Kseniia's blog

“Twelfth Night” was written about seven years later than “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, so if there has been any change in Shakespeare’s vision of society and gender roles in it, it will be easy to see it in this “mature” comedy.

The image of independent women

Indeed, “Twelfth Night” seems to be different in comparison with other comedies we have analysed before. Here we do not see any typical women closed in their households by their husbands or fathers. Actually, in this play we have the image of strong, self-sufficient women: Viola and Olivia. Both of them are not married, they do not have fathers, and their only brothers have recently died. So, theoretically, they can be the mistresses of themselves and do whatever they want. Shakespeare seems to be interested in investigation of this very topic: what a woman would do if she had temporal or permanent liberty.

However, we see that these two female characters do not take advantage of their free state, either because they do not know what to do with it, or, most likely, because they cannot do much in any case. The only heiress to her father’s estate now that her brother is dead, Olivia is financially independent, but she is vulnerable to unwanted courtship. Being the mistress of her own household, she prefers to cloister herself. Viola, however, is literally homeless. Shipwrecked on the shores of Illyria, she has no house to hide in. Believing her own brother dead, and knowing her wealth makes her a handsome target for men, Viola finds herself with a little too much liberty. No sooner, in fact, is she at liberty than she securely houses herself, not in Olivia’s household, where she cannot gain entrance, but in the guise of a eunuch, thus closing off all possibility of seduction. So, we see that being theoretically independent, these women could not use their liberty, because still they were not totally free in the male dominant society.

Viola

Viola, however, seems to have more liberty that Olivia. She disguises as a man and thus she becomes one of them who actually rule in society. She cannot be subjugated and enclosed in her house with domestic affairs. She is free to do and to go wherever she pleases. So Viola becomes Orsino’s servant (by the way, the fact that Viola knows how to play musical instruments, sing and speak poetically speaks about the typical Elizabethan education given to the girls at that time). She falls in love with Orsino, and wishes to tell him about her feelings, though she knows that in her present situation and with a male disguise it is not possible. Anyway, in Act 2, Scene 4, when they are left alone with Orsino, Viola tries to hint at her feelings:

DUKE ORSINO

Thou dost speak masterly:
My life upon’t, young though thou art, thine eye
Hath stay’d upon some favour that it loves:
Hath it not, boy?

VIOLA

A little, by your favour.

DUKE ORSINO

What kind of woman is’t?

VIOLA

Of your complexion.

DUKE ORSINO

She is not worth thee, then. What years, i’ faith?

VIOLA

About your years, my lord.

DUKE ORSINO

Too old by heaven: let still the woman take
An elder than herself: so wears she to him,
So sways she level in her husband’s heart:
For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,
Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,
Than women’s are.

VIOLA

I think it well, my lord.

DUKE ORSINO

Then let thy love be younger than thyself,
Or thy affection cannot hold the bent;
For women are as roses, whose fair flower
Being once display’d, doth fall that very hour.

VIOLA

And so they are: alas, that they are so;
To die, even when they to perfection grow!

(A, 2.4.907-929. From now on I will use this text as a reference for the quotations)

Besides, from their dialogue we can derive some typical conventions of the time concerning marriage (that are likely to survive to nowadays in some societies): a wife must be younger than husband. There are two main reasons for it: first of all, as Orsino mentions, the man’s fancies “are more giddy and unfirm”, so he is likely to fall out of love soon if he is younger than his wife; and secondly, “women are as roses”, they fade quickly, so if a woman is already older than a man, she will become an old lady very soon, and all men want to have a young and beautiful wife.

Men and women exchanging roles?

In general, Orsino in “Twelfth Night” does not look like a typical misogynist man who wants to be the master of his wife’s body and soul. He is rather passively romantic. Viola and Olivia seem to take the role of men in this case. Sometimes it seems that in this comedy men and women exchange their social roles: men just lament over their romantic sufferings and women woo men. If Viola does it by masked hints, Olivia is not afraid to “hunt” a man she is in love with openly. She is the most “advanced” feminine character in the play, she does not only choose a man to be with, but she also courts him.

Olivia as the most advanced feminine character

“A classic example of a female character that Shakespeare has given license to “act outside her role” as a woman (at least, until she is “appropriately” reined in at the end of the play) is the lady Olivia of “Twelfth Night”. When she falls in love with Viola disguised as the young page Cesario, she works hard to try to woo him, taking on the role of the hunter where she would normally be the hunted. This gives her incredible appeal as a strong and empowered woman, as does the fact that she has no real reason to reject the advances of the Duke Orsino –  in fact she even admits that he’s quite handsome, saying that he is “of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth”; (1.5.551) as well as “in dimension and the shape of nature / A gracious person” (1.5.553-554) but like Hermia of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” when faced with the love of Demetrius, Olivia refuses to back down and submit to the man she doesn’t want. She is strong, and she rules over her household with an unquestioned hand, with servants at her beck and call and even her live-in uncle (an older, male relative, who by all accounts should be in charge) firmly under her thumb. Even while the strong, shipwreck surviving Viola, or the wise and dangerous lady Portia of “Merchant of Venice” are forced to go into disguise in order to protect themselves as they wade in among the dangers of the male world, Olivia steps forth undisguised and unchallenged, as firm against the tide of the misogynistic elements of society as the Elizabethan era’s own “Virgin Queen” was. Like Shakespeare’s Olivia, Elizabeth too stood as a pinnacle of female power, refusing all suitors as she sat at the helm of her nation (not just her household) with control over many older males, including members of the clergy and the military, unwilling to yield her power to any would-be king.

In the end however, despite all of Olivia’s power and feminine flame, despite all her similarities to the “Virgin Queen” who never fell to the wiles of suitors or ambitious men, the Lady of Illyria is easily undone, and her end is perhaps fitting for the eyes of an audience of Shakespeare’s era, reducing her to a mewling kitten-like shadow of her former self, one who cries out “What shall you ask of me that I’ll deny” (3.4 1728) in the hopes of winning the love she now desperately seeks to see returned (instead of valiantly denying or hunting it.) It takes only the easy agreement of Viola’s brother Sebastian (who Olivia doesn’t really know at all when it comes right down to it) to reign her in and put her under the knuckles of male domination (where members of the audience at that time in history would probably argue she truly should be) as the wife of a penniless “gentleman” who is most certainly beneath her. Whether this is a veiled critique, stab, or worse– hope for the future inserted by Shakespeare in regards to the “Virgin Queen” and her refusal to marry, we can only guess, though I still think it bears mentioning as something to consider when we read “Twelfth Night” and witness first hand the way the mighty Olivia is brought low by a young man who, like so much refuse and dead seaweed, was found and brought into the city by an enemy of the ruling elite after he washed up on the shore of Illyria.”(E)

Thus, again we see that the original image of independent women, mistresses of themselves, vanishes at the end of the play. The idea of harmony in androcentric society emerges instead, making us feel that this is what the women in “Twelfth Night” were, actually, looking for, as now they are perfectly happy and peaceful.