The Power of the Conditional

At the conclusion of As You Like It, Rosalind (as Ganymede) neatly resolves every issue of homoerotic desire that has arisen throughout the tangled lovelines of the play. She has to fix the "problems" of this queer desire and potential queer marriage plot, and the way in which she manages this feat is incredibly similar to Portia's solution in The Merchant of Venice.

Terrible disguise aside, Portia's plot serves her well.

In her plot, Portia uses a strict interpretation of language to force Shylock into sparing Antonio, telling him that "this bond doth give [him] here no jot of blood; / the words expressly are 'a pound of flesh.'." (Merchant of Venice 4.1.306-07). She traps him with the language of the deal, interpreting each clause literally in order to accomplish her goal. It is only when in drag that she is able to exert her power, but what a power that is. Portia's command of language transcends that of anyone else in the play, and she is able to trap Shylock into doing what she wants him to do. Portia's rhetoric is just as powerful as that of any of the lawyers and other men in the play.

Rosalind's plan parallels Portia's almost exactly. She also disguises herself in drag, though her persona Ganymede is much more central to the story than Portia's false identity. Having hidden her female identity, in which her agency would be much more limited, Rosalind is now free to work out a deal. She also makes great use of the conditional here; she traps the duke by getting him to agree that "if [she] bring in [his] Rosalind / [he] will bestow her on Orlando here" (As You Like It 5.4.6-7). Phoebe agrees to marry Ganymede only "if [he] be willing" (AYLI 5.4.11) and that otherwise she will marry Silvius. Her conditionals continue until everyone is trapped into a marriage that abides by the heterosexual norms. In other words, she tricks them into renouncing the queer desire that has permeated the play up to this point.

Don't worry, Orlando: no homo.

In drag, these women are able to fully employ powerful rhetoric and achieve their ends. Though both women clearly have a strong command of language and understand how to use it, their true agency only comes through when in drag. This gender-bending makes a statement about the power dynamics at the time; women lacked only the recognition for their skills, not the intelligence. Both women also demonstrate the overwhelming power of language; each is able to use the conditional and a literal interpretation of contracts in order to achieve their goals. Through this expert use of rhetoric, both women resolve all the issues in their respective plays, saving the day with their wit.

Shakespeare's Lesson on Queer Attraction

     Out of all of the Epilogues in Shakespeare’s play, the most memorable is the one in As You Like It where Shakespeare specifically addresses that queer attraction is present throughout society.

                                    Rosalind.    My way is to conjure you;

                                    And I’ll begin with the women. I charge you, O women, for the love you

                                   bear to men, to like as much of this play as pleases you.

                                    And I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women—as I perceive

                                    you by you simpering none of you hates them—that between you and the

                                    women the play may please. If I were a woman I would kiss as many of

                                    you as had beards that pleased me, complexions that liked me, and

                                    breaths that defied not. And I as sure as many as have good beards, or good

                                    faces, or sweet breaths will for my kind offer, when I make curtsy, bid me

                                    farewell. (Epilogue. 9-19)  

Through the Epilogue, Shakespeare informs the crowd that queer attraction isn’t something only present in plays, but as the audience consumes the display in front of them, they are also experiencing queer attraction themselves. Rosalind states that if “the love you bear to men” pleases the women watching the play, then they may enjoy the entire play, even the female leads because they are also men. And if women still find the male actor attractive while he is in drag, then there’s more of a queer attraction present since they’re enjoying the appearance of a lady more so than a man. On the other hand, the men that are watching and believing in the beauty of Rosalind are technically

believing in the beauty of the male actor in drag which in itself is queer attraction. If the boy chooses to “kiss as many of you as head beards that pleased” him while assuming the part of Rosalind, no man would “defied not” the boy’s in drag “kind offer”. If this is true, then the men watching the play are definitely experiencing queer attraction. Therefore, while Rosalind resolves the queer attraction conflict in the play by revealing herself as Ganymede, the Epilogue creates another conflict involving the audience and their possible queer attraction towards her/him.

     While Shakespeare is well known for exploring queer attraction throughout As You Like It, this exploration still continues throughout movies today. In movies like Tootsie (1982), Juwanna Mann (2002), White Chicks (2004), Jack and Jill (2011) they deal with men dressed in drag as women. Throughout each movie, the woman, who is actually a man, is forced into a conflict of sorts when a man falls in love with “her”. While drag is done in these types of movies for comedic relief, they make sure to take the precautions seen in As You Like It and resolve this queer attraction through the cross-dressing man revealing his deception and ending up with, usually, the woman he’s supposedly likes. But while in most movies this conflict is resolved, one movie that never reveals that the woman is actually a cross-dressing man is Tyler Perry’s Madea. Tyler Perry allows Madea to maintain the 

identity of a woman, and not a man dressed in drag, by never acknowledging the fact that she's a man in drag and never revealing himself at the end of any movies. But throughout all of the Madea movies there isn’t a single occurrence of a man showing interest in her because, if there was, then that would create a queer attraction conflict that can only turn out in one of two ways: 1)Tyler Perry would have to reveal Madea as a man or 2) the queer attraction would still exist by not outing Tyler Perry as Madea which, as Shakespeare has shown, is a predicament that cannot persist. So in order to keep up the perception that Madea is a full-fledged woman and not a man in drag, the queer attraction is avoided by Madea never possessing a love interest.

      Just like Shakespeare shows that queer attraction exists in Elizabethan society through As You Like It, movies today show that queer attraction is still present throughout society, whether it’s purposeful or not. Shakespeare uses the Epilogue in As You Like It to teach the audience that queer attraction isn’t just for entertainment and plays, but it’s a complexity present throughout human society.

Lesbihonest… Are there really any boundaries to friendship?

Girlfriends, circa 1600s 

Like Antonio and Bassanio of Merchant of Venice, Rosalind and Celia portray the liberal love between two (usually) heterosexual friends. These two women of As You Like It exemplify the loyalty of true friendship. We see their relationship and admire the ways that they look out for each other and partake in mischievous schemes together. If we look a little closer, though, we might detect some homoerotic or homosocial behavior in their relationship. Some people would say that the "friendship" between Celia and Rosalind is actually a true love affair. Whether or not there is any actual homosexual desire between the two women, it is undeniable that they are at the least very devoted friends: 

   "The Duke's daughter [Celia] her cousin so loves her, being ever from their cradles bred together, that she would have followed her [Rosalind's] exile, or have died to stay behind her…Never two ladies loved as they do" (1.1.93-97)

   "If [Rosalind] be a traitor, / Why so am I [Celia]. We still have slept together, / Rose at an instant, learned, played, eat together, / And wheresoever we went, like Juno's swans / Still we went coupled and inseparable" (1.3.66-70)

Girlfriends, circa 2000s

But let's be honest, is their relationship that much different from best friends' today? Think about some of those Buzzfeed lists you see on social media and immediately forward to your friends, with titles like, "19 Signs Your Best Friend is Actually Your Soulmate," "16 Times You Realized You and Your BFF Have No Boundaries," "18 Female Friendship Truths, as Told by Bridesmaids." We admit to all the really weird things we do with our best friends: peeing, sleeping, and cuddling together, swapping clothes and personal items with each other, inadvertently dressing and acting the same, etc. You've probably seen your best friend naked, experienced her most personal habits, learned every nasty detail about her life, and maybe even (drunkenly?) made out with her. Also, you've probably responded to such incidents with some kind of brush-off "No homo" remark. But it is pretty "homo." And it's also okay.

The problem is that we strive to label everything as black and white, straight or gay. Maybe critics are genuinely shocked by the relationship of Celia and Rosalind because they find the liberality of such a feminine relationship of that time strange. Or maybe they are oblivious to how homoerotic or homosocial their own relationships and the relationships of people around them actually are. On the other hand, maybe there is something deeper between Celia and Rosalind. Celia could be in love with Rosalind, but we'll never really know. Personally, I read their relationship and mischief as Sex and the City-esque: two friends sticking together with the idea that "maybe our girlfriends are our soul mates and guys are just people to have fun with."



Here are the links to those lists… In case you need to gush about them with your BFF.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/kristinharris/21-signs-your-best-friend-is-actually-your-soulmate#.dcMvBKd9V
http://www.buzzfeed.com/kirstenking/no-boundaries-with-my-gal-pals#.denZ8AnPw
http://www.buzzfeed.com/erinlarosa/18-female-friendship-truths-as-told-by-bridesmaids#.yaGLkxZlp

Pyrrhic Victories

Shakespeare’s As You Like It explores the consequences and goals associated with female crossdressing and societal power dynamics. From a historical perspective, crossdressing has often played a role in pop culture, but hidden crossdressing has also revealed how established power structures react to violations of gender roles and how those reactions speak to the outlooks of transgressive women. DeAnne Blanton’s piece “Women Soldiers of the Civil War” in the National Archives documents women who secretly served in the military during the Civil War by disguising themselves as men. Unlike Rosalind’s guise as the notorious Ganymede, these women appropriated generic male aliases to not raise suspicion.





Rosalind/Ganymede and Orlando's mock marriage in the forest

            Blanton writes, “The reading public, at least, was well aware that these women rejected Victorian social constraints confining them to the domestic sphere” (Blanton). Yet was their primary goal to rebel against these constraints and experience a more independent life outside the household or fight for the victory of their respective allegiances? No one knows, but regardless of their motives, the consequences of such actions appear to be the same in the context of mid-19^th century America and Shakespeare’s play. Even though Rosalind and Celia apparently wish to avoid conflict with their disguises as men, they, like the women who fought in the Civil War, end up seizing a measure of unconventional authority only to circulate more collective powers to men.

As Valerie Traub cites in her essay we read, Louis Adrian Montrose frames Rosalind/Ganymede’s power as a temporary misrule that ultimately transfers “authority, property, and title” to other men (Traub 136). Similarly, the female soldiers would have ended up doing the same, for their actions were ineligible for measurement in terms of merit while other male soldiers became heroes, garnering praise and material rewards. “The press seemed unconcerned about the women’s actual military exploits. Rather, the fascination lay in the simple fact that they had been in the army,” Blanton writes (Blanton).




Frances Clayton serving in the Missouri artillery during the Civil War

            The single instance in Shakespeare’s work where women take an interest in combat comes as Orlando prepares to wrestle Charles. “…are you / crept hither to see the wrestling?” Duke Frederick asks Rosalind and Celia (1.2.127-8). His comments indicate that he is  somewhat amused by their presence and does not think these women could ever have a serious appreciation for violence. In the context of the female soldiers, this hints at a tendency for male-driven social structures to discount the possibility of women serving in the military in the first place. Ironically, this tendency leads to rigid defense mechanisms to maintain systematic pride when evidence of crossdressing women in the military surfaces. In one letter, General F. C. Ainsworth writes, “I have the honor to inform you that no official record has been found in the War Department showing specifically that any woman was ever enlisted in the military service of the United States…at any time during the period of the civil war” to a researcher even though abundant evidence suggests the opposite (Blanton).

            So what does this mean for the outlooks of crossdressing women in the Civil War and Shakespeare’s play? In my opinion, the aforementioned parallels between the female crossdressing in As You Like It and the Civil War along with the reactions of individuals and institutions suggest that any amount of power, agency, and/or opportunity drawn from such actions by women are very limited and rely on others for their fruition. Rosalind/Ganymede demonstrates this after binding other male and female characters into marriage agreements. “I have left you commands,” she says before leaving (5.2.111), demonstrating that instead of her agency backing her commands, the force of the imperatives rests between the promises and enforcement of and by the other characters only. So although crossdressing women have the ability in these contexts to channel authority normally reserved for men, such victories are pyrrhic victories because they ultimately return authority and circulate rewards back to men in relation to their inability and unwillingness to view the actions and intentions of female crossdressers outside of gendered expectations. What do you all think?

Here's the link to that article if you all are interested.

http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1993/spring/women-in-the-civil-war-1.html