Rosalind Gender Roles

Throughout Shakespeare’s As You Like It, there are characters such as Rosalind and Orlando who do not act how their gender who act in that time period. Shakespeare does this by taking two characters, who seem quite normal, and putting them somewhere they can be the complete opposite. They go against that time period’s rules and boundaries of gender roles. Once they enter Arden, the rules of normal society do not apply. To stress this, Shakespeare challenges gender roles to see if they actually make sense by having Rosalind cross dress and become a young boy, Ganymede, making Orlando act like a woman. Rosalind’s first appearance of As You Like It is at the court, after her father, Duke Senior’s banishment, where she is being very melancholic. To cheer her up, much to her surprise, Rosalind witnesses Orlando best Charles in a wrestling match. Quickly, Rosalind somehow manages to fall in love with Orlando. It almost sounds like a generic love story, a noble, beautiful, young girl, like Rosalind, falls in love with a heroic, handsome man, like Orlando, at first sight. But then, Rosalind and her friend, Celia, are banished from the court. They head to Arden to find Duke Senior, but they decide that the journey would be too much for women or their caliber, so Rosalind disguises herself as young man, Ganymede and …show more content…
Although most of it is him proving them wrong, sometimes he does something like having Rosalind faint when she sees blood or have Orlando fight a lion to reminder people that there is some truth or backstory to all stereotypes. Not that all men could fight a lion or that all woman would faint at the sight of blood, but when things like this occur often, then people start to expect it. Mostly, Shakespeare defies gender roles by making Rosalind, Ganymede, a confident, young man who people look to for advice and Orlando, a love-struck guy who writes bad