That that is, is: A Study of Homoeroticism in Twelfth Night

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That that is, is:

A Study of Homoeroticism in Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night is a major site for homoerotic discourse in queer studies. However, the play is largely concerned with the idea of love, like many of Shakespeare’s comedies. In order to investigate his subject further, Shakespeare periodically uses homoeroticism in order to represent various forms of relationships. The pairings of Olivia and Cesario/Viola, Antonio and Sebastian, and Orsino and Cesario/Viola, demonstrate that same-sex erotic attraction is a major theme in the play. Viola's secretive cross-dressing causes Olivia to believe that both of them are participating in normal, heterosexual interactions, while in reality they interact in a homoerotic fashion. These complex, homoerotic representations serve to dramatize the socially constructed basis for determination of sexuality according to one's gender identity. I intend to establish that in this play Shakespeare dramatically criticises the idealized norms of heterosexuality (required by his society) through focussing his narrative on representations of homoerotic pairings and deconstructing dominant gender categories.

Viola's transvestism spurs various relationships that fall within the bounds of homoeroticism. Through the secret of her disguise, her actions illustrate the flaws of socially constructed gender identities, defined by the socially perceived opposites of aggressive, “macho” masculinity, and silent, yet coquettish, femininity, checked by behaviour of males. Viola's success in perpetrating her secret transvestism indicates that the construction and performance of gender is not dependent on one’s physical characteristics but on one’s behaviour, as well as upon a set of observed and internalised mannerisms. Viola’s representation of homoerotic interaction in Olivia’s love for her, and in her own love in Orsino as Cesario, disrupts the traditional, feminist “us vs. them” principle, and demonstrates that constructed, socially acceptable gender identities of the feminine and masculine are attributes that can be found in either male or female.

In the final scene of the play, when Viola’s act is exposed – “If nothing lets to make us happy both / But this my masculine usurped attire, […] That I am Viola” (V.i.249-253), Sebastian, Viola’s twin brother, easily steps into the vacuum left by the revelation of Cesario’s identity marrying Olivia as he states, “So comes it, lady, you have been mistook. / […] You would have been contracted to a maid, / Nor are you therein, by my life, deceived. You are betrothed both to a maid and man” (V.i.259-63).  The twins' interchangeable nature demonstrates to us that even the natural perspective of the world is not a gendered duality. The differently-gendered identical twins show a collapse of sexual difference as a natural process, indicating that nature never intended man to be constrained by gender binaries. Orsino proclaims "One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons, / A natural perspective, that is and is not!" (V.i.215-6), stating that nature is able to create two identical beings despite the natural sex difference between brother and sister, male and female.

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The same concept that allows a female Viola to be a male Cesario also allows male actors portraying female characters to seem authentic, despite their natural gender. Upon mistaking Sebastian for Cesario/Viola, Feste remarks: "Nothing that is so is so," (IV.i.8), indicating that gender is not dependent solely on physical attributes. Feste later adds, "That that is, is" (IV.ii.15), commenting on his own dressing as a Parson while Feste is really a fool. This same phrase extends to comment on the fact that Viola is male so long as she portrays a male, that gender is dependant on society's perception ...

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