Does Tragedy Invariably Conform to a Conservative Perspective On Gender Relations, Or Can It Work to Bring These Into Question - Essay Example engnether (1996) discusses that in the play King Lear, the relinquishment of the father’s authority also caused the unveiling of the destructive dominance and impact of female power and chaos, as seen in the acts of the sisters Goneril and Regan. Both sisters were not provided treatment as good examples of tragic female heroes; still their characters as powerful women should be considered without focusing on the existing 16th century stereotypes (Callaghan, 1989). An assessment of Goneril indicates how she is viewed in relation to her sister with Shakespeare wanting to prepare the sisters to be one evil entity (Liu, 2010). This theory can easily be founded in Regan’s own words when she expresses that she is made up of the same qualities as her sister, with the same prize and weight attributed to them both.
