Theater Mar 12, 2014 at 4:00 am

Shakespeare, Feminist Criticism, and White Male Privilege in Third

Making teacher hot (for the wrong reasons). Michael Brunk

Comments

1
Sounds kinda like Election (with the male/female roles reversed).
2
Sounds really off putting. Maybe it's more nuanced on stage, but in this review it reads a lot like "Nice white boy is SO MUCH DEEPER than Straw Feminist is capable of understanding! Obviously, she's also hot for him, but she can't just submit to him like she should, so she pursues him like the sexually deranged vengeful harpy that Straw Feminists always are!"

And what kind of feminist reading of Lear would characterise Cordelia as docile and lacking fire? She humiliates her father in front of the entire court, on purpose then later leads an army and invades England. Yes, this is all selfless, but it's a fierce, St Joan, uncompromising kind of selflessness, not a meek, "oh, pay no attention to little old me" kind. Also, there's a selfless son with no will to power who is also cast out and also proves to be the Good Son while the brother who wanted stuff for himself is Bad. Also, Cordelia dies, so even if she was "docile" there is no possible reading of the play that this pays. The MOST you could say is that the play implies that selfless virtue would be rewarded in a just world -- but that this is not it.

No points if the female academic has never noticed this and it takes her male student to point it out. Not that there's no misogyny in King Lear (the "centaurs" speech is pretty definitive), but it's just not in those places, and any portrayal of a feminist academic who is that incapable of doing her job to the point of apparently never having read the play ... it seems really condescending and grating.
3
Dear whomever posted a blurb for this on the SLOG:

Does the play have a title?
4
Considering that you didn't even notice the name of the person who posted the review, maybe you should look again for the title of the play. It is mentioned in three places.
5
Make that five places. I'll check back to see how you're doing.
6
The corollary of the professor's (flawed) thesis is that ambition pays dividends tor men, but the ambitious male character in Lear are awful people who meet awful ends; the positive models here are people like Kent, Albany, and Edgar who eschew ambition in favor of loyalty to the king.

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