La société CROSS (document en anglais)

During the Renaissance, women were treated as inferior people. They had to keep their role in the household and had three duties towards men: they had to be silent, obedient and chaste. Whoever broke one of those rules was severely punished; for example, women considered too chatty were said to be scolds and were put on a cucking stool. This statement is really well expressed through literature. Shakespeare, for example, liked to talk about society in comedies so that the audience could learn a lesson on how badly people are treated. He well represents the writers of the Renaissance for he was born in 1564 and died in 1616. He is even today considered as the greatest dramaturge and writer of the English language. He wrote no less than 38 plays such as Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth or Hamlet, and 154 sonnets. His play called Twelfth Night or What You Will is particularly well describing the cross-dressing of a woman, Viola, who decides to disguise as a man to find a job in an unknown country. We will focus on Act I scenes 2, 4 and 5 to analyze the confusion that Viola's cross-dressing can lead to.

First we will analyze the gender confusion present in the play, then we will show that it led to an unexpected development of the play: the love triangle.

In act I, scene 2, we are told about Viola's story: she comes from a country called Ellysium and was found at sea after her boat sank. She seems frightened about that new land she must accost on because she keeps asking questions like "What country, friends, is this?" (l. 1), "what should I do in Illyria?" (l.3) and "know'st thou this country?" (l.20). She seems to be reassuring herself, which is why she decides to search for a job there as a man: to feel safer. But first she says to the Captain: "Thou shalt present me as an eunuch to him" (l. 55). She first thinks of presenting herself as a eunuch. This choice is ambiguous sexually speaking because a eunuch, which was common in the 17th century, is a man who was castrated: he was deprived of his masculinity. So really Viola wants to become Cesario: not a woman, but not completely a man either. The eunuch stands as a symbol of gender uncertainty. However this ambiguity disappears in the rest of the play for Cesario becomes simply a delicate young man. Either it is Shakespeare's deliberate choice to change Viola's plans or he changed his mind and forgot about the eunuch.

Moreover, cross-dressing women were considered as transgressors. Indeed, the clothing (dresses for women, and trousers for men) were God's design so cross-dressing was really breaking God's natural laws. These women were also considered as dangerous because they were blasphemous but also because they stole the power that God specifically gave to men. Their tort was not only to shame God but also to infringe on social class boundaries. The hierarchy we could find in society was God's creation therefore it should not be taken lightly. In fact, clothes were a way to identify members of another social class but when women cross-dressed, they didn't care about clothing distinctions of gender or social class: they wore silk and velvet even if they didn't belong to aristocracy and that, again, was breaking God's laws. They were a threat to the natural order and led to chaos because they could move easily from one social class to the other without worrying about the consequences. In addition, cross-dressing was discouraged by means of pamphlets calling cross-dressers prostitutes. The idea was that women wearing men's clothes were hiding their forms and so they were sexually appealing to men because women who used clothing to hide their female bodies provided an extra layer of mystique to men. They were seen as sexually loose people. This whole phenomenon around cross-dressing shows that the three roles of women were deeply rooted into men's mind because cross-dressing women were everything but silent, obedient and chaste: at best they were extravagant, rebel and sexually provocative.

Yet in Shakespeare's day cross-dressing was not as ridiculous as it may seem since it was frequent for men to dress like a woman on stage. Women were not allowed to perform until 1660 and the downfall of Cromwell's puritanical government, so when it came to play a lady, young men, preferably with a high pitched voice, had to do the trick. The Renaissance audiences were ready to acknowledge that men could convincingly disguise themselves into women, and vice-versa. This facility in portraying characters of other gender only echoes to the complexity of Shakespeare's cross-dressing characters since on the stage a man had to play a woman who tries to play a man at the same time: this leads to an interaction between appearance and reality. In addition, the audience is blind regarding who plays what gender; Shakespeare could have included women dressed as men to enhance the ambiguity and the audience would not have seen it. In this play, Shakespeare gave women a way to speak on the same level as men because they are allowed to say a lot more as men than they are as women.

Viola's cross-dressing leads to a lot of ludicrous situations including the strange love triangle that occurs between Orsino, Viola/Cesario and Olivia.

From act I scene 4, we witness a sexual ambiguity between Orsino and Viola dressed as Cesario. Orsino, supposedly in love with Olivia, believes Cesario is a man, yet his acts weirdly with him. We find out that, after only three days, Cesario has become Orsino's favorite servant, as Valentine tells Cesario: "If the duke continue these favours

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