Pride, according to Stuart Scott, is “The mindset of self… a focus on self and the service of self, a pursuit of self-recognition and self-exaltation, and a desire to control and use all things for self” (179). C.S. Lewis describes it as “the complete anti-God state of mind” (94). We’re being prideful when we don’t focus on and exalt the One that we should focus on and exalt (God), and instead focus on and exalt the one that shouldn’t be focused on and exalted (us). But pride doesn’t just come in one form. William Shakespeare and Jonathin Swift recognized that. The works King Lear and Gulliver’s Travels show that pride comes in many forms, and that all of them are sinful and should be dealt with.
In King Lear, Shakespeare mainly depicts the Ancient Greek form of hubris—a self-assurance so strong that people don’t listen to sound advice or warnings from others, an “I got this” mindset.
Take, for example, the move King Lear made that set the whole play rolling—he disinherited Cordelia for saying, “I love your majesty / According to my bond, no more, nor less” (I. i.). Lear declared her unworthy for not giving flattering (and untruthful) declarations of love for him like her sisters had done. There was pride even in Goneril and Regan’s opulent speeches—they gave them only because they wanted to become Queen after Lear died.
At the end of the play, Goneril and Regan’s pride still had not left them. They both wanted Edmund to be their husband, and strove to win him for themselves. Each assured herself that she was the one who was worthy of wedding him. As Edmund put it, they were “Each jealous of the other as the stung / Are of the adder” (V. i. 58-59). Regan asked Edmund very specifically if he had pledged his love to Goneril, and Goneril posed similar questions to him. Edmund—in his pride, wanting only the best for himself—worked himself deep into a slippery hole by courting both. “Which of them shall I take,” he asks himself. “Both? One? Or neither? Neither can be enjoyed / If both remain alive. To take the widow / Exasperates, makes mad her sister Goneril, / And hardly shall I carry out my side, / Her husband being alive” (V. i. 59-64). But pride still grows, until finally Goneril poisons her sister and commits suicide after her husband discovers that she had written a letter to Edmund asking him to murder her husband so Edmund could marry her. Goneril, in her pride, could not bear to see her plans found out and her reputation disgraced.
Goneril, Regan, and Lear all are guilty of the hubris form of pride. The thought that maybe they weren’t perfect never occurred to Goneril and Regan, and Goneril, when she was confronted with evidence that she wasn’t, could not bear the thought and killed herself. So too Lear thought that he was so perfect and worthy of love that when Cordelia didn’t meet the standard he’d set for himself, he kicked her out.
Jonathin Swift, in Gulliver’s Travels, depicts Gulliver in many travels around the globe where he lands in four different strange countries, and Swift points out pride in numerous ways in each country.
In Lilliput (the first place Gulliver is shipwrecked), there is a feud going on—a feud between the people who wear low heels on their shoes and the people who wear high heels. But the feud isn’t about heels—it’s about eggs. Years before, it had been generally accepted that when eating an egg, the proper end to crack was the big end. “But his present Majesty’s grandfather,” the principle Secretary of Private Affairs told Gulliver,
While he was a boy, going to eat an egg, and breaking it according to the ancient practice, happened to cut one of his fingers. Whereupon the Emperor his father published an edict, commanding all his subjects, upon great penalties, to break the smaller end of their eggs (74).
This was not inherently bad (though maybe ridiculous); the Emperor, by making everyone break their eggs on the small end was trying to keep them from cutting their fingers. But his pride showed when people refused to obey the edict: “It is computed,” the secretary said, “that eleven thousand persons have, at several times, suffered death, rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end” (74). Eleven thousand people killed because they wouldn’t obey the Emperor’s law. There was definetly pride on the people’s part, but look at the Emperor. He made a law to protect the people, but when they wouldn’t obey it he killed them. Killing doesn’t seem like protecting. He wanted people to obey his law so badly that instead of protecting them when they disobeyed him, he killed them. And all the emperors that succeeded him were just as prideful, carrying on the feud, determined to be the one to stop it, but unwilling to compromise. This is similar to hubris in that the emperors are refusing to admit that their law is anything short of gospel truth. But overall, it is pride in its most basic form—they are killing people over an egg and there is no benefit to anyone, no reason however ludicrous for them to be doing this.
In the country of Laput (similar name, very different place), there was another sort of pride. The Laputains were
So taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of others, without being reminded by some external taction upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason those persons who are able to afford it always keep a flapper… in their family, as one of their domestics, nor ever walk abroad or make visits without him (p. 246).
In other words, they were so caught up in their own thoughts and “speculations” that they needed to be reminded to speak and listen to other people, and therefore those who could afford it had a servant who wacked them on the ears or mouth when they needed to interact with others. At first glance, this seems just like another strange character trait of a make-believe people. But when you think about it, it really is pride that these people are so taken up with their own thoughts that they cannot listen nor talk to others without being reminded that they need to.
All these examples from King Lear and Gulliver’s Travels seem rather ridiculous. My initial thought pattern went like this: Disinhering my daughter because she doesn’t give me long and flattering declarations of love? Murdering my sister because I want to marry the man she loves even though I’m already married? Killing 11,000 people because they won’t break their eggs on the small end? Being so caught up in my own thoughts that I can’t even listen when other people are talking to me? No, I would never do things like that. But when I actually think about it, though I may not do these particular things, the sins I commit in my pride are just as silly. Getting mad at my sister because she didn’t pick up the LEGO’s in front of my dresser that she was planning on picking up but hadn’t quite gotten to it yet? Being frustrated that I need to cook dinner because mom is sick, since I’d rather read a book? Those examples of pride in my life are just as ridiculous as those that Shakespeare and Swift gave—it’s just that when I’m sinning in my pride, I don’t see it as silly. I see it as the most important thing, even more important than God.
In King Lear, Shakespeare depicts the beauty of humility when Lear repents of his pride in kicking out Cordelia. He admits that it was wrong to disinherit her because she told him the truth, while her sisters exaggerated a love that they did not have. “I know you do not love me,” he tells Cordelia upon their reunion, “for your sisters / Have, as I do remember, done me wrong. / You have some cause; they have not” (I. vii. 75-76). Goneril and Regan had no reason to rebel against their father except for their pride, but Lear’s virulent rejection of Cordelia has given her no reason to love him—and he admits that. And Cordelia, in her humility, still loves her father even though he has been so cruel towards her.
Humility is the exact opposite of pride—admitting that I am not the most important, and that I am not perfect. We cannot accomplish this on our own, and therefore must depend upon God to grant us humility—and even that takes humility.
Works Cited:
Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. Collier Books, 1952.
Scott, Stuart. The Exemplary Husband. Focus Publishing, 2002.
Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Norton, 2008.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels. G.K. Hall, 1726.
Featured image by the author.
Ellen Sheehy 