Twelfth Night Essay The Necessity of Cross-dressing

The Necessity of Cross-dressing Twelfth Night The action of Twelfth Night begins shortly after a damaging tempest shipwrecks the heroine, casting her upon foreign shores. Upon arrival in this strange seaport, Viola--like the Princess Leonide--dons male disguise which facilitates both employment and time enough to orient herself in this unfamiliar territory. Violas transvestism functions as emblematic of the antic nature of Illyrian society. As contemporary feminist and Shakespearean scholars are quick to point out, cross-dressing foregrounds not only the concept of role playing and thus the constructed or performative nature of gender but also the machinations of power. Viola can only make her way in this alien†¦show more content†¦In effect, we experience that state of radical identity-confusion typical of adolescence, when the differences between the sexes are as fluid as their desires for each other.5 Gender identity might well be perceived as fluid in this play, for Viola does not simply impersonate a man but a eunuch, a persona that provides access to the even more compelling privileges of androgyny, as her liminal sexual identity exposes the limitations of masculinity and femininity and allows her to move beyond gender. Just as Viola permeates gender boundaries, Olivia, Toby, Orsino, and Malvolios love interests lead them across class lines--another example of the ways in which standards are relaxed or social codes reversed during Twelfth Night. Olivia spurns the love of her social equal Orsino (who many critics find to be more in love with love than he is with the marble-breasted tyrant) and lights instead on the Dukes page. Sir Toby admires Olivias waiting-gentlewoman Maria rather than favor an aristocratic matron, Orsino is perhaps too fond of his servant Cesario and Malvolio dreams of marrying Olivia. Significantly, it is only the stewards love that is regarded as illegitimate or forbiddingly transgressive while the upper-class individuals are permitted to indulge their socially illicit desire. Elliot KriegerShow MoreRelated Cross-Dressing in Shakespeares Twelfth Night and As You Like It1736 Words   |  7 PagesCross-Dressing in Shakespeares Twelfth Night and As You Like It In Shakespeares plays Twelfth Night and As You Like It both of the lead female characters dress as men. Both plays are comedies and the change in gender is used as a joke, but I think it goes much deeper. A woman can become a man, but only if it is not permanent. The affect of the change cannot be too great because she must change back to female once everything is settled. They are strong female characters, but must becomeRead MoreWilliam Shakespeare s Twelfth Night1762 Words   |  8 PagesShakespeare wrote the romantic comedy play, Twelfth Night, in the year 1601. Despite being over 400 years old, people have been studying and performing the play continuously. Even though some may argue American audience now cannot understand the significance of social hierarchy in the play nor the lines written in Shakespearean English, Twelfth Night remains popular today as shown by New York Times’ publishing of seven reviews on different performances of Twelfth Night. At the same time, Shakespeare utilizesRead More The Roaring Girl Essay3978 Words   |  16 PagesRoaring Girl Though its primary function is usually plot driven--as a source of humor and a means to effect changes in characters through disguise and deception—cross dressing is also a sociological motif involving gendered play. My earlier essay on the use of the motif in Shakespeares plays pointed out that cross dressing has been discussed as a symptom of a radical discontinuity in the meaning of the family (Belsey 178), as cul-tural anxiety over the destabilization of the social hierarchy