Close Reading, Part 1: Finding a Human, Blind Gloucester

I've been hesitant to actually post a class reading of King Lear because I'm so new to the study of blindness, and I've been doing the best I can to first understand the objections that blind critics have to portrayals of blindness in literature. Perhaps the criticism that I've been thinking through most comes from Georgina Kleege, a legally blind professor of literature at UC Berkeley. In her memoir, Sight Unseen, she writes of portrayals of the blind in literature:

These are the old stories of blindness. They make me weary and a little afraid. They take Oedipus at his word, and start from the assumption that blindness is both an outward sign of hidden sin and a punishment worse than death. They show no life after blindness, offer no hope to the blind, except that the condition might prove impermanent or that death might come quick. . . . And this is the whole point. If Oedipus got used to the idea of his lost sight, much less adopted new methods of getting around or recognizing people, then his blindness would be less of a punishment. He would cease to be the instructive and frightening spectacle he voluntarily made of himself. (73-74)

Right now, my thinking is that Gloucester is not an "instructive and frightening spectacle" for at least two reasons:

1. Gloucester is not treated as a pure symbol by people in the text. Though he is certainly despondent about being blinded, he shows some hopes for living, and other people around him try to help him adapt to his new life of blindness, unlike in the case with Oedipus.



Watch as I muddle through my close reading!

2. The instructiveness of Gloucester is problematized (but certainly not solved all the way) by Edmund's fulfillment of his position. As Steve mentioned in class, Edmund the bastard kind of acts like a bastard, so it's impossible to say that Gloucester's blinding was an uncomplicated punishment for treating Edmund, well, like a bastard. 

Ultimately, though, I want to get to the scene that I love so much: the cliffs of Dover, where Edward tries to create a new life for his father through language, and a figurative death and rebirth. But I'm not quite there in my rereading, and there's a lot of depth to plumb here. So, I'll start with point 1 in this post, and probably work on the other two throughout the week as I work on developing my tweethis and annotated bibliography.

Basically, I'm finding that immediately after Gloucester's eyes are put out, people try to help him in his blindness or point out that he is not helpless in his condition. Examples.

• Third Servant [after Cornwall and Regan leave]: "Go thou. I'll fetch some flax and whites of eggs / To apply to his bleeding face" (III.vii.128-29). My Folger edition of King Lear provides this note on these lines: "prescribed (in the Renaissance) for wounded eyes" (166).
• Lear says to him: "A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears" (4.vi.165). I realize that Lear is saying to Gloucester that he comprehends how unfair the world is, but this seems to be a knowledge that he feels comfortable crediting only to Gloucester.

And even Gloucester himself has some hope that he'll adapt to his blindness:

• Gloucester: "O dear son Edgar, / The food of thy abused father's wrath / Might I but live to see thee in my touch, / I'd say I had eyes again" (IV.i.22-25).
• Gloucester: "I see it [the world] feelingly" (IV.vi.164). This line gains more resonance once we realize that Gloucester said earlier, "Heavens, deal so still: / Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man, / That slaves your ordinance, that will not see / Because he does not feel, feel your power quickly" (IV.i.76-79). He attributes some measure of knowledge of the world to tactile (even if emotionally tactile) instead of visual senses.

As I write out these quotes, though, this point feels kind of useless to make. My close readings don't change the fact that Gloucester was off to commit suicide after he was blinded, even if he did appear to have a moment of hope. They don't change the fact that Lear was speaking to Gloucester in madness and may not have been addressing him as a real person who needed help struggling with his blindness. Though I'm glad I've dived into the text at least a little bit, I think I ultimately need to ground myself in the Dover scene.

Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions? I'm a little frustrated with the outcome of this post, but hopefully the next one will be better.