King Lear makes his daughters compete for inheritances by declaring “which of you . . . doth love us most.” His youngest refuses to let her dowry depend on displaying filial piety, instead declaring her fealty in the old, less emotional language of lineage: “I love your Majesty / According to my bond; no more nor less.” Brontë’s Heathcliff expresses the dialectic of lineage and affect in terms of affective