When Lady Olivia first begs Viola, a young girl disguised as a male page Cesario, to love her, the two share a repartee that seems to call into question Cesario's affection for the Countess. But as Viola responds to Olivia, "You think you're not what you are" and "I'm not what I am," it becomes clear that the conversation is about more than emotion; it concerns Viola and Olivia's identities and the ease with which they could be shaped according to each other's wishes (3.1.137 and 139). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Throughout William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, the characters are safest in an identity based on conformity; hate being individual because it takes them away from a comfort zone of tradition and accepted social mores. But for Olivia and Viola in particular, the appeal of individuality (defined as difference and/or uniqueness from a social norm) inspires them both to adopt masculine characteristics to distinguish themselves from the bonds of their gender natural. Although both are caught in a paradox that Stephen Greenblatt describes as drawing Viola and Olivia equally toward conformity and individuality, Stephen Orgel identifies the eventual collapse of a reliable social/sexual system as the most dangerous consequence of easy switching between genders and identities. In the play, each woman plays a character incongruous to society's expectations - Viola straddles the delicate knot between childhood, femininity and virility while Olivia is, unknowingly, attracted to the sexually enigmatic Cesario . Eventually, Viola's unconventional disguise and Olivia's offbeat desire lead them to an unexpected, but satisfyingly conformist, conclusion, with both attached to men. But long before that, both women have already begun to react to the perversity of their situation; Because they struggle to manage the uncertain feelings evoked by disordered sexuality, Viola and Olivia turn to rule-bound tradition to balance the "away" movement of their affections and actions. Olivia, for example, relies on the concrete limits of the law to redress her uncomfortable sexual confusion. Greenblatt points out that when Viola denies her marriage to Olivia, "the problem is framed not in psychological but in legal terms. A priest is brought in to testify to the procedural impeccability of the ceremony he performed" (67). Viola, on the other hand, does not measure her true self through ambiguous feelings or experiences; she identifies herself through the standard guidelines of "Which countryman? What name? What parentage?" (5.1.225).But the characters have an innate need to break boundaries; if they are too constrained by systemic beliefs and actions, they are more likely to fall out of their “normal” roles into madness or excessive productivity. Difference and individuality, at least according to Greenblatt, are necessary mechanisms for achieving the ordinary. Most people, he argues, have extremely mundane desires—to get money, respect, and love—that they realize only after experiencing surprising twists and turns in their lives. Greenblatt's theory finds a modern example when former teenage rebels inevitably join the ranks of middle-class office workers raising their families. This may explain why Malvolio is so eager to don yellow garters and "do so in obedient hope" in order to achieve hisfinal goal of a successful union with Olivia with the external signs of esteem (5.1.331). Feste's unusual incarnation of a minister seems to give him comparable pleasure, as the incident gives him a glimpse of a "decent" profession so different from his own. For Olivia and Viola, only the frustration of Olivia's initial desire for Cesario and the denial of Viola's natural femininity can lead to a societally and personally acceptable outcome, such as their heterosexual love matches. The “deviation” described by Greenblatt is in full swing, “a source of festive surprise and a time-honored theatrical method for achieving a conventional and reassuring resolution.” No one but Viola gets exactly what she consciously seeks to achieve in the play, and Viola only gets what she wants because she is willing to submit to the very principle of deviation” ( 70). The paradox of Greenblatt's argument is this: that everyone thinks they are seeking normalcy, but when they pursue it in traditional venues, they are met with perplexity and failure. This is Antonio's situation, where all the affection and devotion he has been able to muster still prevents him from winning Sebastian over. Paradoxically, when people pursue a twisted goal, like Toby and Maria's prank on Malvolio, they find routine (in this case, marriage) waiting at the end. “An imbalance or deviation recorded is providential,” explains Greenblatt, “because. a perfect sphere would lead straight to a social, theological and legal disaster: success lies in a strategic and happy deviation” (68). But if a "concrete individual" like Olivia or Viola "exists only in relation to forces which oppose singularity and which attract all life, whatever its particular form, towards community norms", as Greenblatt explains , women's individuality is threatened (75). Olivia's disdain for Orsino, surprising because of his attractiveness, turns out to be less a personality quirk for Olivia than a plot device to enable the secure pairing of Olivia/Sebastian and Orsino/Viola - again , the balance of nature at work that is only possible through what Orsino calls “a natural perspective, which is and is not” (5.1.210). Furthermore, Viola's playing, although apparently convincing to other men, cannot conceal her feminine qualities: "your little pipe / is like the girl's organ, shrill and sonorous, / And everything is emblematic of the role of a woman” (1.4.32-34). Even as she unbalances her identity with her men's clothing, nature stabilizes her, Greenblatt writes, because "prodigies challenge the conventional classification of things, but they do not make classification itself impossible" (76). . But beyond nature's outward efforts to bring Olivia and Viola into cultural equilibrium, women's individuality is also difficult to maintain internally. The two leading women, while notable for Olivia's power and Viola's charade, are still kept from true oneness because they are haunted by what Greenblatt calls "persistent duality, twinning inherent in all individuals” (78). Shakespeare uses women to dramatize the inner struggle of all humans between a dominant, "normal" personality and the complementary perverse negative: Viola spends most of the play as a kind of stunted character, missing half of her body. identity, a complement to its twin. . Cesario is essentially a hybrid of Viola and Sebastian: "all the daughters of my father's house, / and all the brothers also" (2.4.120-121). Olivia's identity is also constantly tied to her male counterparts. According to Valentine, she is consumed by, 1994.