DISABILITY IN KING LEAR ILLEGITIMACY IN A POST-COLONIAL READING (Pages 30-42) by Thayumanavan . V in THE ENGLISH INDIA / ISSN: 2321-1172 (Online); 2347-2634 (Print)

In a matrilineal society the mother’s brother has the role of social father. Here resources are prohibited to men’s sisters’ offspring’s. There were no heavy restrictions on women’s sexuality. in the initial states polyandry was practiced but it gradually dissolved. Hence they felt a socially acknowledged union was necessary for the distribution and inheritance of resources. The child of socially accepted father is acknowledged and called legitimates where as the child of socially un accepted fathers were called illegitimates. Thus marriages are used as a distributive medium to share resources and create status and statusless that is legitimacy or illegitimacy. Thus is both the systems the child’s claim to his land or wealth is linked to his father. In English societies there are also restrictions for a child to inherit if the marriage is not an endogamous one. The offspring’s of the parents who went beyond the endogamy was considers illegitimates and they are deprived from enjoying resources. In early times church treated marriages between both Christian parties as legal if the marriage is with Jews or if Infields they are treated as illegal’s and their children are illegitimates. Hence an illegitimate child is one whose concept of birth did not take place as per the rules where its parents’ society exists.