Essay on 'Twelfth Night' Character Analysis

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Essay on ‘Twelfth Night’ Character Analysis

This essay will discuss the relationship between Viola’s performance as Cesario and Judith Butler’s theories on the relationship between sex and gender, exploring the concept of drag in the play, in addition to the effect of gender performativity on the relationships of the play and the role of performative gender in enforcing compulsive heterosexuality.

In Twelfth Night, Viola’s performance of masculinity as Cesario can be interpreted through Judith Butler’s assertion that drag shows the unstable relationship between sex and gender and attests to the performativity of gender expression (reference). If gender were inherent to sex, meaning that the performance of gender expression correlates to one’s sex, it would be expected that Viola would not be able to function as her usual self in her performance as Cesario. On the contrary, Viola maintains the core aspects of her personality as Cesario. She is consistently loyal, motivated by love for Sebastian, charismatic, and convincing: as Viola talks the Captain into securing her a role as Orsino’s eunuch (Shakespeare, 1982, 1.2: 44), as Cesario convincing Malvolio to grant him entrance to Olivia’s house (Shakespeare, 1982, 1.5: 137). Thus, as Viola’s sex and core personality stay the same, we can see that the only change necessary for people to accept Cesario as male is a change in the performance of gender. She achieves this primarily by dressing in ‘men’s attire’ (Shakespeare, 1982, 1.4: 1), but also constructs masculinity through social actions – for example discussing women from a supposedly male perspective (Shakespeare, 1982, 2.4: 108). Through this performance of gender, Viola is accepted as male. Nobody knows Viola’s ‘true’ identity, because they are all prepared to accept the performance of typical gender expression as a clear marker for identity: as far as the characters in Twelfth Night are concerned, Cesario is male, because Viola performs so. Thus Viola’s gender in Twelfth Night is constructed through the repeated performance of gendered expression and actions. If we take drag to be a performance of gender through means of subverting these repeated expressions, Viola’s performance as Cesario can be defined as such. As Viola’s sex is assumed to be female (Shakespeare, 1982, 1.2: 50), the act of drag that she performs as Cesario, and other characters’ acceptance of her as male through this performance, illustrate Butler’s theory that gender is performed rather than inherent to sex. All this would suggest that, as Butler proposes, there is a ‘one’ that exists in all of us beyond gender before we make decisions to perform that gender (Critically Queer, 1993). Furthermore, the fact that Viola is even able to take on a masculine role in society by changing only her appearance, name, and small behaviors illustrates that in Twelfth Night, gender is constructed through repetitive performance, as Butler asserts in Performative Acts and Gender Constitution, 1988.

The relationship Orsino has with Viola as Cesario and herself can be explained by Butler’s writings on constructed gender about compulsive heterosexuality. It is implied that Viola and Orsino are attracted to one another from their first meeting – Orsino says ‘Diana’s lip Is not more smooth and dubious’, Viola says in an aside, ‘Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife’ (Shakespeare, 1982, 1.4: 31, 43). Yet as the play continues, their relationship develops meaningfully in a platonic way: by Act II Scene IV, Orsino confides the depth of his feelings for Olivia to Cesario, and Cesario delivers him profound advice on the nature of women, as well as some of his deep feelings. But it is not entirely platonic – by this point, Viola has revealed to the audience her love for Orsino (Shakespeare, 1982, 2.2: 34)., in modern productions of Twelfth Night, this particular scene has been interpreted as a moment of sexual tension between the two. The Globe’s 2012 production and National Theatre’s 2017 production both have them almost kiss towards the end of the scene, before breaking away to hide any possibility of a homosexual interaction. Even the 2006 movie, She’s The Man, inspired by and based on Twelfth Night, includes the same moment between the characters representing Orsino and Viola. While there is no shortage of homosexual love in Twelfth Night (look at Antonio’s love for Sebastian, and Olivia’s love for Viola as Cesario), the relationship between Orsino and Viola is the only one that involves a change in gender presentation and does not end or begin as a result. Romantic love is present when the relationship is homosexual – Viola even recognizes that ‘As I am man, My state is desperate for my master’s love’ (reference) – but it is not explicit in their relationship. When the relationship is revealed to be heterosexual, Orsino feels free to reveal his feelings explicitly (Shakespeare, 1982, 5.1: 323). It is only the presentation of Viola as male or female that makes the relationship acceptable to society or not. Had Orsino fallen in love with Sebastian playing a woman, I doubt the ending would be the same. Gender is only an object in this relationship to maintain heterosexuality as the norm; the distinction between Viola and Cesario is only important in enforcing the concept of heterosexuality. In the words of Monique Wittig, ‘the category of sex is the political category that founds society as heterosexual’ (The Category of Sex, 1976). In Gender Trouble (2007), Butler discusses Monique Wittig’s views on heterosexuality – the function of ‘woman’ as a term in place to enforce a binary and oppositional relation to a man – that relation being heterosexuality. Through this lens, the only importance that gender expression plays in the relationships in Twelfth Night is that which is imposed by society through compulsive heterosexuality.

Overall Viola’s presentation in Twelfth Night is a direct example of Butler’s assertions that gender is constructed and acquired through repeated performance rather than an expression of sex (Butler, 2007, p. 152). Viola’s performance as Cesario shows the mutable nature of constructed gender, and her relationship with Orsino highlights how constructed gender serves compulsive heterosexuality.

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