Desdemona and Cordelias Love

Doris L Soto Prof Nadita Batra INGL 4025 802 07 8757 Desdemona and Cordelia’s Love The differences between love and tragedies are portrayed in Shakespeare’s Othello and King Lear. The complete relationship between father and daughter is corrupted by an external meaning, which plays an important role. How blind and deft can a father be to not understand? Is it that important for a daughter to die just to prove her point and her extreme emotional intelligence?

One man that can provide an example would be a father like King Lear, who denied his daughter Cordelia because she did not use flattering words to make him feel better or out shadow her sisters. The heroines of Shakespeare are born is these plays, they can be great and intelligent for their age, but they were somehow young and naive. Love and sorrow are a part of these tragic relationships; whereas it is too late for denial and repent. Within their actions of love and understanding both of these women convinced their fathers they were completely right.

Desdemona was married to Othello without the consent of her father Barbantio, this caused Barbantio to feel indignant and even more so when he knew that Othello, who was more of a friend than anything else, was the man who had courted and married his daughter without his consent. Indirectly, this is one way that Desdemona proves her true love, which is by confronting her father and declaring her love for Othello. Brabantio question her “Destruction of my head if my bad blame” (Shakespeare p. 38), where Desdemona responds, “ but heres my husband, and so much duty and my mother showed to you, preferring you before her father, so much I challenge that I may profess due to the Moore my lord” (Shakespeare 341). This shows how as a daughter Desdemona admired her father, and felt compelled to explain her actions, although she did not regret them. Brabantio was grasp and put in the same position, he was put when younger. As a father figure, Barbantio realizes this love even though Desdemona was in opposition to his ideals.

It was ontly logical that Desdemona would choose Othello since he was the figure that most corresponded with her father, in reference to social status, etc. For what her father has taught her, she had high standards; Brabantio was a very intelligent man. Desdemona had for the two men most important in her life, the one that raise her and the one that completed her. Acting without forethought is what best describes the injustice that is done towards Cordelia by her father and her non-supporting traitor sisters.

Cordelia was the daughter that never cared about putting her life at risk in order to prove her point to her father King Lear. Her character was put to a test of love, money, and truth. Cordelia had proven that her love is divided; she cannot love more, she had a greater philosophy, which was that love equals love; none was greater and none was smaller. This could have been because she was royalty and well taught; she understood the danger of dividing a Kingdom. Ironically an intelligent father disinherits her, with her soon to be husband.

This action of his came back tenfold when his other two daughters betrayed him and he ended out suffering just as Cordelia, only worst. This king that has been so successful and intelligent was blinded by the love of his daughters and his deception in Cordelias actions. This may prove he did not have knowledge enough of the demon that existed between money, betrayal, and power. Cordelia’s relationship with the King was not acknowledged at that very moment since Lear had made his own pedestal.

With Cordelia’s departure, she put Lear on an evaluation, a test where he was the only one that could resolve; she decided to give him the time. Cordelia was willing to make her father understand her love no matter what, but King Lear was to devastated and stubborn to realize that he was being betrayed by the daughters that pretended to love him and loved by Cordelia, the rebellious one. The moment in which the King understood this was too late. The king reply “had I your tongue and eyes, I’d use them so that the heaven’s vault crack. She’s gone forever.

I know when one is dead and when one live; she is dead like earth” (Shakespeare 704) By the time it came to him that she was the truly good daughter, he saw that the place were she was suppose to be from the beginning was with him. An ignorant father that could not realize his third child was the one with the more knowledge and understanding of life and love. Cordelia died to prove it. Desdemona and Cordelia made the impossible to acknowledge their importance of their existence throughout the play; they were both the heroines for their stories of being strong and liberal women.

The ones that made reason within the power that were assigned for men. Desdemona was a very intelligent woman like Cordelia, they were assigned for those men to make them understand that love is pain and is not only love. These women tried to make their fathers understand with just words what they intended to do but could not. Cordelia did not lie to her father and Desdemona clarified that she was not stolen. Both of these great women did what they felt it was right.

Desdemona’s overconfidence of the world and her own situation drag her to her own murder, she was too naive to understand the evil that her own father planted in Othello’s mind which was going to get her killed. The price that Desdemona and Cordelia had to pay was of silent and death, they had no more options, they both wanted to prove that they were right and that their truth was going to be relevant in some of the point of their situation. Cordelia was not going to rest until she save her father and Desdemona was not going to be complete unless her father approves her relation with Othello.

Their father and daughter relationships seemed to correspond with one another in both of the plays. These women were from a high class and both had their father as an example of greatness and power, therefore they are as intelligent and powerful as their fathers, the difference between them is that they are women and somehow that makes them see things different and understand from another perspective what men would not. Women are actually stronger, and the both prove it when their love was enough to not want to quit and to prevail in their points. ‘ Work Cited Shakespeare, William. Four Tragedies Shakespeare. April: Bantam Dell, 2005. Print.