blogging the bard

The reason that Regan and Goneril abandoned their father was not due to their selfishness, but rather to protect themselves. The sisters just saw their father kick out his favorite sister, Cordelia, and one of his friends. It seemed to me that the sisters were just trying to save their own necks. While it was still cowardly to do it wasn’t as though Regan and Goneril had no reason to do what they did.

Based on King Lear, the relationship between parents and children seems to be better today than it was in the 17th century. However, I’m not sure if I can use King Lear as a reference to determine the status of the child-parent relationship back then.

I would say we have a better society today for helping people, but not because of higher morality. I think our standard of living allows us to help more people, because now we have a middle class that is able to spend money and time to help the needy. Before then, the aristocracy and church were the only groups that really had the means to help people in need. Luckily, today more people are not lower class and can better help and serve the needy.

Both commentators referred to present western civilization having better means to care for the elderly. I would challenge this.

Today, caring for an elderly or sick parent means paying someone else to do the caring. You can go and visit, play a few rounds of yahtzee, or even pick up their groceries, but you have put the burden of their care, health, and in many cases, supervision into the hands of someone "qualified" to deal with such things.

As parents weaken with either age or sickness, the parent-child relationship is slowly reversed, until the once self-sufficient aged is unable to sustain themselves alone. The once parent takes on a permanent infant roll, in which they need to be fed, clothed, and cleaned. As any new mother could tell you, this is a full time job. A full time job that would fall into the hands of the children who, as their parents had bathed and fed them, now complete the circle by reversing the task.

But who has that kind of time? We no longer have the time, but we do have the money and means to make sure the aged and elderly are tucked away, safe and cared for, where they won't hamper our busy schedules. As a child in rearing becomes increasingly stronger and self-sufficient, an aging person becomes increasingly weaker and needy, making the task of helping them towards death often painful and unrewarding. But no longer need to participate--a bed, three meals a day, and we can wash our hands of them.

Lear's two daughter's not only wanted their father's land--they had already succeeded in getting that--they wanted him out of their hair. He ran out into a raging storm with a "naked head" and they turned the other way, trying neither to bring him back nor send someone out to keep him safe. They had nothing to fear from him; he was old, retired, senile, nearly friendless (with his most loyal banished) and landless.

But we are much more humane today. We don't let them wander out into a raging storm--we make sure they are safe and sound, grouped together in a building that often looks halfway between a hospital and a mental ward.

But here’s the rub: the motives and outcome are the same: the younger, fitter, and terribly busy youths are left to their own affairs, while the aged are gone.

Have things progressed so much since Lear? Have we, the "most advanced" section of civilization, grown in our humanity and concern of the aged? We apparently now have the money to deal with the aged. But who has the time or energy? Only those who are being paid to care. Neither Gloucester nor Kent had any hope of getting anything from Lear in return for their care of him in his child-like state. That would prove that Lear had truer and more humane care than a good majority of our aged today, who have neither a friend nor a counselor who’ll stick by them with loyalty through the storm.

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