Gender Roles In Twelfth Night

The Identity of Gender Twelfth Night or What You Will by William Shakespeare is a story of journeys. Characters go through journeys both physically and emotionally. Sebastian journeys months out at sea to Illyria. Sir Toby starts as a drunkard and becomes more responsible. The journey I want to focus on is Viola’s or more accurately Cesario’s. In Viola’s first scene we see her stranded in a foreign country where she knows no one. The scene focuses around her figuring out what she will do now, she comes up with several ideas. Her first ideas get shot down so she comes up with an idea to become a man and work for the Duke Orsino. This is where her journey begins as Cesario. I began to think that changing genders couldn’t be very common back then because we can’t even accept it now! Of course all actors were men, so they even played women, but what is the likelihood of a woman dressing as men outside of a play. To me the acceptance of the captain with Viola when she decides she will be a man is jarring. I wish it was like that today. With what we perceive as more openness in the world has led to gender identities not just being what was assigned to us at birth. There
I learned about it maybe two years ago and not from anyone I knew personally. In health classes sure they mentioned gender identity, but never with anything more than a gloss over. Our teachers didn’t even talk about how the binary genders we know are a spectrum, not opposites. Viola isn’t a complete different person as Cesario, just differently dressed and addressed. It isn’t a light switch with Viola on and Cesario off. I can understand this because I kind of identify with it. Not strongly like this though, sometimes I don’t want to be a girl and sometimes I do. Viola has less of a choice when becoming Cesario. Cesario even feels really comfortable as himself. We never see inner conflict about being a man unless it is crossing with