Olivia also seems to change through her relationship with Viola. Before meeting Viola, Olivia’s mourning seems slightly artificial because she mostly uses her mourning over her bother’s death as an excuse to withdrawal from the world. For every man she has relied on has left her: her father that died “some twelvemonth since” followed by her brother who died recently. Therefore needless to say, she is scared to love again and vows to lock herself from the world for seven years. But after meeting Viola, all her shows of apparent grief and mourning seem to drop away unforgotten. For example, Olivia’s mourning veil symbolises just this. Once the veil that covers Olivia’s face is taken off, “we will draw the curtain and show to the picture”. This is a metaphor between Olivia and a painting, where once the “curtain” is thrown off, her true nature is exposed for any to see, particularly stressing her defencelessness and vulnerability. Eventually, Olivia who is “enchanted” by Viola’s attractiveness and engaging wit must use all her wit and emotional honesty to deal with Viola’s straight-to-the-point nature. For Olivia has become too used to dealing with Orsino’s self-indulgent ways. While Orsino may twiddle around with Olivia’s feelings with elaborate poetry, Viola is more emotionally direct and therefore requires a more emotionally honest response.
When this character is introduced into the play, Viola enters these two lives and brings them both back into reality. Through a relationship with them, she shows them how to leave their polite formalities and become more emotionally honest about love. Viola breaks into both characters’ self-absorbed worlds and consequent to this, Viola has revealed not only to herself but also to the audience the true personalities of Orsino and Olivia.
Viola also is an important character because she develops and reflects the central theme of disguise within the play. After all, she is the main character who puts on a disguise for nearly the whole length of the play.
There are two types of disguises she puts on. One of them is a physical disguise where she chooses to dress up as a boy and adopt the name Cesario. “For such disguise haply shall become form of my intent. I’ll serve this duke: Thou shalt present me as an eunuch to him”. Needless to say, this is a form of a disguise with the purpose of ensuring her immediate safety after being shipwrecked onto a foreign country (called Illyria) but also, it enables her to enter the employment of Duke Orsino as a “eunuch”. The other type of disguise Viola puts on is more emotional: She has to disguise her love for Orsino. “I’ll do my best to woo your lady [Aside] Yet a barful strife! Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife.” Trapped by her own disguise, Viola has to woo Olivia for Orsino when she admits in an aside that she loves Orsino and would rather be his wife. But in reality, the possibility of Orsino recognising her love is close to nothing and the formation of this love triangle (where Olivia is in love with Cesario i.e. Viola’s disguise, Orsino is in love with Olivia and Viola is in love with Orsino) only increases the importance of disguising her love.
These two disguises of this nature allows for many ironies in the play.
For example, when Orsino asks if Viola (who is disguised as Cesario) is in love, Viola replies that she is in love with someone “of your complexion” and “about your years” which is undeniably true but very ironic considering she is not talking of another woman but hinting that she is in love with Orsino himself.
Viola carries out the theme of disguise throughout most of the play. She reflects the theme of disguise because to everyone else in “Twelfth Night”, she is known as Cesario (with exception to the audience) and she has to constantly keep her love for Orsino disguised. Although at various times her honesty lets her come close to revealing her real nature as a woman, her disguise still holds up until the appearance of her twin brother, Sebastian.
