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Twelfth Night Viola Essay

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Viola is considered to be the hero in the play.Viola is the only character that truly knows what she wants. Viola is in love with The Due and she is truly passionate about him this is shown when she is describing the love she has for him in the line “She pined in thought, And with a green and yellow melancholy she sat like patience on a monument, smiling at grief was not this love indeed?”(Shakespeare). Viola causes many conflicts with her identity. She must be herself but also be Cesario. Viola finds herself forgeting who she truly is because she is around people who don't know her truly. Viola feels pressure she must keep her identity a secret but she would also like to tell The Duke that she isn't a man because she likes him. All of this …show more content…

Viola is very confident in herself. Viola believes in the woman's traditional need to be safeguarded by a strong male. Yet because she has been deprived of both her father and her brother, she makes the bold choice of taking on that role herself. Instead of turning to the Duke and asking for shelter, her impulse, on landing alone in Illyria, is to "conceal me what I am" until she is ready to be "delivered to the world"" (Hamilton). This proves that Viola can provide for herself. Viola's intelligence, engaging wit, and immense amount of charm helps her obtain her position with The Duke, and they are also the same qualities which cause Lady Olivia to immediately fall in love with her. It is her charming personality that won her the sea captain's loyalty, without his help her disguise would have never succeeded. "Viola's charm lies in her simple, straightforward, good-humored personality. She could have used her disguise for all sorts of connivings, yet she is forthright and honest in all of her dealings with Lady Olivia and with Duke Orsino, albeit she does use her disguise to entertain the audience with delightful verbal

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In the Twelfth Night written by William Shakespeare, it demonstrates Viola using her head to make the decision to dress up as a boy and become a part of the Duke Orsino’s court. She states, “Conceal me what I am, and be my aid For such disguise as haply shall become The form of my Intent”

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The biggest point that the audience must be able to to ignore to enjoy the play is that Viola was able to perfectly disguise herself as a male, and moreover, as identical to her brother. While they were twins, this would have been extremely difficult, especially in manipulating her voice to sound like his, and hiding her feminine features. As Duke Orsino states, “One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons! A natural perspective, that is and is not!” (Shakespeare.

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Shakespeare filed confusion with gender throughout the entirety of the play. In the same way, he precedented social class to be viewed correspondingly. Viola was in love with Orsino, surely, but not because of his social stature. She loved him for who he was and did not wish to be with him purely to change her social class. Viola was originally born into a high-class family but decided to pose as a servant despite “what my estate is” (1.2.43-46).

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Both Viola (as Cesario) and Sebastian, as Orsino aptly puts it, have the same physical appearance, the same “voice”, and even dress in the “same habits” (5.1.226-227) (Shakespeare). In addition, both seem to be seamlessly substituted for the other by the characters around them—a seamlessness which may, indeed, be an illusion (a “natural perspective”, so to say), since these occurrences of ‘mistaken identities’ turn out to result in real danger for Viola/Sebastian, and a break in the relationship between Sebastian and Antonio. It is the substitution of Cesario by Sebastian, however, that calls into question the distinction between these two “persons”. Olivia seeks to marry Cesario, but is mistaken, and therefore ends up in a betrothal to Sebastian. Despite the fact that she, for most of the play, appears to care for no man other than Cesario, Olivia seems to easily transfer those feelings to Sebastian even after it is revealed that Olivia’s betrothed is not Cesario, as if the relationship between her and Sebastian is in continuity with her and Cesario’s interactions.

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It is even possible that her vow to retreat from society fueled her lack of interest in the duke who pursues her called Orsino. Olivia and Viola both have lost a brother, although Viola fortunately eventually finds her brother. Still, due to the fact both characters believe their brothers to be dead for the majority of the play, their attitudes are affected by this. Olivia in particular attempts to keep a good opinion of

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Shakespeare uses Viola (Cesario) as an example of a mechanism that can throw internal conflicts into temporary chaos. Viola willingly faces whatever comes in her way. Her love for Duke Orsino seems too constant and true, unlike the other characters in the play. The temporary chaos of the play is when Viola falls in love with Orsino, who falls in love with Olivia, who on the other hand falls in love with Viola’s disguise, Cesario. This love triangle is very complicated as none of them realize that Cesario is a woman, making this an internal conflict for Viola, as she cannot ‘truly’ love whom she wants.

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