In Defense of Goneril and Regan

The moral and metaphysical issues of the entanglements of Lear and his three daughters have been the subject of unending discussion. The psychological issue of those entanglements has been the subject of less discussion, with the focus of psychological study on Lear himself. The complexities of Goneril and Regan have been either ignored or slighted. Some critics are convinced that Goneril and Regan can hardly be considered human because of the depravity of their deeds. Whether they are indeed the worst of human nature in Shakespeare is irrelevant to this discussion; but that they are outside the pale of humanity is simply not true. Shakespeare has given us a consistent and detailed picture of these two daughters, and the path from the beginning of the play to their decision to kill their father—although far more subtle and complex than is generally assumed—is meaningful. The ground I propose to cover in this essay is as well worn as any in Shakespeare (and the point of departure so generally understood that I dispense with documentation). But I do not know of a specific argument that addresses itself to the question of what happens in the first half of the play to drive Goneril and Regan, who at the outset had no murderous feelings for their father, to wish him dead. The process is determined by an unexpected and unpredictable combination of motive and circumstance. What I am saying is that the absolute determination to kill their father which Goneril and Regan reach by the middle of Act III was in no sense an idea, an intent, or an objective at the end of the opening scene of Act I. This is also true of them at the end of Act II, when Lear rushes out into the storm. There is a change in the attitudes of both daughters toward their father between these two points, but (and this is all significant) the determination to “seek his death” comes later. These statements may appear either as truisms requiring no further critical attention, or they may appear simply wrong—t