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Twelfth Night And Gender Roles In The Elizabethan Era

1259 Words6 Pages

Throughout William Shakespeare’s time during the Elizabethan Era in the late 1500s, societal standards and gender roles were not like how they are in most of the world today. Women in the Elizabethan Era were raised to believe that they were inferior to men. The Church enforced this, quoting from the bible to ensure that this principle was widely followed. Women were to obey not only their parents but any other male relatives of their family. Disobedience was seen as a crime against their religion. Marriages were arranged for them in order to increase the wealth and social ranking of the family and continue the family bloodline. Women were seen as a typical housewife without the ability to express themselves freely. Women were not allowed to …show more content…

Viola is the primary character used to display Shakespear’s defiance of the Elizabethan gender roles and societal norms. After hearing about her brother Sebastian’s assumed death and her father’s death at her arrival in Illyria, she is left all alone. The captain explains how Lady Olivia is going through something similar to her. He claims that Olivia is going through mourning claiming that she will never leave her room for seven years and creates a huge deal out of it. However, she soon overcomes this and decides that she wants to preserve her brother’s identity by adopting his masculine persona, and becomes Cesario. With her new persona, she decides to work under Duke Orsino, the ruler of Illyria, as a servant of Lady …show more content…

However, Olivia constantly rejects him, yet Orsino still sends messengers to deliver his love confession for her. Here, Olivia seems to have forgotten about her mourning for her dead brother. Olivia recognizes this when she states “I do I know what and fear to find”. This means that she knows that what she is doing is unusual and admits that she is falling for Cesario. She talks about fate and talks about how she is willing to accept whatever for coming events occur. She says that fate brought Cesario to her and will let fate decide what happens later in the plot. The irony in this affection for “Cesario” is that Olivia does not realize that he is actually Viola. To some, this can mean that she is technically gay, which heavily went against religion and societal conformity in the Elizabethan

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