Twelfth Night Gender Roles Essay

The play, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare supports the concept that men are superior to women in all aspects in life. This is highlighted numerous times and is witnessed through the dynamic relationships shared between women and men within the play. The men of Verona crave dominance, whilst the women of Verona are subservient. Ultimately, Shakespeare’s play is a depiction of typical gender roles of the Elizabethan era.

Born on approximately April 23, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, William Shakespeare is considered by many to have been the greatest writer the English language has ever known. His literary legacy included 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and five major poems. Among his many plays is the notable, Twelfth Night, a romantic comedy, placed in a festive atmosphere in which three couples are brought together happily.

All throughout Illyria there is romance, passion, royalty, and an immense amount of gender stereotypes. William Shakespeare imagines the kingdom of Illyria to have very traditional gender stereotypes in his play Twelfth Night. In Scene 2 of Act 1, Viola, recently rescued from a shipwreck, hears about a duke named Orsino and instantly comes up with a plan to get closer to him. Her plan is to disguise herself as a boy who she will name Cesario and become one of Orsino's attendants. Right off the bat we begin to see gender stereotypes. Why must Viola become a man in order to work for the duke? Elizabethan society “molded women into the form of the dutiful wife and mother” (Elizabethan Women). Viola could not have served the duke Orsino as a woman because of the norms for women's jobs. Scene two prepares the audience for the idea of gender throughout the rest of the play. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is very traditional play due to its ideas of gender stereotypes in Elizabethan society.

Born on approximately April 23, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, William Shakespeare is considered by many to have been the greatest writer the English language has ever known. His literary legacy included 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and five major poems. Among his many plays is the notable, Twelfth Night, a romantic comedy, placed in a festive atmosphere in which three couples are brought together happily. The play opens with Orsino, the Duke of Illyria, expressing his deep love for the Countess Olivia. Meanwhile, the shipwrecked Viola disguises herself as a man and endeavors to enter the Duke's service. Although she has rejected his suit, the Duke then employs Viola, who takes the name of Cesario, to woo Olivia for him. As the play

    Othello represents a prime example of Shakespeare's ability to develop relationships between the sexes so as to demonstrate those relationships' weaknesses. In Othello, the sexes are divided by misconceptions and ego- centric views of the opposite gender. The men of the play, in particular Othello, maintain a patriarchal, chivalric notion of the sexes, while the women of the play yearn for more involvement in their husbands' affairs. So it is that the thrust of the play emerges from "the opposition of attitudes, viewpoints, and sexes." (Neely 214)

All throughout Illyria, there is romance, passion, royalty, and an immense amount of gender stereotypes. William Shakespeare imagines the kingdom of Illyria to have very traditional norms for both women and men in his play Twelfth Night. In Scene 2 of Act 1, Viola, recently rescued from a shipwreck, hears about a duke named Orsino and instantly comes up with a plan to get closer to him. Her plan is to disguise herself as a boy who she will name Cesario and become one of Orsino's’ attendants. Right off the bat, we begin to see gender stereotypes. Why must Viola become a man in order to work for the duke? Elizabethan society “molded women into the form of the dutiful wife and mother” (Elizabethan Women). Viola could not have served duke Orsino as a woman because as a woman she was expected to work at home and be either a “dutiful wife [or a] mother”. Scene two prepares the audience for the idea of gender throughout the rest of the play. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is very traditional play due to its ideas of gender stereotypes in Elizabethan society.

Next, another good example of gender roles is Beatrice and Benedick. After Hero is denounced, she realizes that someone has to challenge Claudio. Beatrice as a woman could not challenge Claudio, so she says to Benedick if you really loved me, challenge Claudio for me. Benedick challenges Claudio because of how much he had loved

In the twelfth to the seventeenth century, men and women had their own roles that define them in each category either men or women. The author demonstrates that Gender Roles characterizes individual most in the Marriage that women should serve their husband and Virginity or sex after married was a treasure to admire in women. In the play, Othello: The Moor of Venice, William Shakespeare illustrates Gender Roles as characterization of the plays, to portray the individual characteristics and roles.

Through comedy, Shakespeare bends the rules for the gender in the play Twelfth Night. Viola and Olivia are two women who complicate the relationships they have. Viola dresses as a man who she calls Cesario, while her double life has her learning the roles of both male and female. She meets Olivia, who struggles with her own relationships and looks to Viola as Cesario for help. Both these women go through the same struggles of the gender roles, but because Shakespeare created by Viola to play both male and female her roles allow her to push the role of the female gender in society. These roles that they face are heteronormative verse binary gender, use of male and female communication, male power verse female power, relationships and identity.

Shakespeare had portrayed various themes of humans’ feelings inside his play, Othello. Love, jealousy, repentance, betrayal and racism were all shown throughout the story. Gender roles in Othello played a very important element for the construction of this whole play. The way men and women were shown were considered to be pretty different from general idea of their roles compared to modern societies.

Shakespeare has clearly separated almost all elements of the book into two categories; silliness and seriousness. Viola’s gender and presentation would fit into silliness – at face value, the changes began because of a ridiculously dramatic act of love, and Shakespeare uses many lines of dialogue such as the frivolously dangerous wordplay Viola uses (as described by the Duke in the end, “Boy, thou hast said to me a thousand times / Thou never shouldst love woman like to me.”), which might blow her cover, to inject more unrealism into the entire situation. However, looking deeper at the subject, Viola’s gender presentation is one of the most ambiguously casted elements of the play. She is only

Real Lives of Most Men." He says to a friend of his "This must be a

In these lines Orsino implies that he can only be with his true love when she looks like a woman. She looks like a woman when she is in woman's clothing. In these play the characters are able to change from female to male by putting on different clothes. The women are treated differently when they are dressed as men. This brings about the conclusion that clothes define gender. Gender is not about who you are, it is what you look like and how other perceive you. To prove her gender Viola must change into women's clothing. She also must go back to her correct female role and abandon the new male attitude she took on. When Rosalind removes her disguise she also gives up the strength it symbolizes (Erikson 23). Her soon to be husband Orsino will not accept her in her male attire. He says to her "Give me thy hand/ And let me see thee in thy woman's weeds" (5.1.265-266). He can only know for sure that Viola is female if she is correctly dressed. In As You Like It Orlando recognizes his true love only after she changes into her womanly clothes. "If there be truth in sight, you are my Rosalind" (5.4.108). In both plays the women trick people who are very close to them into believing not only that they are men, but not even recognizing. Orlando speaks to Ganymede, Rosalind male persona, without noticing the resemblance to his love. How can people claim to be so in love and then mistake them with different clothes on? This is an obvious

Gender defiance from Goneril takes place in Act 1 Scene 4 Line 285 Lear says to Goneril “I am ashamed that thou hast power to shake my manhood thus; that these hot tears, which break from me perforce should make thee worth them.”

Shakespeare often incorporates social issues that occur during the time period into his play, Othello. In Shakespeare’s play Othello, he challenges the image of women in the during the play period as it relates to the oppression of women. In Othello, there are three female characters: Desdemona, Emilia, and Bianca, each of which played a major role in the plot. In this essay, I am going to discuss how Shakespeare uses this imagery of women within the play to give clues to how society views and oppresses women within the play.He does this by attempting to rewrite female subjectivity, touching on false accusations of adultery as a way women violate social laws, using love as a foundation for characters’ actions, and portraying women as submissive and as a possession.