Everyone
gets married at the end of As You Like It
and then they all dance. It’s a common social convention that everyone is
supposed to be happy and dance and eat cake and get super drunk at weddings,
but does that mean everyone involved is actually happy? Nope. In fact, at the
end of this play, I would argue that the majority of the relationships
solidified at this mass wedding (horrifying in itself) are pretty undesirable.
Really, only one of the pairs seems to be mostly happy and has a good future
outlook.
There are four marriages at the end
of As You Like It: Rosalind and
Orlando, Celia and Oliver, Phoebe and Silvius, and Audrey and Touchstone. Rosalind
and Orlando’s relationship seems to be one based mostly on deception and it
would be highly unlikely that after spending so much time with Ganymede that
Orlando would just go back to being madly in love with Rosalind. Celia seems to
just marry Oliver to be with someone because she obviously doesn’t have a shot
with Rosalind, who she’s clearly in love with. Phoebe was tricked into marrying
Silvius (happens to the best of us), which leaves Audrey and Touchstone, who
are the only two people who seem to be content with their marriages.
So what does this say about marriage
in general, that to be happy in marriage, do we just need to say “yes” and not
think? Is marriage even meant to be something we’re happy to be in? We’d maybe
like to think that marriage should be a happy venture, and it certainly is for
some, but given that the majority of marriages in As You Like It and even today are relatively unhappy and
unsuccessful, why do people continue to glamorize it? Taking it a step further,
do we tend to feel pressure from society to get married even if it isn’t
something we would want?
No comments:
Post a Comment