Academic Paper for the Master of Arts in English
Rosalind and Viola, the cross-dressing heroines of Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Twelfth Night, respectively, offer critics some of the most fertile ground for exploring and critiquing feminist and gender issues in Shakespearean literature. Although direct comparisons of the two are rare among modern critics, indirect comparisons can be drawn based on critics’ responses to each in relation to her female counterparts within the play – Rosalind to her bosom friend, Celia, and Viola to the object of her master’s desire, Olivia. Such an approach effectively casts Rosalind in a more admirable light than Viola, but the comparison is incomplete without considering the two cross-dressing heroines side by side.
Another problem is the tendency of feminist criticism to pay lip service to gender equality without acknowledging – much less celebrating – gender differences. The risk of disregarding natural gender differences is that of damning the unmasculine female for her “weakness” when she fails to perform both gender roles perfectly, in spite of her gendered existence. Therefore, the qualities that in Elizabethan society would have been respected as womanly virtues are treated by modern critics as distasteful, effeminate attributes, which is likely to distort characterizations. While gender equality is wholly desirable, women and men cannot realistically be expected to be identical. To ignore or denigrate the very qualities that differentiate women from men is to deny an important aspect of human nature. If man and woman are not different, then some or all of the characteristics attributed to one must be declared inferior and subordinated to those of the other. Thus, one sex is the “real” sex, and the other is just an incomplete (inferior) manifestation of the first.
In order to provide a fairer and more complete comparison of Shakespeare’s cross-dressing protagonists, As You Like It’s Rosalind and Twelfth Night’s Viola must be examined in relation not only to their female counterparts within each play, but also to one another. In such a comparison, Viola’s confidence, honesty, devotion, and patience set her apart from Rosalind, who is demonstrably squeamish, deceptive, fickle, and impetuous. While Viola adapts comfortably to her man’s garb, is faithful to both the requirements of her manly disguise and the strengths of her femininity, and avoids stereotypically womanish hysteria in difficult situations; Rosalind casts aspersions on herself and womankind in moments of weakness, uses her stereotypical “womanly wiles” to get her way, and builds an elaborate infrastructure of deceit to win the love of a man she has met only once. Rosalind embodies too many tired clichés of femininity to be an admirable heroine, but Viola represents her sex with integrity and fidelity, making Viola the stronger female protagonist.
Angela Pitt, in her discussion of Shakespeare’s Women, compares Rosalind to Celia to demonstrate Rosalind’s strength in her masculine disguise. Pitt notes that Celia is the leader of the two women until Rosalind becomes Ganymed, after which Rosalind takes the leadership role, supporting her friend of the “weaker” sex during hardships (114). True as this observation may be, it cannot be said to suggest that Rosalind is a stronger female role model than another cross-dressing heroine like Viola, since it makes no mention of them. On the contrary, Rosalind’s show of strength for Celia’s sake is just that – a show – which actually affirms the spurious view of women as weaker than men. Rosalind, exhausted from the strain of her hurried escape, moans, “How weary are my spirits . . . I could find in my heart to disgrace my man’s apparel and cry like a woman, but I must comfort the weaker vessel” (II; iv; I.1-6). Aside from revealing to the audience that her inner strength is not really bolstered by her disguise, Rosalind belittles her own gender, calling her tears a womanly “disgrace [to] man’s apparel.” In contrast, Viola, charged (in her guise as Cesario) to approach the reclusive Olivia on Orlando’s behalf, dutifully accepts the mission. In spite of her reluctance, she makes no disparaging remarks about herself, her sex, or her efforts to carry out her master’s wishes, except to say in an aside that she herself would rather be the object of his affection.
In “Crossdressing, the Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern England,” Jean Howard criticizes Viola’s position of “properly feminine subjectivity” by comparing it to Olivia’s improper aspirations “to masculine privilege and prerogatives (432). Still, the comparison is inadequate. Viola may be more willing to remain subservient to Orsino – even disguised as Cesario – than Olivia is, but unlike Olivia, Viola is a castaway with no nearby home in which to find shelter; she has no family or connections to support her, and she occupies a lower social class than Olivia’s. A wealthy aristocrat like Olivia can afford to spurn Orsino’s advances and husbandly presumption of dominance, while Viola could not, as either herself or the servant Cesario. The comparison, therefore, is unfair.
A more equitable comparison appears in the Riverside Shakespeare’s introduction to Twelfth Night by Anne Barton, who notes that whereas Rosalind is determined to take personal action to gain the love of Orsino, Viola is more passive and patient. Assailed by a number of complications, including her love for Orsino and Olivia’s passion for her alter ego, Cesario, Viola prudently responds, “O time, thou must untangle this, not I, / It is too hard a knot for me t’untie” (II; ii; I.40-41). According to Barton:
This attitude, as it turns out, is the best she could have adopted. By surrendering herself unquestioningly to the madness of Illyria, by remaining aware but passive, she contrives to win Olivia for her brother, redeem Antonio’s life, and marry Orsino herself. Time does untangle the knot without her help. (406)
Not only is Viola’s willingness to wait fundamentally admirable, given the feminine stereotypes of impatience and impetuosity, it also stands in stark contrast to Rosalind’s self-serving eagerness to woo her beloved Orlando. Viola is just as much in love with Orsino as Rosalind is with Orlando, but Viola has served her master for some time before (secretly) declaring her love for him, whereas Rosalind claims to be lovestruck after her first meeting with Orlando. The difference between the two women’s approaches to life and love reflects favorably on Viola: Rosalind loves selfishly and pursues the object of her affection with haste, while Viola “exemplifies the image of Patience, inwardly suffering, outwardly smiling” (Pitt 118), as she waits for time to unravel the complex knots that entangle her and bring her together with Orsino. Compared with Rosalind’s selfish, impatient love, Viola’s patient devotion is admirable.
Some critics, though, contend that Viola’s patience leads to an unnecessary extension of her deceitful charade. They would have her reveal her true identity when she first realizes that her brother may have survived. Of course, her refusal to do so indicates that she is a patient woman, but it also seems to support claims that she is inherently dishonest. In this regard, too, though, Viola’s dishonesty pales in comparison to Rosalind’s. Unlike the stranded, shipwrecked Viola, Rosalind masquerades as a boy to flee her uncle’s kingdom and avoid the risks facing women who travel without male protection. Yet when she is safely ensconced in the forest of Arden, with a home and friends to protect her, she maintains her disguise. She even goes a step further, moving to a disguise within a disguise when she offers to “play” Rosalind and cure Orlando of his “love madness” (III; ii; I.400-435). Such elaborate deceits are difficult to justify. Rosalind risks Orlando’s love and the trust of her newfound friends to play a lying game of how-deep-is-his-love.
Viola plays no such games, and although she could abandon her disguise sooner than she does, she probably makes the wiser choice to wait for the tangled knot of circumstances that surround her to be untangled. In the meantime, Viola is careful to maintain her feminine identity inwardly while dutifully performing the masculine role of Cesario as Orsino’s servant. Although she is very much in love with Orlando herself (“Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife,” I; iv; I.42), Viola faithfully delivers his love messages to the scornful Olivia. She applies both wit and devotion to her entreaties in Orlando’s behalf, holding back no praise for her beloved master. Viola’s words of praise for Orlando reveal two facets of her devotion: she expresses her feminine side in her adoration of him, and she remains true to her character as the boy-servant, Cesario. Such balance of honesty and discretion is difficult to maintain, but Viola does so masterfully, and she protects the dignity of herself and her cohorts in the process. To completely reveal her identity any earlier would only serve to embarrass Olivia and cause a scandal in Orsino’s household. Next to Rosalind’s self-serving deceits, Viola’s secrecy appears merely prudent.
As well as being unnecessarily deceitful, Rosalind’s masquerade as Ganymed-Rosalind reinforces the negative stereotype of women being manipulative. Rosalind even goes so far as to state explicitly how faulted women supposedly are, claiming they are “changeable, longing and liking, proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears,” fickle, and ridiculously unpredictable (III; I.411-417). Through her words and actions, Rosalind “plays out masculine constructions of femininity,” acting out “the parts scripted for women by her culture” (Howard 435). In Act I, scene ii of As You Like It, Rosalind chats gaily with Celia about the “good huswife Fortune,” and she makes the rather unfeminist remark that “the bountiful blind woman [Fortune] doth most mistake in her gifts to women” (I; ii; I.35-36). She again refers to women’s inferiority when she wishes good luck to Orlando before his fight: “The little strength I have, I would it were with you” (I; ii; I.194-95). Rosalind further insults the feminine identity by asking Celia to “have mercy on [her] woman’s impatient curiosity” (III; ii; footnote to I.194-96), remarking “Dost thou think, though I am caparison’d like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition?” (III; ii; I.194-96) as if only men have any patience. In the same conversation, Rosalind makes yet another defamatory reference to womanhood, this time in reference to women’s supposed tendency to say absolutely everything that crosses their minds: “Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak” (III; ii; I.249-50). Such remarks finally disturb her friend, who says in Act IV, scene I “You have simply misus’d our sex” (I.201).
Although Viola does not make any comparable defamatory remarks in Twelfth Night, she can be contrasted with Rosalind by way of the heroines’ responses to their respective crises: the challenge of a duel with Sir Andrew and Orlando’s injury by a lioness. Viola is often criticized for her cowardice because she is fearful and unwilling to fight Sir Andrew, and Rosalind is thought no weaker than Viola for fainting when she sees Orlando’s bloodied handkerchief. Jean Howard remarks derisively that Viola “cannot wield a sword” (433), inadvertently pointing out the very fact that redeems Viola. She may be confident enough in her man’s garb and play the part well, but she has no training in swordplay (for obvious reasons). In order to effectively wield a sword, Viola would have to have had training from her youth, something unavailable to women during her time. She has only been costumed as a man for three months at the time of the challenge, so she has had no opportunity to gain skill at swordplay. Therefore, she cannot be expected to want to risk her life toying with a weapon that she has no idea how to use.
As for Rosalind’s faint, little can be said to defend her display of weakness. Rosalind “tries to avert [Oliver’s] suspicion by affecting to have merely feigned to swoon” (Martin 277), indicating that she thinks it unmanly to faint at the sight of blood, but it makes less sense for a woman to fight at the mere sight of blood than a man, since much of simply being female involves blood. If all women fainted when they saw blood, men would have to spend all their time reviving swooning, menstruating women. Rosalind is most certainly the weak woman she claims to be if she is so disturbed by the sight of that which should be common to her. In contrast, Viola’s fear of swordplay is fear of that which is unfamiliar (and dangerous) to her, which certainly casts her as a stronger feminist model than the simpering, swooning Rosalind.
In the context of Shakespearean drama, cross-dressing characters like those in As You Like It and Twelfth Night offer critics a unique opportunity to examine and compare gender roles in Renaissance literature and society. However, by stopping short of direct comparisons between the protagonists Rosalind and Viola, critics fail to offer a complete and fair analysis of the complex roles played by women who cross gender boundaries in a strictly patriarchal society. In both plays, the women are forced by circumstance to adopt masculine attire and manner, but they respond very differently to their gender-swapping roles. Rosalind, who embodies negative stereotypes of women, criticizes women’s frailty and fickleness, and blames her own weakness on her femininity pales in comparison with Viola, whose patience, prudence, and faithfulness to both her own sex and that of her alter ego, Cesario, reflect a wisdom and strength of character feminist critics can embrace.
Works Cited
Barton, Anne. “Introduction to As You Like It.” The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974 (365).
Barton, Anne. “Introduction to Twelfth Night.” The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974 (403).
Howard, Jean E. “Crossdressing, the Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern England.” Shakespeare Quarterly. Winter 1988.
Martin, Helena Faucit. On Some of Shakespeare’s Female Characters. New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1970.
Pitt, Angela. Shakespeare’s Women. New Jersey: Barnes & Noble Books, 1981.
Language on the Loose 