When Lady Olivia first begs Viola, a girl disguised as a page Cesario, to love her, the two share a joke that seems to question Cesario's affection for the countess. But when Viola responds to Olivia, "you think you're not who you are" and "I'm not who 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 desires (3.1.137 and 139). Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Throughout William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, the characters are most secure in an identity based on conformity; they hate being individual because it takes them away from the comfort zone of tradition and accepted social mores. But above all for Olivia and Viola, the call of individuality (defined as difference and/or uniqueness compared to a social norm) induces both to take on masculine characteristics to distinguish themselves from the constraints of their natural sex. Although both are trapped in a paradox that Stephen Greenblatt describes as Viola and Olivia's move toward conformity and individuality, Stephen Orgel identifies the eventual collapse of a reliable social/sexual system as the most dangerous consequence of the easy shift between genders and identities. In the game, each woman plays a character incongruent with society's expectations: Viola straddles the awkward knot between childhood, femininity and virility while Olivia is unknowingly attracted to the sexually enigmatic Cesario. In the end, Viola's unconventional disguise and Olivia's unconventional desire bring them to an unexpected but satisfyingly conformist conclusion, with both attached to men. But long before that moment, both women have already begun to react to the perversity of their situation; Because they have difficulty dealing with the uncertain feelings evoked by out-of-order sexuality, Viola and Olivia turn to rule-bound tradition to balance the "steering" motion of their affects and actions. Olivia, for example, relies on the concrete boundaries of the law to resolve her uncomfortable sexual confusion. Greenblatt points out that when Viola denies his marriage to Olivia, "the issue is not defined in psychological but legal terms. A priest is called into question to testify to the procedural impeccability of the ceremony he celebrated" (67). Viola, meanwhile, doesn't measure her true self through ambiguous feelings or experiences; identifies through the standard guidelines of "Which compatriot? Which name? Which parents?" (5.1.225). But characters have an innate need to cross boundaries; if they are too limited by systemic beliefs and actions, they are more likely to step outside of “normal” roles into madness or excessive productivity. Difference and individuality, at least according to Greenblatt, are necessary mechanisms to achieve ordinariness. Most people, he argues, have extremely mundane desires—to obtain money, respect, and love—that they recognize only after experiencing surprising twists in their lives. Greenblatt's theory finds a modern example when rebellious former teenagers inevitably join the ranks of middle-class employees raising families. This may explain why Malvolio is so eager to wear yellow garters and "act in obedient hope" in order to achieve his ultimate goal of a successful union with Olivia with the trappings of esteem (5.1.331). Feste's unusual incarnation of a minister seems to bring him pleasurecomparable, because the accident allows him to glimpse a "dignified" profession so different from his own. For Olivia and Viola, only the frustration of Olivia's initial lust for Cesario and the denial of Viola's natural femininity can both lead to an acceptable outcome on both a socially and personally level, such as their heterosexual love encounters. The "swerve" described by Greenblatt is in full swing, "a source of festive surprise and a time-honored theatrical method of achieving conventional, reassuring resolution. No one but Viola gets exactly what she consciously sets out to achieve in the play, and Viola gets what she wants only 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 normality, but when they pursue it through traditional venues, they encounter bewilderment and failure. This is Antonio's situation, where all the affection and devotion he can muster still prevent him from winning over Sebastian of the paradox, when people pursue a twisted purpose, like Toby and Maria's prank on Malvolio, they find routine ( in this case, marriage) waiting at the end. "An imbalance or deviation implemented is providential", explains Greenblatt, "for a perfect sphere would roll straight towards social, theological, juridical disaster: success lies in a strategic, happy deviation" (68). But if an "individual concrete" like Olivia or Viola "exists only in relation to forces that oppose spontaneous singularity and that drag every life, however peculiarly formed, towards community norms", as Greenblatt explains, women's individuality is threatened (75). Olivia's disdain for Orsino, surprising in his attractiveness, turns out to be less a quirk of Olivia's personality and more a narrative device to enable the safe pairing of Olivia/Sebastian and Orsino/Viola - once again, the act of balance of Nature at work which is only possible through what Orsino calls "a natural perspective, that is, and is not" (5.1.210). Furthermore, Viola's acting, while seemingly convincing to the other men, fails to hide her feminine qualities: "your little flute / is like the maiden's organ, shrill and sonorous, / And all is emblematic of the part of a woman" (1.4.32-34 ). Even as she unbalances her identity with her man's clothes, Nature stabilizes her, Greenblatt writes, because "wonders defy the conventional classification of things, but they do not make the classification itself impossible" (76). But beyond Nature's external efforts to bring Olivia and Viola into cultural balance, women's individuality is also difficult to maintain internally. Both female protagonists, though notable for Olivia's power and Viola's farce, are still kept from true oneness because they are haunted by what Greenblatt calls "the persistent duplicity, the inherent twinness of all individuals" (78 ). Shakespeare uses women to dramatize the internal struggle of all human beings between a dominant, "normal" personality and the complementary perverse negative: Viola spends most of the play as a sort of stunted character, missing half her identity , a supplement to its twin. . Cesario is essentially a hybrid of Viola and Sebastiano: "all the daughters of my father's house, / and all the brothers too" (2.4.120-121). Olivia's identity is also constantly linked to that of her male counterparts. According to Valentine, she is consumed by "her brother's dead love, which she would keep fresh / And lasting in her sad memory" even as she absorbs both her brother's and her father's position (1.1.30-31)., 1994.