Agency and space: the women of Don Quixote and Twelfth Night

The thesis explores how women characters' agency changes based on their physical location in Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1607) and Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare (1602). It uses a feminist and spatial narrative theory approach to analyze what different roles women characters are allowed to fill and what roles they take on themselves despite expected societal circumscription. It also looks into what they have the freedom to be and do depending on the natural or social space that surrounds them and if and when this freedom requires them to take on male roles or dress. How do their agency and representation change when they are disguised as men and not presenting as themselves? This analysis of space and agency is undertaken in conjunction with an analysis of the genre under which each work operates and the literary tradition each upholds or modifies.