Cinderella in a Black Dress

Cinderella in a Black Dress

Goneril is not one of the evil stepsisters from Cinderella. Her many faces, in fact, stem from the same source and are not as different as one may conceive. The truth lies in one of her lines in Act 1, Scene 1. “There is further compliment of leave-taking between France and him [Lear]. Pray you let’s hit together. If our father carry authority with such disposition as he bears, this last surrender of his will but offend us” (I, i, 331-4). The statement can be viewed as somewhat selfish based on her use of the word “us”. It really depends on whom she is referring to. Since Lear has already divided the land between his two eldest daughters, it is safe to assume that the “us” could be referring to Goneril and Regan. However, the “us” could be referring to the kingdom of England as a whole.

As of late, Lear has been losing his wits. It is a fair assumption that Goneril and Regan are truly concerned about his well-being and the well-being of the kingdom of England. Lear could potentially start a war with France. This is ironic because it is, in fact, Regan and Goneril’s actions against Lear that ultimately result in the war with France. However, Goneril’s heart may actually be in the right place at the play’s beginning.

It is her later actions which make everything she does in the first Act seem false. Her supposed mask is beginning to crack and the true Goneril is revealed when she throws Lear into the cold storm and lets him rot in his madness. So, perhaps Goneril’s intentions were not good. She may have been deceiving not only Lear, but the audience, from the start. Her act as the devoted daughter to Lear is easy for an audience to see through because the audience is not on stage and has easy access ...

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...ril loses control logically. She devises a plan to poison Regan. People who are actually insane don’t have time to plan. Hamlet has time to plan, yet his plan never reaches fruition. Hamlet’s insanity lies solely in the planning.

So, in a sense, King Lear is a lie. The characters that are believed to be good and evil are a false representation of both good and evil. Goneril is almost as good as Cordelia is bad. Neither is either. Just as Goneril is almost as bad as Cordelia is good. It’s not necessarily that one is more bad than the other. It has to do with perspective and perception. In the eyes of Goneril, Cordelia is the misguided one, yet for Cordelia is the opposite. So, there’s a gray line between the falsehoods and the truths. Yet, neither truly exists in any pure form. This play isn’t about the lies but the misunderstanding and perceptions of good and evil.