In Shakespeare, Goneril is considered a villain, obsessed with power and overthrowing her elderly father, whereas Melville's Goneril is more shrew than villain and his unfortunate man, made unfortunate through, as the story goes, making her his wife, not the man to tame but to be ruled by her vicious behaviour.
Who knows what induced him to propose, if propose he did, for perhaps he was bullied or tricked into it? For judging by the description the narrator gives of her person it's hard to detect what physical attraction there might have been – in spite of, or perhaps because of, the similarities I read there to myself – but perhaps, as it is suggested, from a distance she was seemed to possess beauty.
What struck people, it seems, were her peculiarities in temper and taste, less than those apparent in her person, whereas it was to these I was originally drawn, seeing, as forementioned, I saw something of myself there. A 'person lithe and straight, too straight for a woman,' with a certain hardness, 'like that of the glazed colours on stoneware', to tarnish her rosy complexion, and her hair 'a deep, rich chestnut.' Her figure naturally impaired the bust, 'while her mouth would have been pretty but for a trace of a moustache.' All in all, her 'style of beauty rather peculiar and cactus-like.'
Yes, there's definitely some chord in me that responds to the above, but if I look in the mirror is that what I see? That would be too revealing to reveal, and would not change my instant recognition on reading this description of Goneril. Her natural antipathy to the peach or grape I do not share, but I can and do, in private, make a satisfactory lunch of hard crackers, though without, of course, the brawn of ham which she it is said she is partial to.
I also, like her, seldom speak at certain parts of the day, though, not it must be stressed because I take time to thaw, but to warm-up to discourse and company. There is a difference, believe me. Unlike her I do not start from an ice-cold place, but from a far milder clime, which waits patiently, and impatiently, for a hint of sun. My nature is, I confess, strange, but not as strange as that of Goneril's.
I might possess, most of the time, her independence of mind, but I wouldn't fling it, as she does, in other people's faces. I do not have her malice; nor therefore her ability to stab and distress and reap delights from it. Although, many moons ago, it was said I employed the evil-eye; a teenage-eye of inward though outwardly shown cursing.
I don't think a man has never been unfortunate enough to have been tormented. Perhaps I'm wrong? If any were it was accidentally, not expertly, done. I can say at least that having never wed I have never divorced a man or hounded him through court; I do not have that virago-force, nor have I had the devil of jealously enter me, which can inflict, truth be said, either gender, and inflict, through it, injuries.
The fortunate man, for I can only assume he was fortunate prior, was unfortunate indeed, we are led to believe, to have met and married a Goneril; or is it the case his unfortunate state is his fortune?
For, just like the good merchant, I have been drawn to discourse, and think, on a Goneril, who, though apparently deceased, likely never existed, in any real fictional form, as wife or woman, being created, as she was (a fiction within a fiction), to solely tug on the sympathies of the unfortunate man's fellow travellers.
Picture credit: Goneril and Regan from King Lear, Edwin Austin Abbey (source: Wikipedia.)
From a journal entry, June 2021. See The Confidence Man by Herman Melville,
