Essay: Twelfth Night – discussion of sex and gender

As Barber notes, ‘holiday for the Elizabethan sensibility implied a contrast with “everyday” … the release of that one day was understood to be a temporary licence, a misrule which implied rule’ (Barber, p.10). Thus, while Twelfth Night creates a space for the discussion of sex and gender, the patriarchal and heterosexual institution of marriage ensures that all misrule is, on paper, banished from Illyria by the time the curtain closes, offering no opportunity for a continuation of the carnivalesque.
Simone de Beauvoir famously stated that, ‘one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’, an argument fitting to Twelfth Night which, on a ‘transvestite stage’, implies that the differences between men and women are socially enforced and culturally inscribed. The ascribing of gender to material items, in particular clothing, led Smith to argue that, ‘clothing is fetishized from start to finish: it is invested with transformative powers’ (Smith in Stanivukovic, p.32). As soon as Viola dresses up as a man, she assumes the trappings and costume of that role in society and is given access to ‘the book even of my [Orsino’s] secret soul’ (1.4.14). This inclusion of Viola’s in amity, the highest form of friendship between men, is an implicit challenge to Montaigne’s argument that women were incapable of forming such intense friendships, and gives credence to the larger argument that differences between the two sexes are to do with the cultural psyche rather than the fundamental biological makeup. Given that traditional Elizabethan casts were comprised of solely men, they relied on the audience’s sufficient immersion in cultural conventions to accept gesture, makeup and crucially attire as indicators of gender. This ‘transvestite stage’ breaks the Brechtian fourth wall and Butler argues that ‘drag fully subverts the distinction between inner and outer psychic space and effectively mocks both the expressive model of gender and the notion of a true gender identity’ (Butler, p.2385). Having the character of Viola be played by a male actor who adopts the traditional male costume for the majority of the play despite fundamentally playing a female character is a double inversion. His outside appearance is masculine, but his character is feminine, however this can be reversed, in the fact that he is playing a female character on the outside, yet he is, fundamentally, male. Thus, this interplay between what is happening in relation to character, but also of the body of the performer, naturally leads one to view gender as a culturally constructed performance rather than a natural and essential repertoire of traits associated with anatomical sex. Mark Rylance, speaking as both artistic director and as the actor playing Olivia, insisted that having an all-male cast for the Globe’s 2013 production of Twelfth Night was essential in revealing the ‘layers of meaning that modern practice obscures’. Power relies on compliance to binary structures, and thus the exposing of this imagined distinction between ‘man’ and ‘woman’ reveals that male, masculine autonomy is illusory. Having male actors adopt the cultural inscriptions and tropes of femininity highlights the extreme dependency of the masculine subject on the female ‘other’ for patriarchal dominance. Thus, Viola is a character who combines and subsequently denies both genders in her playing of the eunuch Cesario, as Feste muses, ‘four negatives make two affirmatives’ (5.1.19).
Shakespeare uses the commonly accepted notions about anatomical sex to create a dialogue in Twelfth Night about the fluidity of gender, and in particular, the distinction between “boy” and “man” which is played out through the characters of Sebastian and Viola. Galen’s single-sex model of human anatomy was generally accepted in contemporary times, and asserted that “male” and “female” are points along a single spectrum in which the “male” is the superior. Genitalia was thus deemed homologous, with the female genitalia accepted as the inverted male phallus. Unlike the two-sex theory that developed around the 18th century and saw “male” and “female” as polar opposites, the one-sex model, in theory, offered progression towards the “male”. This is important when considering the feminine impression that Sebastian seems to give off to the other characters in Twelfth Night. The blind acceptance of Viola as Cesario suggests that “male” and “man” do not necessarily correlate, but require a “becoming”. For the entirety of the play, none of the characters doubt “Cesario’s” sincerity, and this, coupled with Orsino’s anaphoric exclamation, ‘One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons!’ (5.1.213-4), when the twins are stood together, serves to reinforce the other characters ignorance to the situation, but also the femininity of Sebastian. After Malvolio’s first interaction with Viola, who is under the guise of Cesario, he proclaims that Viola is ‘not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy’ (1.5.149), stuck in a limbo that conflates gender and anatomical sex as one in the same. This discussion hinges on Orsino’s statement seen above, and his insistence that they share ‘one face, one voice’ implicates Sebastian with all the gendered language and imagery that has surrounded the ‘eunuch’ (1.2.54) “Cesario” throughout the play. In Act 1, Malvolio says that Viola ‘speaks very shrewishly. One would think his mother’s milk were scarcely out of him’ (1.5.154), his description of Viola’s speech as shrewish, a word commonly associated with women, and the connection of Cesario with mother’s milk bears no sense of forceful renaissance masculinity. Olivia’s inquiry of ‘what kind o’ man is he?’ (1.5.143) consciously interrogates the relationship between male and masculine and suggests the polymorphism of the latter term and the lack of correlation between gender and sex.
Twelfth Night explores a tension between the competing definitions of masculinity, and as a result of this, Stanivukovic argues that masculinity ‘is not represented as normative’, instead the Renaissance interpretation of masculinity is questioned by a plethora of unstable gender categories (Stanivukovic, p.114). These gender transformations engender emotional setups that provide access to a territory outside the fixed binary culture of Elizabethan England, and one of the taboos it is thus able to explore is the issue of masculinity. The older male generation, who imitate the role of the heroic, chivalric knights appear as an ‘aesthetic anachronism’ within the play (Smith in Stanivukovic, p.120). Despite Sir Toby’s noble birth, he is presented as a farcical character who is confined to speaking prose, Shakespeare mocks Sir Toby for his attempt to emulate a certain masculine image that has become outdated, that of the conflation of masculinity with violence. Crucially, the duel which Sir Toby encourages between Sir Andrew and Cesario/Viola, ‘Go, write it in a martial hand’ (3.2.37), occurs within a feminine household. The juxtaposition between the feminine, domestic sphere of influence, represented by Olivia’s orchard, and the chivalric act that takes place within it serves to emphasise the comicality of this masculine caricature. Stanivukovic observes that this scene is a ‘burlesque of heroic masculinity’, and the fact that the scene is played out in prose only increases the weight of his statement (Stanivukovic, p.122). Romantic masculinity is played out most prominently through the character of Orsino, who is effeminized for his approach. His incessant and unrequited pining for Olivia becomes the subject of comedy and the most cutting example of this can be seen in the first interaction between Viola and Olivia. Viola exclaims that she has taken ‘great pains to con’ (1.5.165) Orsino’s hyperbolic and cliched speech and her assertion that she has ‘studied’ (1.5.169) his words alludes to the theatricality of adopting certain masculine identities, in this case, that of the romantic. The saccharine first words of Orsino’s declaration, ‘most sweet lady’ (1.5. 209), sets the tone for his speech which plays upon the established conventions of poetic courtship. Its idolatrous worship of her physical perfection, ‘’tis beauty truly blent’ (1.5.225) and ‘but if you were the devil, you are fair’ (1.5.237) coupled with the overwhelming grief of rejection, ‘with adorations, fertile tears, with groans that thunder love with sighs of fire’ (1.5.241-2) are all stock tropes of Renaissance love poetry. The grandiose and inflated imagery of Orsino is starkly juxtaposed with the minimal and natural imagery that Viola employs when asked by Olivia how she would woo. The images of isolation, ‘hallow your name to the reverberate hills’ (1.5.259) and true passion, ‘call yon my soul [Olivia] within the house’ (1.5.255) reveal a sensitivity that Orsino is unable to grasp. To complicate the matter further, Olivia assumes the role of the Petrarchan male in her reversal of the Petrarchan discourse to position Cesario as the object of her desire, ‘methinks I feel this youth’s perfections with an indivisible and subtle stealth to creep in at mine eyes’ (1.5. 283-5). Olivia’s newly attained position serves to further feminise Orsino, who, in a relationship of carnivalesque, mixed up his metaphors in his opening speech, becoming the object of the hunt, ‘that instant was I turned into a hart’ (1.1.20), hounded and pursued by his irrational, and by implication, feminine desire. This complicated tangle of different gender identities is all part of Twelfth Night’s carnivalesque atmosphere.
While no explicit reference is made to homoeroticism, either covered by the façade of cross-dressing or the subtleties of language, there is a strong undercurrent of homosexual love that undercuts the binary heteronormativity the play appears to uphold. Ache asserts that there are ‘glimpses of lesbian poetics’ in Twelfth Night, as can be seen in the ongoing interactions between Viola and Olivia, but ultimately Rubin writes that ‘the suppression of the homosexual component of human sexuality, and by corollary, the oppression of homosexuals…is a product of the same system whose rules and relations oppress women’ (Rubin in Butler, p.2281). Female love is treated as comedic whereas male love is cut off entirely by the play. Olivia’s position as the head of an aristocratic household with the agency to turn down a powerful male suitor poses a threat to the patriarchal structures of Elizabethan society and she is therefore ridiculed by being made to fall in love with the cross-dressing Viola. As Howard argues, ‘the good woman, Viola, thus becomes the vehicle for humiliating the unruly woman in the eyes of the audience’ with the patriarchy using women as puppets to bring each other down without implicating their male superiors (Howard in Orgel, p.27). While some may argue that Olivia’s marriage to Sebastian at the end of the play ensures that she is subjected to the male rule, the end of Twelfth Night still results in resolution for Olivia, unlike Antonio who remains displaced. The messy layering of Orsino, Viola and Olivia’s desires are rectified by the heterosexual institution of marriage. Traub notes that their homoerotic energies are ‘displaced onto Antonio, whose relation to Sebastian is finally scarified for the maintenance of institutionalised heterosexuality and generational continuity’ (Traub in Orgel, p.28). While Antonio makes no overt and explicit declaration of romantic love towards Sebastian, subtle mechanisms of speech give his feelings away. Antonio expresses his adoration for Sebastian in verse, the syntax commonly used to express romantic love,
That his speech shifts from blocks of prose to iambic pentameter here, coupled with the rhyming couplet of ‘so’ and ‘go’, echoes the sonnet structure. As a corollary, to further drive home the existence of Antonio’s romantic feelings, Olivia’s switch from prose to verse in the scene that immediately precedes this, mirrors her falling in love with Viola/Cesario. Having thus insinuated his homosexuality, Antonio is subtly ostracised at the end of the play, forced to watch Sebastian marry Olivia, with Shakespeare offering no hope of a romantic partner for him. Antonio’s exclusion at the end of the play reminds the audience that not all configurations of masculinity can fit the mould of Byron’s canonical statement that all tragedies are concluded with a death, and all comedies by a marriage. Antonio’s melancholy and homoerotic masculinity highlights the complexity of desire and relations that the play consciously interrogates, but society ultimately silences.