Studying King Lear: An Ecocritical and Ecofeminist Reading

This paper analyses William Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear through the theory of Ecocriticism and seeks to understand Ecophobia—the fear of Nature. Lear's act of reducing Nature to an object through which he is deriving natural resources stems from his deep-seated animosity with the idea of women as independent entities. His feud with Cordelia and inability to see through the evil mechanisms of Goneril and Regan can be attributed to his unwillingness to surrender control of the land and to Nature. His failure to accept Cordelia's refusal to partake in his structure of power and authority can be read as his phallic anxiety in surrendering to Nature and women.


Introduction
An Ecocritical study of King Lear has a twin fold effect by arming Shakespearean studies with the environment's vocabulary and providing a way to move beyond symbolic and thematic readings concerning Nature's representation in the play. Ecocriticism, as a discipline, is often scrutinized for the far-reaching practical employment of its theories. Scholars have SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH e-ISSN: 2582-3574 p-ISSN: 2582-4406 VOL. 8, ISSUE 8, AUGUST 2020 www.ijellh.com 143 often debated the difference between Ecocriticism and other environment-related studies.
Ecocriticism takes the natural world as an essential entity rather than just a thematic study. It aims at making connections between the world of man and Nature by partaking in cultural variation. The problem resides in the fact that thematic discussions of life are relatively new, while its employment in Shakespearean studies is an even more unique phenomenon.
Shakespeare was writing in an age that was not conscious of environmental crises like modern-day writers-Leslie Marmon Silko or Edward Abbey's writings are explicitly tackling.
Therefore, we cannot just look at Ecocriticism as the study of natural things or Nature in literature but rather, more in the space of a theory that understands social, historical, and ideological framework of Nature.
By the fifteenth century-time in which Shakespeare was writing-there were considerable changes in man's relationship with the natural world. During this period, there was an active exploration of unexplored foreign lands, empire-building, and its subsequent effect in the form of imperialism, which was humanity's first attempt at controlling the natural environment. The world was getting smaller, predictable, and something that could be mapped, and this resulted in changed social relations, which constructed new ideas about space. In King Lear, space is needed to establish ideology and create boundaries in a shrinking world unbound. Therefore, when Lear loses control of his kingdom's natural environment, everything crumbleshome, power, position, identity, and sanity, which are in opposition to the natural world of the play.

Nature and Humanity
While studying the sections about Ecophobia in the text, an important question arises: In what ways does Nature have the upper hand over human-made 'constructed' structures of power? The interplay of power, authority, and control assumes the significant role in deciding  Greek myths of Gaia's supplantation by male deities; "the biblical account of creation giving humankind dominion over nature but only man the power to name both woman and animals"; or representation of "women as more emotional, embodied, and accordingly closer to nature rather than culture" (Y Kao, 6). This perspective raises concern over a socially constructed notion that identifies women as life sustainers.
In King Lear, all the main characters, to some extent, contribute to a pragmatic view of Nature. It is perceived as a space that must be controlled, and if done otherwise, it becomes a space of chaos. John Danby locates Lear, Gloucester, Albany, and Kent in the "orthodox" view of Nature, which is "orderly, benign (but punitive), and connected with custom, reason, and religion" (19). He places Edmund, Cornwall, Goneril, and Regan as being "indifferent to social order and customs and at worst amoral and rapacious." He sees Cordelia as "standing for Nature herself" (19). Because of this, Cordelia's silence in the play marks the beginning of play's most problematic area. Her refusal to bow down to Lear's demand could be equated with Nature's rejection to be bounded. Therefore, for Lear, women are a space of danger and pollution-like Nature lacks reason and must be muted. Even in Cordelia's silence, Lear can hear something and that something is Cordelia's sense of authority even in her nothingness.

Nothingness of Cordelia and its ramification
In the play, Nature is exercising an ambivalent authority in male-female dichotomy to either condemn or sanction. That is why Lear thinks that Nature is favoring his daughters and the elements are "servile ministers" (3.2.21) that join "in battles 'gainst a head/ So old and white as [his]" (11.23-4). Nature and women are both seen as agents who on attaining free will could pose a threat to misogynistic Lear as evident in his refusal to accept Cordelia's "nothing." Both Nature and women are portrayed in extreme terms of saint and demon, silent and noisy, with almost little to no space for neutrality in between. Their positioning as an object raises structural and thematic concerns in the play. Lear's inability to allow Nature and women to have a voice and be in control stems from his anxieties about masculine identity, relentlessly abused by not only Goneril and Regan but also Nature. The unmapped spaces of the natural environment could be equated with the issue of "nothing" in King Lear as their existence signify resistance to domestication and Lear's attempt at controlling spaces. As women of the play, Nature is voiceless, except when seen as a threat, representing a masculine desire for control and hence, becomes an object to be managed. Cordelia's "nothing" signifies something "which nor our nature nor our place can bear" (1.1.171). For Lear, authority and its subversion-filial or political-is the core basis of Nature. Lear's desire for control is impossible to be achieved in Cordelia's "nothing" and an absence of blind support in Kent.
When Lear calls Cordelia a stranger, he is not only removing her from space that Lear recognizes as home but also against the law of Nature. For Lear, like Nature, Cordelia represents a hostile space whose silence does not show or confirm Lear's culture and society. And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too-Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out-And take upon 's the mystery of things As if we were God's spies; and we'll wear out.
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones.
That ebb and flow by th' moon." (11.9,11-19) He is fantasizing about an ideal natural world that does that matches up to the grim reality of his experiences. He is blissfully dreaming about a daughter within confined space who will provide him with undivided attention and unconditional love as, initially, deceitfully preached by Goneril and Regan and denied by Cordelia in her silence.

Conclusion
It would be befitting to say that King Lear is about the dynamics of power and authority as it is about the natural world. In refusal to perceive Nature and women as more than masculine objects of desire, there occurs a reversal of natural order. With men like Lear losing their position, authority and even sanity to hold on to the last shreds of masculine