Cordelia conforms to male authority, cares for the ailing Lear, and appears pristine and sexless, despite being a married woman. However, in the opening scene, when Cordelia refuses to profess her love for Lear, Lear tries to marry her in a way reminiscent of the slave trade: Lear puts a "price" (1.1.225) on Cordelia and tells her suitors to “take it or leave it” (1.1.235). The act of placing a monetary value on Cordelia and considering her a commodity is dehumanizing and demonstrates that, even when the angelic Cordelia resists male authority, she is still subject to the same degradation of all women in the work. This emphasizes that women are placed in a subordinate position in society compared to men, perhaps also due to fear of rejection by men and suspicion towards mothers shown by men in the play causes them to place women in an inferior position in society and see their sexuality as diabolical. However, when Cordelia dies, the last fragment of femininity and motherhood is erased in the play. Lear's grief and death demonstrate that, despite their ruthless condemnation of the maternal, the masculine cannot exist without the feminine, and that without the maternal, hope for the future would be bleak, for "the young will never see so much nor will they live that long”..”