Exploring Gender Roles In William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

In William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Maria’s role is a gentlewoman to Olivia whose main purpose is to serve and follow orders. However, Maria shows great significance to the play as she proves her intelligence plotting revenge against Malvolio, She takes control of her actions and decision that she gives orders to Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Fabian to spy on Malvolio. Thus, Maria challenges the gender roles to illustrate her strength and ability to control others. For that reason, Maria uses her role as gentlewoman to her advantage, in which Malvolio would not think that Maria could fool him. In other words, Maria is clever with her motives; she creates humour by mocking Malvoilo. As a result, Maria shows her care for others

In the scene, Maria illustrates her control over Sir Toby when she questions his whereabout. Maria tries to direct Sir Toby to establish her power against him when she says, “Ay, but you must confine yourself within the modest limits of order” (1.3.8-9). The opening interaction between Maria and Sir Toby Belch establish how Maria’s contribution to the scene inverts the social norms (Tassi 173). In other words, Maria controls Sir Toby, although her initial role is Olivia’s gentlewoman. Not only does she serve Olivia, she also serves herself, when she makes controls others. Therefore, Maria decides what is best for both Sir Toby and

Maria shows care to both Olivia and Sir Toby that she creates a plan to decide what is best for them. She illustrates her sense of “wit and, more importantly, her worth” (Tassi 176), since Maria is truly smart with her actions that she steps up and makes the decision to fool Malvoilio and recognize his self-love. She understands Olivia’s likes and dislikes that Maria mocks Malvolio to get him away from Olivia which includes wearing yellow stockings, “tis a color she abhors”(2.5 200-201). In addition, as she mocks Malvolio, Maria demonstrates how she manipulates other people’s thoughts and control over others, which she also takes control of Olivia. However, Maria does not tell Olivia about her revenge to gull Malvolio and pretends that she does not know why Malvolio acts “in very strange manner” (3.4.7-8). Also as Olivia’s gentlewoman, Maria goes unsuspected because Malvolio does not attend to Maria when they meet because she is of lower