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Women's Roles In King Lear, Cordelia, And Othello

891 Words4 Pages

Some people may find it interesting to learn how women were treated back in the day, around the 1600’s, and how William Shakespeare interprets them in his plays. Once you have researched all the plays one can possibly determine how Shakespeare portrays the differences between the women’s roles in his plays. Some plays introduce very strong female roles, like King Lear, and others have an absence of women as just being in the background scenes, like King Richard II. In all, the plays seem to be all about power, control, war, love, even magical. I chose to do this paper and show the contrast and similarities of the women in King Lear, Cordelia, and Othello, Desdemona, along with the women who surrounded them. Also, to interpret the way Shakespeare wants the reader to view his intake on women.
King Lear is a tragic story of deception between a King and his daughters. The roles of women is this story is both, loving and deceitful. How were two daughters, Goneril and Regan, so similar in their actions against their father, while the third Cordelia, was completely different in her own actions? Of course, the earliest known writings of Shakespeare has Lear being overthrown by his sons-in-law, more than his daughters (Bevington, 2014). However, Cordelia still has one of the main roles in this play. King Lear is the play that actually allowed women to be powerful and have authority. Throughout King Lear, conventional interpretations of gender identity are challenged by

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