Essay
A* Twelfth Night Exemplar Essay 5 (Section B)
'In Twelfth Night, love is always presented as an irrational and uncontrollable force.' To what extent do you agree with this view?
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Twelfth Night practice essay 5'In Twelfth Night, love is always presented as an irrational and uncontrollable force.' To what extent
do you agree with this view?
The apparent impossibility of Viola’s love for Orsino because of her disguise and the
subsequent deception of Olivia, who falls hopelessly in love with Viola (disguised as Cesario),
strongly supports the view that love is presented as an irrational and uncontrollable force in Twelfth
Night. This view gains further credibility when the socially-incompatible and ultimately destructive
affections of the natural fools, Malvolio and Antonio, are taken into account. Nevertheless, it is also
necessary to consider the superficiality of Orsino’s love for Olivia and the absurdity of Sebastian’s
agreement to marry the Countess without even knowing her, suggesting that marriage in the play is
perhaps based on good social matches as opposed to passionate love.
The catalytic nature of Viola’s disguise could be seen as the driving force of love in Twelfth
Night in the sense that it is responsible for the irrational affections of not only Viola herself, but also
Olivia and Orsino. Viola’s struggles seem to arise principally from an uncontrollable love for her
master; her difficult situation is clearly indicated by her utterance ‘Whoe’er I woo, myself would be
his wife’. Shakespeare stages the line as an aside, which provides the audience with the exclusive
knowledge of Viola’s thoughts and feelings and how she has fallen in love with an incompatible
suitor. Their incompatibility is a direct consequence of the disguise since a union between two
apparently male characters would have been considered unacceptable in the religiously devout and
patriarchal society of Elizabethan times. Because the play is a comedy, the audience is able to revel
in Viola’s discomfort in the knowledge that all will eventually be resolved, taking great pleasure in
Viola’s inability to repress her feelings for Orsino in her response ‘Ay but I know-’ to the Duke’s
speech about the impotence of women as lovers. Shakespeare abruptly ends her utterance as an
indication of her agonising situation in loving her master of the same gender – her apparent failure
to repress her love completely in spite of its danger strongly supports the view of love as an
uncontrollable and irrational force. Viola is forced to invent a fictional tale that her ‘father had a
daughter that loved a man’ in order to cover her mistake, which is extremely ironic given that the
audience is aware that the ‘daughter’ of whom Viola speaks is indeed herself. Subsequently, it can
be argued that Viola’s love is so powerful that it causes her to lose her identity and speak in a
manner that is increasingly enigmatic; in resisting Olivia’s advances, Viola can only answer ‘I am not
what I am’. The monosyllabic and riddle-like nature of the utterance provides compelling evidence of
Viola’s suffering as a consequence of her role in Twelfth Night’s ‘love triangle’ and how her love for
Orsino has deprived her of her identity, which she clearly sees as preferable to abandoning her love
for her master. Such a preference establishes love as uncontrollable force that cannot be simply
repressed despite its irrationality.
Similarly, Olivia can be considered a victim of the disguise as she also falls in love with an
unacceptable suitor on gender and social grounds. If Olivia’s initial depiction as a ‘cloistress’ can be
seen as more than just a mere pretence, then her abandonment of all restraint immediately after
meeting the male Cesario could be seen as an example of powerful infatuation for the page, who is
in reality the female Viola. Her dangerous captivation is indicated by Shakespeare’s use of the
Petrarchan convention of blazon in her utterance ‘thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions and spirit
do give thee fivefold blazon’. The listing of Cesario’s body parts suggests that Olivia has fallen in love
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