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To A Large Extent, Rosalind's Gender Misalignment Cannot Be Considered A ...

To a large extent, Rosalind's gender misalignment cannot be considered a sexual transgression. Despite the obfuscation of power in her exchanges with Orlando and Celia, it cannot be denied that the setting of these exchanges is unique. All of Rosalind's exploits with Orlando take place in the forest, a setting Orlando adopts as an exile from society. Rosalind approaches Orlando in her own exile, assuming the identity of Ganymede in the forest as a socially excluded exile.

Maria Prendergast notes in her critical Renaissance Fantasies: The Gendering of Aesthetics in Early Modern Fiction that it is in the space of Arden that the transformation of gender takes place; Arden is a pastoral space that, like other pastorals, is associated with the enclosures of fiction (Prendergast 1999, p. 117). Shakespeare seems to form a world in Arden where mimesis has no place and plays thus have no need to mimic the strictures of social norms. In this sense, can sexual transgression really be asserted? If such cross-dressing affected no one in society, taking place away from the prying eyes and opinion of the public, did Rosalind overstep the gender boundaries and roles established in Elizabethan England? It is in the forest that Celia and Rosalind exploit the vulnerability of Orlando, carrying on a mock marriage between him and Ganymede to which Orlando is completely unaware. It is only during this marriage that Celia berates her wayward cousin, claiming she simply misused [their] sex through Orlando's manipulation (Act IV, scene I, lines 185-188). It is curious that once a familiar social institution such as marriage was brought to the picture that Celia deigned to change her stance on Rosalind's exchanges with Orlando, admitting a degree of complicity in the sexual transgressions that transpired. Shakespeare here introduces a sense of sexual normalcy, and from the staged marriage on, Rosalind begins to falter in her duplicity until she is united with Orlando as herself.

Rosalind's cross-dressing was a machination that caused little malice; Orlando, after all, was a social pariah smitten with Rosalind long before the manipulation employed by Ganymede. Rosalind achieved little other means outside the securing of Orlando's affection; therefore, the sexual transgression was not of a significant degree. Manipulation was very much in place, but it was arguably in favour of a grander scheme in which Orlando tamed Rosalind in the three distinct phases outlined above: The first phase would be Rosalind's desire for Orlando and assumption of the identity of Ganymede, the second phase would be her indirect courtship of Orlando, and the third would be Rosalind's abandonment of Ganymede and subsequent marriage to Orlando.
Chapter Two: Twelfth Night
Twelfth Night's Viola, like Rosalind, is an outcast of sorts.


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