Through Silence She Speaks: The Rearticulation of the Female Voice in King Lear

Résumé

This essay explores the minimal dialogue and voice of Cordelia in relation to feminine resistance and rearticulation through silence and the female body. I will investigate the methods through which Cordelia is silenced and restricted by the central male patriarchal authority figure, her father Lear. Her death will function as a key point of examination, as it is through this silence that Lear is unable to impose his language onto her voice, and is instead situated in her position of voicelessness. This essay aims to demonstrate how Cordelia forms an alternative mode of communication, one that is difficult to interpret for the patriarchal ear and therefore challenging or impossible to control. She becomes valuable, even becoming the lynchpin of the play, in imparting one of the central themes of the text; that human beings should mean and feel what they say rather than rely on false, flattering dialogue.