Date of Award
2011
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Committee Chair
David Parker
Abstract
In taking on their male disguises, Viola (Twelfth Night ), Rosalind (As You Like It ), and Portia (The Merchant of Venice ) are able to transcend the confines of their social roles and achieve agency and voice as both females and males. With their male disguises, they gain power and agency as lower-class males and as aristocratic females. This power correlates to the fact that they are not fully male. Their female attributes, ideas, and nature (the essence of their femininity) still come through. They are limited and marginalized as women not because of their intelligence and wit, but because of the gender, sexual, and class expectations of the day. Due to their precarious societal position, the only way for a woman to fight the social boundaries is to use the vehicle of disguising as a male of a lower class.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Citation Information
Wright, Heather Lynn, ""Sit back down where you belong, in the corner of my bar with your high heels on": The use of cross-dressing in order to achieve female agency in Shakespeare's transvestite comedies" (2011). MA in English Theses. 8.
https://digitalcommons.gardner-webb.edu/english_etd/8