Is it the fashion that discarded fathers
Should have thus little mercy on their flesh?
Judicious punishment! ‘Twas this flesh begot
Those pelican daughters.
– William Shakespeare
King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4. King Lear speaks of the ingratitude and treachery of his daughters. Lear’s experiences with daughters hasn’t been a happy one. He scolds himself for fathering Goneril and Regan and uses a particularly apt metaphor when he calls them "pelican daughters." During Shakespeare’s time it was believed that the mother pelican sacrificed herself by wounding her breast so that her chicks could feed off her blood.