As You Like It topic analysis - Wisniewski 1 Kathryn...

Wisniewski
Kathryn Wisniewski
Professor Amy Green
ENG-450
12 March 2017
Topic Analysis -As You Like It
Gender can often times be seen as a strength or as a weakness. Males tend to be thought
of as smart, strong, and in charge individuals while women are thought of as the weak one who is
supposed to serve her husband. Shakespeare tends to ignore these gender role stereotypes and
even completely switches the traditional gender roles up. Shakespeare’s As You Like It defies the
fixed identities and the exclusionary choices of the everyday world, offering instead a world of
multiple possibilities and transformable identities by showing the struggle between families and
using disguises to temporarily exchange gender roles allowing characters to escape from their
own personalities.
As You Like It is a love story with an abundance of family drama. Sir Rowland de Boys
died and left his two sons Oliver the oldest and Orlando the youngest behind. Oliver treats his
brother Orlando terrible and even tells the local court wrester to break his neck. Orlando ends up
wrestling the court wrestler and beating him. During the wrestling match Orlando caught the eye
of a girl named Rosalind who is the daughter of exiled Duke Senior, who used to rule over the
French court.