Teaching LGBQT Themes with “Twelfth Night”

by Christina Gil

I thought that I was a liberal, open minded person, that I had done all the work that I needed to and that I was open and understanding of all—but then I realized that there was still another frontier that I needed to break through.

Earlier this year, my school hosted a professional development day that focused on LGBQT awareness. Obviously, I had an open-minded administration and lived in an open-minded area of the country, or this kind of workshop never would have happened.

I learned a lot on that PD day. I learned about the idea of “preferred pronouns” and “dead naming” (referring to a person by birth name instead of the chosen name),and I realized that I was still holding on to a few judgments and assumptions; it was my responsibility to figure out a way to lose them.

I knew it was a big wake-up call for me when I reconsidered my life-long stance that “they” should never be used as a singular pronoun. I have always taught that the correct usage is “he or she” when the antecedent is singular. But then I realized that by using that grammar format, I am forcing people into one of two categories. And it doesn’t always work that way.

It may sound silly to say that shifting my ideas on a grammar concept was a major change, but I do believe that how we construct language not only reflects how we see things, but it also creates our vision of the world.

I had my first trans student this year, and despite my panic that I would mess up the pronouns, calling him her instead of his preferred pronoun, it wasn’t a big deal at all. He was a fairly quiet and private student, and he kept to himself. But he did have friends in the class, and students used the male pronouns when talking to him and about him.

Along with the rest of the country, my old school has been developing policies for trans students. Bathroom availability, access to sports, bullying problems—these are issues that I can stand behind, but they weren’t exactly my jurisdiction.

But I did get a chance to bring up more discussion within my classes when I taught Twelfth Night later in the year.

Reading Gender and Love in Twelfth Night

I had taught Twelfth Night before, but only with smaller or honors level classes. This time, I would be teaching it to three large and very mainstream classes. The cross dressing theme is apparent right from the beginning. When I explained to my classes that during the actual performances, all of the actors were male, so Viola was played by a boy dressed as a girl pretending to be a boy, they thought it was kind of funny and interesting. But it wasn’t really a big deal.

Students in the class who identified as LGBTQ picked up the themes and ran with them from the beginning.

As we continued to read the play, the silly plot began to take on more meaning and depth. It’s funny when Olivia falls in love with Cesario, who is really Viola dressed up as a boy, but also, it’s serious—here is a lesbian relationship right on stage. But also it’s all “okay” since Viola is played by a boy (but then Olivia is played by a boy as well….).

We really got into a discussion of what it means to be gay in a predominately straight world with the seemingly minor character of Antonio. Within a few minutes of his first appearance in the play, he tells Sebastian, “If you will not murder me for my love, let me be your servant” (II.ii) and at the end of this short scene, he tells him “I do adore thee so / That danger shall seem sport, and I will go.” In his tiny scenes with just a few lines, Antonio has brought up the danger of his feelings—how they put him at risk in both the outside world and with the object of his affection.

Later, Antonio continues to reference the pain that his feelings cause when he tells Sebastian that “My desire / More sharp than filed steel, did spur me forth” (III.iii). Teenagers can easily relate to feelings so strong that they are physically painful. In that way, almost all of them can relate to Antonio’s conflict here. Many have loved or desired someone who did not return their feelings. But there is a special pain in being a LGBTQ teen, even in a world that seems to be more and more accepting and open.

And Antonio’s character gives some really nice insight into that experience.

By the end of our study of the play, most students disliked almost all of the characters in the play—the characters fall in love with the wrong people for the wrong reasons, or they are selfish or foolish or just plain jerks. But many also felt a great deal for Antonio. These feelings of compassion were the most powerful at the end of the play when Sebastian’s true identity is revealed, and Viola is reunited with her brother. After risking his life to serve, Antonio is given no thanks or recognition of any kind. Sebastian, the object of his affection, the person for whom he has risked his life, is happily in love with Olivia, whom he has met a few hours before. In Antonio’s last moments on the stage, he describes his experiences with love:

A witchcraft drew me hither:
That most ingrateful boy there by your side,
From the rude sea’s enraged and foamy mouth
Did I redeem; a wreck past hope he was:
His life I gave him and did thereto add
My love, without retention or restraint,
All his in dedication; for his sake
Did I expose myself, pure for his love,
Into the danger of this adverse town;
Drew to defend him when he was beset:
Where being apprehended, his false cunning,
Not meaning to partake with me in danger,
Taught him to face me out of his acquaintance,
And grew a twenty years removed thing
While one would wink; denied me mine own purse,
Which I had recommended to his use
Not half an hour before. (V.i)

He also describes the depth of his relationship with Sebastian before the play:

To-day, my lord; and for three months before,
No interim, not a minute’s vacancy,
Both day and night did we keep company. (V.i)

And then that’s it.

We never hear another word from Antonio, besides when he remarks on the similarity between Sebastian and Viola in the last few minutes of the play. He never gets any thanks from Sebastian or explanation. He doesn’t go to jail for his past crimes against Orsino’s court, but that’s about all the reward he gets for risking his life.

In my experience, students have a great deal of understanding when it comes to Antonio’s pain here. Whether or not they identify with his experience of loving someone of the same sex, they most likely identify with his experience of loving someone who doesn’t love him back, or of doing someone a favor and getting no thanks, or of feeling like they don’t matter, like no one cares about their pain or their story.

When I discussed the outcome of the play as a whole with my classes, it was very apparent that they understood all of the underlying homoerotic themes in the play. Olivia is “betrothed both to maid and a man,” and Orsino continues to call Viola “boy” even after he knows she is a girl.

All of this abstract discussion was fine in my classes. There was a little discomfort among a small minority during a few readings, but for the most part, classes were smooth.

Seeing Gender and Love in Twelfth Night

The real button-pushing happened when we watched a film. I admit that I first wanted to watch a movie because it was the week before Christmas vacation. In my experience, that is the worst week of the year. All of the energy and anxiety and anticipation has been building up for months. I didn’t want to deal.

So I found a film version of Twelfth Night that had been filmed in a replica of the Globe theater with an all-male cast directed by Tim Carroll and starring Mark Rylance as Olivia and Stephen Fry as Malvolio. I watched a few scenes on Youtube. They were hilarious. I bought the DVD and thought that I would have an easy few days before break.

It turned out that what was all fine and easy in the abstract was actually not so simple when students are confronted with the visuals.

The students laughed when they saw Mark Rylance’s performance of Olivia; he seems to float when he walks, and he gets all flustered as soon as he meets Cesario. They thought that the character of Viola, who wears a lot of makeup as well, including bright red lipstick, was interesting. But in a scene where Viola and Orsino are listening to music—a scene that doesn’t have much in terms of the text—the sexual tension between two men was too much for them to handle. I heard comments of “ew” and “gross,” and this from students who belong to the generation that has mostly been pretty open to gay rights and has definitely been exposed to gay characters in TV and movies.

A Reflection

During that PD day back in the fall, I remember one of the school counselors saying that it might not be so easy for the school as a whole when we had a transgender girl.  And I thought about that idea for a while.  And I thought about that idea for a while.

As a society, and this is also something that I admittedly struggle with myself at times, I think that we get why a woman would want to be a man. Men get more respect, power—and they get that extra 23 cents on the dollar. Women have been dressing in “men’s clothes” for decades.

But we don’t quite get it when a man wants to become a woman. We feel that it is somehow lessening that person. Maybe not consciously, but that reaction is there for sure. And looking back to that professional development day, I realize that I was not totally comfortable with the trans women myself. And I guess that this is something that I don’t easily admit. And that is work that I still have to do.

I think that one of the benefits of literature is that by reading stories, we encounter characters whose lives are not at all like our own. I am not a gay man living 500 years ago and giving all of my money to someone who will never love me back, but I can still feel his pain. I can relate to the experience—the times when I do things that don’t get recognition or thanks—and I can also realize the distance, the foreignness, the pain that I will probably never experience in my life.

Since I watched that film version somewhere around four times—previewing and then watching it with all three classes—I started to get used to seeing the all-male casts. I saw them as men and women in a story, and not as men pretending to be women.

Similarly, with my student who was transitioning. I stopped seeing him as a girl who is acting and dressing like a boy, and just saw him as a kid in my class.

I think that there is value in exposure, in just seeing something that is new and maybe a little uncomfortable and getting used to it that way. And I think that there is value in literature because it teaches us about people whose lives are not like our own.

Teachers often try to hook students by finding books that “they can relate to” and what that usually translates to is books that deal with the same issues or kinds of people that teenagers encounter in their daily lives. But I often try to search out books that kids can’t relate to, at least not entirely. I want to expose them to lives that are nothing like theirs.

I believe that the more we experience their stories, the more we stretch and make ourselves a little uncomfortable and experience that discomfort, the more empathy we have for others.

It’s work sometimes, and it is necessary work, and it is work made somewhat easier by the joy of literature.

Christina Gil is was an English teacher for sixteen years, but she recently left the classroom to follow a dream and move with her family to an ecovillage in rural Missouri. When she is not hauling water to her tiny home, she can be found homeschooling her two kids or meeting with her neighbors about the best way to run their village