also the authority to collectmoral debts.
Goneril’s new duties as queen clash with her duties to her father, whoattempts to collect a debt which she and Regan are unwilling or unable topay back. She complains about the ‘disordered,’ ‘debauched,’ and ‘bold’knights who make the court look
like a riotous inn. Epicurism and lust
Makes it more like a tavern or a brothel
Than a graced palace. The shame itself doth speak
For instant remedy. (I. 4. 233)
Any effort on her part to assume the responsibilities of a ruler is underminedby her debt of gratitude to Lear: the audience witnesses how thetwo elder daughters are tied to their father by this indebtedness, whichmakes it difficult for them to execute other duties or express other loyalties.Lear expects his daughter Goneril to continue serving him, but she isno longer in his service. He has effectively turned himself over to the newrulers and is now in the hands of his daughters.
When Goneril does not pay back what her father expects from her, heattempts to make her feel guilty of undaughterly behaviour and ingratitude:‘Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,/More hideous when thoushow’st thee in a child/Than the sea-monster’ (I. 4. 251). The demandsLear makes are not inconsiderable, a circumstance which may prompt Learcritics to regard him as wilfully provoking. Berger, who clearly holds thatview, observes that ‘[t]hey owe him all, and he is going to do his best todemonstrate that they can’t and won’t pay it; by acting unreasonably hewill test their gratitude and prove it inadequate’.When Lear does not succeed in reclaiming the debt of gratitude fromGoneril, he threatens to go to his other daughter:
I have another daughter,
Who I am sure is kind and comfortable:
When she shall hear this of thee with her nails
She’ll flay thy wolvish visage. (I. 4. 297)
Lear thus threatens to ask Regan for help not only to collect the debt,but also to punish Goneril. In spite of Lear’s attempt to play one sister offagainst the other, his second daughter ‘clears [Goneril] from all blame’ (II.2. 334). So far, the two sisters stand united against their parental ‘creditor’.
Lear has divested himself of his assets, but he cannot unburden himself ofthe guilt and/or debt that he himself is the originator of, because Goneriland Regan will not accept it. The guilt that he tries to infuse into them is aburden that he has brought upon himself, namely the fate of Cordelia – aburden that surely weighs heavily on his shoulders, and which he attemptsto remove by projecting it onto his two present daughters.46 He does notsucceed, of course. Regan seems particularly immovable in her determinationthat ‘[t]he injuries that they themselves procure/Must be their schoolmasters’(II. 2. 493).
The transfer of inheritance disturbs not only the balance of power butalso the balance of guilt and responsibility, raising the question of whois ‘just’ and who the ‘thief ’. Attempting to take what will obviously notbe given or returned, Lear suddenly emerges as a ‘thief ’ whereas Goneriland Regan, whose recent power was bestowed upon them as a gift, have‘justice’ on their side. But the ‘thief ’ refuses to accept guilt and complicity;he will do anything to exonerate himself from blame, persuading himselfand others of his innocence, or at least of his being more sinned againstthan sinning.
He even brings himself to a kind of ‘court’ in order toacquit himself of guilt. When Cordelia finally returns owing to a sense ofcombined indebtedness and responsibility, Lear’s innocence seems to beconfirmed; it was, after all, Cordelia whom he wronged, and Cordelia hasnot come back to ‘collect a debt’ from Lear but to cancel one:
LEAR: 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.
CORDELIA: No cause, no cause. (IV. 7. 73)
Whereas Goneril and Regan throw back responsibility on their father insteadof recognizing their debt, Shakespeare’s Cordelia does not appear assomeone who comes to claim something back. She thus never developsinto a character that constitutes a threat to a stable order, nor does sheinduce a shift of responsibility away from herself and towards the father.The subplot in King Lear also shows readers and audiences how readilythe older generation can transfer guilt and shame to the younger. Cordeliais not the only character to carry a burden that belongs to a father. Edgaris also banished by his father without enough support to prove his allegedguilt; and Edmund becomes the epitome of shame in his role as ‘bastard’.Critics have expressed concern about the exposure of Edmund 48 in theshort exchange of words between Kent and Gloucester before the divisionof the kingdom. As we witness the process by which Gloucester’s privateshame becomes Edmund’s public stigma,49 the scene draws our attentionto the attempted downplaying of shame and guilt:
KENT: Is not this your son, my lord?
GLOUCESTER: His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge.
I have so often blushed to acknowledge him that now I
am brazed to’t.
KENT: I cannot conceive you.
GLOUCESTER: Sir, this young fellow’s mother could;
whereupon she grew round-wombed, and had, indeed,
sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her
bed. Do you smell a fault? (I. 1. 7)
Gloucester does not call attention to the act of adultery as an act of transgression– at least not his – but describes it, with an attempt at facetiousness,as there being ‘good sport at his making’ (I. 1. 22).50 The avoidanceof recognizing himself publicly as the originator of shame comes across,even to Edmund himself, as an evasion of responsibility for Gloucester’spast action, and as a sign of the ‘excellent foppery of the world’ (I. 2. 118).Guilt and shame are projected onto the absent mother instead; it is hershameful action that is brought to light. In King Lear mothers are neverallowed to dwell in the world of the play except when responsibility is to bedistributed. But since the mother is not physically there to take the blameor carry the burden of shame, it is ultimately her son Edmund who mustbear it.
Gloucester’s refusal to assume responsibility leaves Edmund stigmatizedand burdened with shame, a burden that legally keeps him from sharing inhis father’s inheritance. His brother Edgar is his closest threat, but also theclosest possibility for Edmund to be released from his stigma. The forgedletter which imposes guilt on Edgar protects Edmund from suspicion andeventually frees him from the taint of bastardy. For once a suspicion ofEdgar’s guilt is created in Gloucester, the inclination to condemn the accusedis placed above any desire to see the accused free, and Gloucester is,as R.A. Foakes puts it, ‘heedlessly sentencing Edgar without even givinghim a trial’: ‘Not in this land shall he remain uncaught,/And found – dispatch!’(II. 1. 57).52 Gloucester even enlists Edmund to help him pursueand punish his brother: ‘Find out this villain, Edmund’ (I. 2. 114). AsEdgar is found guilty, Edmund is not only liberated from his stigma, he isimmediately ready to become a holder of assets:
I will send far and near, that all the kingdom
May have due note of him; and of my land,
Loyal and natural boy, I’ll work the means
To make thee capable. (II. 1. 82)
Gloucester’s readiness to accept Edgar’s guilt and Edmund’s innocence hasbeen met with astonishment and disbelief by some critics,53 but it emphasizeshow quickly the older generation is ready to assign guilt to theyounger without enough evidence to prove their case: the only ‘proof ’ ofEdgar’s guilt is a letter, and anyone, not least a loving father, ought to haverealized that it might easily be a case of forgery. This also tells us somethingabout the power of ‘telling’: the letter is able not only to persuade a fatherof the guilt of an innocent son, but also to exonerate a guilty one fromguilt – a fact sure to rouse suspicions in the audience.
Edgar is eventually cleared from guilt, leaving Gloucester to carry it inhis place. It is a burden, however, that weighs so heavily on his shouldersthat he attempts to shake it off by throwing himself off the cliffs of Dover.Ironically, it is his son Edgar who is asked to help release Gloucester fromlife and thereby from guilt. This can be compared to Cordelia’s interventionto save Lear; but whereas Cordelia loses no time in attempting toexculpate her father, Gloucester’s son delays in revealing himself to his – afact that has led a number of critics to question Edgar’s ‘goodness’.
In the guise of Poor Tom, Edgar leads his father not towards the terribleverge at Dover, but up a hill. When Gloucester jumps to what he thinks ishis death, he only falls flat on his face. Critics have been confounded as to why Edgar avoids recognition and why he exposes his father to such deception.
According to Berger, many critics have commented on the element of ‘cruelty’ in Edgar’s character, ‘his retaliatory impulse, his shame and guilt, and the “lethal” quality of his actions’.55 Some suggest that Edgar acts the way he does to protect his father from despair and suicide, which seems to be based on Edgar’s own assertion: ‘Why I do trifle thus with his despair/Is done to cure it’ (IV. 6. 33). Edgar’s motives certainly seem complex, and his actions are not altogether easy to understand. He stages a mock-rescue of his father, making Gloucester believe that his survivalis a ‘miracle’ and that he has been saved by something not of this world.
The cruelty of tricking a blinded man into believing that he will take his own life, thereby liberating himself from an intolerable burden of guilt and shame, may be mitigated if we accept that Gloucester’s best hope of restoration to anything that might be called a meaningful life could be the shock of having it bestowed on him as a gift from a higher power – a gift, moreover, which he is obliged to on our (IV. 6. 34-79). Edgar, who praises Gloucester’s vow never to attempt suicide again, could not have implemented the trick had Gloucester known who his ‘attendant’ was. Even so, Edgar does acknowledge that his deferred revelation of his identity was a‘ fault’ to be regretted (V. 3. 191), and that he could not face his fraternal adversary without the paternal blessing.