Simone de Beauvoir (Or What You Will)

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a comical tale of mistaken identity, love triangles, and a great deal of disguises. But throughout the play, there’s another motif, and while it’s not as obvious to readers, it’s vital to the story. The concept of gender roles is the basis of Twelfth Night, and had she been around during the time that it was written, I think Simone de Beauvoir would have been thrilled to see that the way the play presented a woman as an independent character, who could actually make decisions for herself and make choices regarding her future.

            Simone de Beauvoir used Sartre’s theory on existentialism to try and explain the concept of females having the same nature as men. She “denied the existence of a basic ‘female nature’ or ‘male nature’” (Gaarder 459) and “believed that women and men must liberate themselves from such ingrown prejudices or ideals”. (Gaarder 459) In Twelfth Night, the existence of such gender roles is something that is defined very early on in the novel. The opening scene describes Duke Orsino, a wealthy aristocrat, pining for Lady Olivia, the most coveted woman in Illyria. However, Olivia has no interest in marrying the Duke; in fact, she blatantly turns him away when he tries to court her. Considering that Twelfth Night was written during the 17^th century and generally, women didn’t have much of a say in who they married during this time period, it’s important to note that Olivia did have control over this decision in her life. Females during the 17^th century were subordinate to men, and for Shakespeare to portray Olivia as such an independent woman was completely different from the way that females were traditionally viewed.

However, de Beauvoir might also be interested in another part of the plot, in which another woman, Viola, must disguise herself as a man in order to get a job working for the Duke. While she does this of her own free will, I believe de Beauvoir would inquire about why this disguise was necessary and what it meant about gender roles. Sure, a woman during this time period was free to marry who she chose, but at the same time, another woman can’t get a job simply because she’s female? While Twelfth Night does challenge gender roles in some aspects, and Simone de Beauvoir would definitely be supportive of that, I think she’d definitely have an issue with the fact that there was still a bit of an underlying notion that women are inferior to men.

Works Cited

Gaarder, Joseph. Sophie's World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. Print.