Olivia: "I would you were as I would have you be." (III.i.48-49)
Viola is trying to explain to Olivia why she cannot love her. Viola (Cesario) states that he (she) is not what he (she) is. I think that this statement is very forward on Cesario's part and I don't know why Olivia doesn't get the hint that something is not right with the man she loves. I think Olivia's response to Viola's statement is very interesting. What she is saying means that Olivia will think of her lover however she wants to think of him.
I think that Olivia is so hung up on Cesario and so in love with him that she just doesn't want to believe that something could be wrong with her love interest so she automatically assumes its her that is the problem. I feel pity for her because she cannot see why Cesario cannot really love her.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why Viola doesn't pick up on it either. If I were Viola, I would never guess that it was because she was really a woman and not a man, but I don't think that I would take that comment too lightly. The reason she does is because she is so in love she cannot even think of anything else but him.
ReplyDeleteto add, love is blinding Olivia to the point where Cesario becomes the world to her and thats all we hear from her for the rest of the play. i even forgot she had a dead brother as im sure she did too.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Tara and Matt. Because she loves him, or rather is infatuated with him, she's not going to think there is something wrong with him, even if he tells her straight out. She might think he is just being over dramatic.
ReplyDeleteI made the same deductions that everyone above made after reading your interpretation. Olivia is so delusionally in love that she doesn't care what she sees or hears because at this point, she's going to rewrite the way things play out in her head in order to favor the way she wants it to play out. IN a way, she's doing what Malvolio did to the love letter. She's crushing the words that Cesario speaks so that they bow to her situation.
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