Blog 1

Which character in 12th Night do you feel most attracted to? Can you describe the character and say what it is in particular that draws your interest.

Whilst renowned for having strong female characters especially in a time when female actors were not even allowed on stage, reading Shakespeare through a modern feminist perspective, many of his plays have left me with an overwhelming feeling of, well…. Meh! Many female characters pander to the control and power of their male counterparts, reading as shallow and performative 2 dimensional characters, an example of this shallow characterisation is Miranda in The Tempest. And where female representation within Shakespear’s characters is recorded as only 16%, with only 1 or 2 significant female characters per play, this is a significant portrait of women’s social status during the period. However, in Twelfth Night this underrepresentation of women is rectified in the portrayal of two complex main characters. Both Viola and Olivia are autonomous female characters, unattached or overshadowed by a male character. This independence creates space for the female voice to be heard clearly throughout the play free from the wishes of any male ownership. Olivia takes this autonomy a step further by daring to repeatedly refute the affections of an unwanted male suitor. She remains true to herself and does not let Count Orsino’s position or power sway her, she is displayed as a woman of substance and merit with her own strong mind and voice. 

To add to this, her later attraction to Cesario is based on Cesario’s more feminie characteristics, this again goes against the tropes of romantic writing of the time, with masculinity typically being more valued that feminien qualities. Olivia;s interest in the actually female Cesario could even be interpreted as a veiled queer attraction, which would have been deeply controvesarl for the time. Olivia as a character is controversial and pushes the boundaries of female characters in the Renaissance period, she is often overlooked as a valuable historical female character in literature.