Jane Addams: “A Modern Lear”

Glossary

• aught anything
• Cordelia youngest of King Lear’s three daughters and her father’s favorite, who alone remained loyal to the king throughout his troubles
• fleshpots purely material, as opposed to spiritual, satisfactions
• his town Pullman, Illinois, founded in the 1880s for Pullman company workers and later annexed to the city of Chicago
• ken understanding
• King Lear principal character in William Shakespeare’s play by that name, whose vanity and foolishness ultimately cost him both his kingdom and his family
• president of the Pullman company George Pullman (1831–1897), inventor of the Pullman sleeping car, which made overnight travel more comfortable
• proletariat the working class, particularly industrial workers
• the royal father and the philanthropic employer Lear and Pullman, respectively
• simulacrum imitation or copy
• summer of 1894 the time (May 11, 1894) when three thousand Pullman Palace Car workers staged a strike to protest a 25 percent decrease in wages
• tragedies a reference to Shakespeare’s tragedies in general and King Lear in particular
• vision of the life of Europe a reference to Cordelia’s exile from Britain to France, whose king she married