Veterinarians and Lear

Now this post is actually ties into Amanda's but I just so happens she and I had similar epiphanies!

So I'm reading a book called All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot right now and I absolutely love it. It's about a vet of the British countryside in the 1930s (it's his personal experiences). Because of my major and my passion for animals and interest in medicine I find this book fascinating and hilarious. I love the stories of his late night calls, the strange occurrences and his interactions with quirky people. And that is where this book surprisingly ties into King Lear!

James Herriot is working one day when he is called to the house of a wealthy gentleman.

He was a big, floridly handsome man who had made millions in the Tyneside shipyards....I had taken an instant liking to him; I had expected a tough tycoon and had found a warm, friendly, curiously vulnerable man, obviously worried sick about his dog.

Okay so this part isn't especially King Learish becuase obviously it doesn't describe Lear, BUT this next part is almost spot on.

Julia, a scaled-down model of her mother, drifted about the room with the aimless, bored look of a spoiled child.

When her father accidently spills come whisky, and later when they leave for town,

Julia struck her forehead with her hand and raised her eyes to heaven....Julia stared coldly at her father; her lip curled slightly.

Doesn't this description just remind you of the cruelty of Goneril of Reagan? But wait! It getseven more like King Lear's, only with a different family. See when Herriot goes to his next call he is confronted with the total opposite of the Tavener family. The next family was poor.

They lived in a house

Crouching in the lee of a group of stunted, wind-bent tress, its massive stones crumbling under severe weathering.

However the man who lives there is happy with his wife, and his children. Herriot noticed this as he treats a sick pig and then as he leaves the residence he noted something remarkable about their 18 year old daughter.

I was taking my leave when I saw Jeannie... pumping vigorously at the tyre of her bicycle...."Going somewhere?" I asked...."I'm going to to t'village...I'm going to get a bottle of Guinness for dad....Dad's been up all night waiting for a heifer to calve - he's tired out....It'll be a surprise for him."

What makes this so remarkable is that the village was two miles away at the bottom of a steep hill! But this young girl didn't seem to care. She loved her dad so much that she was willing to do that task, though simple and hard, for him to cheer him up after a long hard day. James Herriot was struck by this and this next comment is what really made me think of King Lear.

I couldn't stop my mind from roaming between the two houses I had visited; between the gracious mansion by the river and the crumbling farmhouse I had just left; from Henry Tanever with his beautiful clothes...to Tim Alton with his worn chest-high trousers...[and] his daily grind to stay alive.

But I kept coming back to the daughters; to the contempt in Julia Tavener's eyes when see looked at her father and the shining tenderness in Jennie Alton's.

Wow! I read that and I was like, that's Lear's life but in two different families. There are daughters that despise their father and then one that truly loves him and is willing to sacrifice all for him. It's really sad and beautiful in my opinion to see a real life example of family relationships that Shakespeare is portraying. It'll be interesting to see how the play ends and what people realize what they really want out of life. In my opinion Herriot has the right idea and sums it all up nicely.

It wasn't so easy to work out as it seemed; in fact it became increasingly difficult to decided who was getting the most out of their different lives. But as I guided the car over the last few years of the track and pulled on to the smooth tarmac of the road it came to me with unexpected clarity. Taking it all in all, if I had the choice to make, I'd settle for the Guinness.

Parasitic Families

Hopefully your parents don't consider you to be a parasite. But this what the Fool seems to be insinuating about Goneril, and frankly he's right. (This is one of the first glimpses at what we will see in King Lear about parent-child relationships.)

The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,

That it had it head bit off by it young. (Act 1 scene 4)

Now, I don't know how much you know about a cuckoo, that is the bird, and so I would like to enlighten you because I think this analogy really illuminates what Fool is trying to illustrate to Lear. It also really demonstrates the first glance at family relationships in this play.

The common cuckoo lays its eggs in the nests of other birds. The birds don't recognize the egg as one that is not their own. The cuckoo eggs develops a lot faster than other birds and so generally it hatches before the other bird. The newly hatched cuckoo chick then proceeds to push the other eggs out of the nest and eliminates the other competition. As it grows the other adult birds feed the cuckoo chick for 16 hours everyday. See one cuckoo chick is usually about the equivalent of feeding

10 of the regular bird's chick. This is an enormous task!! This is so much work for the birds that end up being smaller than their chick that they are unable to produce another nest full of their own chicks! The cuckoo literally takes all and gives back nothing. (And just for your enjoyment here is a video so you can see that this is real life! Sorry its a link but it decided not to embed....)

Once you know and see this, you can see why choosing to compare Goneril to a cuckoo is such a vivid description, and why it should have snapped Lear back to the reality of his relationship right away.

See, Goneril is only using Lear and is unwilling to give back anything in return. Her whole life she has been fed, protected, and cared for by Lear and the wealth that he has to supply. And much like the cuckoo chick, which has no love or concern for its providers, she has no concern for her father. She just demands, takes, demands more and then schemes to take more! She doesn't even truly love him and wants him totally out of her castle! She is treacherous, and I am sure would have taken out her other siblings, like the cuckoo does the other eggs, if a chance had been given to her before!

Like the other birds, I cannot believe Lear has not seen this before. He is so blinded by pride that he doesn't want to see what is really missing from his life and the many flaws that he has. He doesn't want to truly understand that his daughter is manipulative, cunning, smooth tongued and is planning his downfall. He is being worked over by his daughter and yet he keeps allowing it to happen, until he finally comes to see the truth. But even then he is still blinded as he decides to go see his daughter Regan, who is also like the cuckoo but he has yet to believe that. The only child who is true to him is Cordelia, and he pushed her out of his nest by himself.