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Page 21
That a man should be so absorbed in his own indignation as to fail to
apprehend his child's thought, that he should lose his affection in his
anger, simply reveals the fact that his own emotions are dearer to him
than his sense of paternal obligation. Lear apparently also ignored the
common ancestry of Cordelia and himself, and forgot her royal
inheritance of magnanimity. He had thought of himself so long as a noble
and indulgent father that he had lost the faculty by which he might
perceive himself in the wrong. Even in the midst of the storm he
declared himself more sinned against than sinning. He could believe any
amount of kindness and goodness of himself, but could imagine no
fidelity on the part of Cordelia unless she gave him the sign he
demanded.
At length he suffered many hardships; his spirit was buffeted and
broken; he lost his reason as well as his kingdom; but for the first
time his experience was identical with the experience of the men around
him, and he came to a larger conception of life. He put himself in the
place of "the poor naked wretches," and unexpectedly found healing and
comfort. He took poor Tim in his arms from a sheer desire for human
contact and animal warmth, a primitive and genuine need, through which
he suddenly had a view of the world which he had never had from his
throne, and from this moment his heart began to turn toward Cordelia.
In reading the tragedy of King Lear, Cordelia receives a full share of
our censure. Her first words are cold, and we are shocked by her lack of
tenderness. Why should she ignore her father's need for indulgence, and
be unwilling to give him what he so obviously craved? We see in the old
king "the over-mastering desire of being beloved, selfish, and yet
characteristic of the selfishness of a loving and kindly nature alone."
His eagerness produces in us a strange pity for him, and we are
impatient that his youngest and best-beloved child cannot feel this,
even in the midst of her search for truth and her newly acquired sense
of a higher duty. It seems to us a narrow conception that would break
thus abruptly with the past and would assume that her father had no part
in the new life. We want to remind her "that pity, memory, and
faithfulness are natural ties," and surely as much to be prized as is
the development of her own soul. We do not admire the Cordelia who
through her self-absorption deserts her father, as we later admire the
same woman who comes back from France that she may include her father in
her happiness and freer life. The first had selfishly taken her
salvation for herself alone, and it was not until her conscience had
developed in her new life that she was driven back to her father, where
she perished, drawn into the cruelty and wrath which had now become
objective and tragic.
Historically considered, the relation of Lear to his children was
archaic and barbaric, indicating merely the beginning of a family life
since developed. His paternal expression was one of domination and
indulgence, without the perception of the needs of his children, without
any anticipation of their entrance into a wider life, or any belief that
they could have a worthy life apart from him. If that rudimentary
conception of family life ended in such violent disaster, the fact that
we have learned to be more decorous in our conduct does not demonstrate
that by following the same line of theory we may not reach a like
misery.
Wounded affection there is sure to be, but this could be reduced to a
modicum if we could preserve a sense of the relation of the individual
to the family, and of the latter to society, and if we had been given a
code of ethics dealing with these larger relationships, instead of a
code designed to apply so exclusively to relationships obtaining only
between individuals.
Doubtless the clashes and jars which we all feel most keenly are those
which occur when two standards of morals, both honestly held and
believed in, are brought sharply together. The awkwardness and
constraint we experience when two standards of conventions and manners
clash but feebly prefigure this deeper difference.
CHAPTER IV
HOUSEHOLD ADJUSTMENT
If we could only be judged or judge other people by purity of motive,
life would be much simplified, but that would be to abandon the
contention made in the first chapter, that the processes of life are as
important as its aims. We can all recall acquaintances of whose
integrity of purpose we can have no doubt, but who cause much confusion
as they proceed to the accomplishment of that purpose, who indeed are
often insensible to their own mistakes and harsh in their judgments of
other people because they are so confident of their own inner integrity.
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