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Gender Wobbles But It Don’T Fall Down: Feste And The Instability Of Gender In Twelfth Night, Evangeline Thurston Wilder

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night appears to some readers as a conservative story of gender-bending, in which all is made “right” in the end. The central character, Viola, disguises herself as Cesario in order to survive. In the final scenes of the play, this character reveals herself to have been a woman all along, and immediately enters a cis-heterosexual marriage with the Duke Orsino. To other readers, the play appears to be an early depiction of what we might now call transmasculinity. In this view, the central character is not just dressing up as a man to survive; he really is Cesario. …