is daughter now raped and butchered in an almost unspeakable fashion Titus’ manly nature only leaves him with one method to rectify this crime.. Emily Detmer’s The Need for Lavina’s Voice, mentions that, “Lavina’s inability to say the word rape reminds the else reader that even to speak of rape brings a woman shame.”(Detemer, 75) It is not only Lavina who feels the shame however but her father as well. As result Titus asks Saturninus “was it well of rash Virginius to slay his daughter with his own right hand because she was enforc’d, stain’d, and deflow’r’d?” (Shakespeare, V.iii, 36-38) Saturninus then answers that, “It was Andronicus...because the girl should not survive her shame.” (Shakespeare, V.iii, 39, 41) Titus is no different he in turn Kills Lavina feeling that neither he nor she should have to suffer the shame of the rape by Tamora’s sons. Titus then kills Tamora but Saturninus then kills him immediately. The blame for the horrors of the last scene falls strongly on Titus’ extreme masculinity. It creates a very powerful enemy in Tamora who in turn is responsible for his daughter’s rape and mutilation, which drives him mad and causes him to kill his own daughter then only to be murdered by Saturninus. In his search of female tenderness Lear rejects Cordelia, the only daughter who does love him and instead turns to Goneril and Regan, who do not, and finds only sadness. His inability to find this female love causes Lear to curse his daughters and then women in general. “My daughter, or rather a disease... Thou art a bile, A plague sore.” (Shakespeare, II.iv, 221-224) Lois Potter calls Lear “the representation of the harsh patriarchal structure of the sixteenth century,” (Potter, 196) in her essay, Shakespeare in the Sixteenth Century and some feminist critics even label Lear as a miso...
