Hello, reader! After hours of thinking about something interesting to post in our blog, I finally have come up with something.
I was thinking about disguises in Twelfth Night. As you should know, many characters in the play assume disguises: Viola, who makes everyone believe that she is a man; Malvolio, who dresses up in a different way in order to make Olivia interested in him; and Feste, who dresses up as a priest. They wear disguises because they need people to think that they are different, that they are other completely different person.
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a disguise is the "things that you wear to change the way you look so that people cannot recognize you." Based on this, it can be said that when you disguise you change your appearance with the aim of turning into somebody new. But does it really change who you are?
In my opinion, the new identity created after assuming a disguise is not going to change your essence. For example, Viola put on man clothes and changed her gender, but she was still a woman, and Feste and Malvolio put on new clothes just to give a better impression amongst people as Feste wanted to pretend to be a nobleman and Malvolio wanted to become a nobleman. In other words, by changing clothing the characters were able to change their gender and their class, but just as an illusion for the rest of the people in Illyria. People perceived them as they wanted to, anyway their essence --who they really were-- still the same. They could fool people, yet they could not fool theirselves.
I think that this disguises issue not only happens in Twelfth Night, it also takes place in our reality. Maybe more than once you have had to act or dress in order to fit in society or to give a good impression to someone. What you need to know, after reading the play, is that appearances are just a cover of reality, you should not trust appearances, you should not judge people because of how they look like, as you never know if they are pretending to be someone. You have to look further because even you might be wearing a disguise. Have you thought about it?
Let's be authentic and stop putting on disguises.
References
Raffel, B. (2007). "Twelfth night, or, what you will. The annotated Shakespeare." New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/essential-british-english/disguise_1
I think the same happens in this proberb: Don´t judge a book by its cover". People tend to hide the things that are different just to be accepted and don´t get me wrong but I think that´s fair for them to do so because that´s their way to find the light in place full of darkness. If the people around them cannot see their real self, they are also part of this "pretending". We are always playing a character, sometimes, it just gets more real than in other occassions; take the example of a teacher inside his/her classroom, they have to behave in a certain way; that is adapting to survive and fit in a place where some manners and behavior are not accepted. Considering friends that´s also important; maybe the people who can see, respect and value your real self are your real friends and the others are just pretending to be one. I really liked your post by the way. :D
ResponderEliminarI totally agree with your post Maria Andrea! I also think that it is highly represented in what happens even in our lives.
ResponderEliminarWe tend to disguise ourselves in order to feel integrated in some context. It is not that we are walking around, hiding our real personalities, but we do have the ability to manage our behavior in order to get what we want. I think that that is one of the main purposes when you hide your real "identity". Actually, a very common way to see it is when people create fake facebook profiles in order to show to the world a side of you that is not very well-known by people that surrounds you. I disagree with this type of act, because even though you try to show to the world what you want to show, you are not being complete honest even with you, because you can start to believe that what you have invented can be true.
the fact that you cannot deny who you are is evident in every single action of our lives. Every single particle of us makes us different from the rest, the way we think, the way we talk, the way we decide or opt for having fruits or a hamburger create our identity and that identity cannot be changed. It is static, no matter how many clothes we wear or how strong our desire to be someone else could be. Unfortunately, the infinite possibilities to change our appereances that tend to come and crush into our minds could be related to the inner tendency to want to be accepted by people we do not like just because to prove ourselves how empty we are and how meaningless the life we are applying for might be.
ResponderEliminar