Twelfth Night Gender Roles Essay

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Genders are Complicated In the play, Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare he makes the characters love lives very complex and ambitious. These characters are so ambitious that he messes around with the gender role and how they use them. He uses Viola known as Cesario to act more masculine, to be like her twin brother Sebastian. Shakespeare also uses Olivia to be more controlling and take charge more like a man rather than a woman taking orders. Orsino's gender role is also mixed around by taking orders like a woman rather giving them. All of these characters gender roles are flipped rather than a regular gender role. In the beginning of the play Viola is on a voyage but gets into a shipwreck and ends up on the shores of Illyria. She is a very When she lands on Illyria she heard that her brother Cesario had died in a shipwreck. Viola dresses up as her brother to remember him and not let people know that he’s dead. The gender role played is literally dressed and acts like a man. Viola's character mixes the play up because she is in love with Orsino, but can't tell him because he is in love with Olivia and Viola is dressed up like a man. Later in the play Viola finally tells Orsino she loves him, “Too well what love women to men may owe. …show more content…
Orsino is a masculine man but shows his feminine features more through the play and different approaches about love while Olivia is the complete opposite of Orsino. Olivia is a very beautiful woman but acts more masculine by having the authority and being very demanding to other people like her servants and attendants. Our protagonist Viola is dressed up as a man and shows that she can play both gender roles male or female. She does this by pretending to be a man throughout the whole play, but then reveals her true gender role as a woman in the act five scene one of Twelfth
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