Answer and Explanation: Cordelia represents goodness and loyalty in King Lear. She is honest, pure, and brave. At the beginning of the play, she refuses to unduly praise her father even though she knows that doing so would be politically advantageous for her.
Cordelia is the youngest daughter of King Lear and known to be his favourite. He has arranged for her to marry either the Duke of Burgundy or the King of France. When called upon to make a public expression of love for her father, Cordelia does not feel she can make a flattering speech in the way her sisters do.
This fleeting moment of familial happiness makes the devastating finale of King Lear that much more cruel, as Cordelia, the personification of kindness and virtue, becomes a literal sacrifice to the heartlessness of an apparently unjust world.
Cordelia is King Lear's favorite daughter until she refuses to flatter the old man and gets booted out of the kingdom without a dowry. Soon after, she marries the King of France and raises an army to fight her wicked sisters and win back her father's land.
Cordelia's death symbolizes an unjust world because of her acts of innocence and loyalty towards her father, even after she had been mistreated by him. There is no justification for her death therefore proving that no good deed goes unpunished.
Cordelia sacrificed herself so that Mallory could rise as Supreme, going back in time and killing Michael before he could come into his own as the ender of days. But unbeknownst to the witches, another Antichrist was born to take his place—to Timothy and Emily, the lovers seen in Outpost 3.
extravagant manner. She does not believe in showing off her sentiments or in parading her affection for her father. At the same time, we cannot deny that this incapacity on her part to express her love for her father is a fault in her nature.
At the beginning of the play we see how King Lear disowns his only genuine and kind-hearted daughter, Cordelia, because of her refusal to kiss up to him when he asks to be flattered.
9–11). This blissful vision, however, is countered by the terrible despair that Lear evokes at Cordelia's death: “Thou'lt come no more, / Never, never, never, never, never.” (5.3. 306–307). Yet, despite his grief, Lear expires in a flash of utterly misguided hope, thinking that Cordelia is coming back to life.
Lear, however, refuses to see Cordelia because he is ashamed of the way he treated her. The gentleman informs Kent that the armies of both Albany and the late Cornwall are on the march, presumably to fight against the French troops.
In his tragedy, King Lear, he has portrayed a loveable and touching character- Cordelia. From the beginning to the end of the play, she the victim of fate. Her father's hideous rashness and obstinate attitude bring out his downfall but 'heavenly Cordelia' is also responsible for her tragedy to a considerable extent.
In King Lear, Lear's youngest daughter Cordelia, by not accepting to play the game of love test, willingly sacrifices her dignity and honor as a king's daughter, surrenders her freedom for banishment and forfeits her possible inheritances and legacies from the “retiring” father.
Cordelia is more of a force or an ideal than a character, but if we are to regard her as a character in this drama then we would have to say that, unusually for Shakespeare, we have here a human being who is perfect. She is the ideal daughter, the ideal woman, perfect in her judgment and behaviour, calm and dignified.
Each "good" character displays loyalty through selfless actions. Cordelia selflessly does not attempt to rob Lear of his wealth by flattering him. Even though she risks banishment, she selflessly refuses to indulge her father's foolish wishes.
Why do you think King Lear was unhappy about Cordelia's reply? Ans: King Lear was unhappy about Cordelia's reply because his two elder daughters had expressed great love for him, the elder saying that he was dearer than her own life and the middle daughter saying that she was happiest when she was with her father.
The situational irony at this moment highlights the ignorance of King Lear and is amplified when Cordelia ends up being the only one to stay loyal to him. The two eldest daughters whom he had praised for their flattery actually ended up betraying him, as a result of his blindness towards their false motives.
Summary: Act 4, scene 7
He only partially recognizes her. He says that he knows now that he is senile and not in his right mind, and he assumes that Cordelia hates him and wants to kill him, just as her sisters do. Cordelia tells him that she forgives him for banishing her.
King Lear is a tragic hero. He behaves rashly and irresponsibly at the start of the play. He is blind and unfair as a father and as a ruler. He desires all the trappings of power without the responsibility which is why the passive and forgiving Cordelia is the perfect choice for a successor.
His last words are: “Look on her, look, her lips, / Look there, look there!” (V. iii.). In his dying moments, Lear still has not accepted that Cordelia is dead.
Lear is the protagonist, whose willingness to believe his older daughters' empty flattery leads to the deaths of many people. In relying on the test of his daughters' love, Lear demonstrates that he lacks common sense or the ability to detect his older daughters' falseness.
Key quotation: Cordelia's refusal
She has the natural love of a child for her parent and believes her father should recognise this without the kind of slick flattery offered by her sisters. By rejecting Cordelia's truthfulness, Lear begins the destruction of his world and his identity.
He realizes his decision to banish Cordelia was contrary to his very nature (and implicitly, his love for Cordelia), and blames his head for letting foolishness in at the same time judgment went out. Finally, Lear calls upon the gods to make Goneril barren as punishment for the way she treated him.
Lear curses Goneril
He curses her never to have a child or if she does, that it make her life a misery so that she understands how it feels to have an ungrateful child.
Cordelia had been taken over by the dark entity Jasmine (Gina Torres), which got pregnant so it could give birth to itself. Season 4 rewrote much of Cordelia's previous character arc, reframing her growth and agency as deliberate maneuvering to bring her under Jasmine's influence.