Women were thought of as inferior at the time the play was written. Women were ruled by the men of the household, but because Olivia’s father and brother have died she has no-one to rule her life, this shows her strength as she has taken advantage of this, by ruling her own household and servants by herself. Olivia is confident enough to seek what she wants gracefully for example in act 1 scene 5 Olivia wants Cesario/Viola to come back again, in order to get Cesario/Viola to come back Olivia removes her ring and forces Marvolio, (her head servant) to take it to Cesario “Run after that same peevish messenger” “He left this ring behind him” she did this so that Cesario would come back again to return the ring, as it is not his, this shows the strength of Olivia as she is determined to get what she wants. She has also fallen in love with Cesario/Viola who is a servant, which was not thought of as appropriate for noble women, Olivia did not care what other people thought, again, showing her strength of character.
Olivia refused Duke Orsino’s love, this would have been very hard to do as Orsino is the duke of Illyria, he is the perfect husband as he is noble, of great estate, valiant, gracious, physically good looking, learned and free, he would have been what every women was looking for, but not Olivia, Olivia knows what she wants and is strong enough to find this for herself. Olivia lets her true feelings show, she does not hide them away.
As the vows that Olivia made were very extreme and almost impossible to keep, she decided to break some of them showing her strength and realisation of this impossible task. She had now fallen in love and although she had vowed never to show her face in public, whilst mourning for seven years, love had forced her to change her mind showing her love for Cesario/ Viola was stronger than her love for her brother.
Viola is a very noble, intelligent lady who was very witty and clever in speeches which isn’t what women were normally like showing that Viola is a strong women compared to other women, who has been shipwrecked alone and has lost all of her belongings; this takes a very strong character to be able to cope with this situation. Viola believes her brother Sebastian is dead “my brother is in Elysium. Perchance he is not drowned” but is very strong in the way that she deals with it as she does not mourn, she is very practical and decides that she needs to get a job but women didn’t work, so in order to do this she has to disguise her self as a man, in order to get a job working for the Duke. “I’ll serve this duke. Thou shalt present me as an eunuch to him” this shows she is strong willed and very brave in the way she decides to disguise as a eunuch by the name of Cesario. If the Duke finds out she was not a man she could be imprisoned or even killed. She has fallen in love with the Duke but cannot let her feelings show because the duke thinks that she is a man.
When Viola found out that Olivia had fallen in love with her disguise (Cesario) she does not panic “O time, thou must untangle this, not I; it is too hard a knot for me t’untie.” This shows her strength in her belief that fate will sort her out and everything will be fine.
Duke Orsino is a rich, noble, virtuous duke who is a very weak man we know this, because he had fallen in love Olivia or at least he thinks he has and he is love sick he is very weak and jus lies down listening to music “if music be the food of love, play on” he is also weak because even though he thinks he loves Olivia he makes no effort to get her to fall in love with him, he tells his servants to go and woo Olivia rather than do it for himself. The play also tells us that Orsino only thinks about how he loves Olivia he doesn’t even think about whether Olivia loves him he just expects her to love him.
Sebastian, Viola’s brother is also a very weak male character, when he marries Olivia he lets her take control of him he does what she tells him to do which shows how weak he is because he doesn’t control her or his own life.
Overall Viola is the stronger woman as when Olivia’s brother dies Olivia makes extreme vows where as when Viola thinks her brother is dead she does not make extreme vows or mourn, she gets on with her life, which shows that she is the stronger woman.
The fact that Duke Orsino and Sebastian are such a weak male characters, they make the women look as though they are even stronger than they already are.