One of the things I find quite interesting in William Shakespeare’s, Julius Caesar, is that the play is almost entirely male-dominated with the exception of the two wives. I started to think how does the lack of female influence affect a play? What I started to think about was how the two women, Calpurnia and Portia acted as the voice of reason often overlooked and dismissed. Granted, that does not surprise me for women today are often overlooked and dismissed. However, I found it interesting that Shakespeare would create their lines to be so profound, intuitive, and reflective.
Calpurnia does not want her husband, Caesar to go into the capitol because she has dreamt his bloody death. She has the intuitive desire to protect her husband, soon to be king of Rome.
CALPURNIA What mean you, Caesar? think you to walk forth? You shall not stir out of your house to-day. 9
CAESAR Caesar shall forth: the things that threaten’d me Ne’er look’d but on my back; when they shall see The face of Caesar, they are vanished.
CALPURNIA Caesar, I never stood on ceremonies, Yet now they fright me. There is one within, Besides the things that we have heard and seen, 15 Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch. A lioness hath whelped in the streets; (2:2:7-17)
Of course one can speculate that Caesar felt his ego was infringed upon, after telling his friend, or so he thought of the dream his wife had. Cesara had project his manhood and his ability to make his own decisions. This scene conveys that regardless of what women say they are allowed to be dismissed because after all they are women, what do they know, right? Shakespeare often leaves me confused on his stance regarding women. For I feel that he writes them to be very powerful in their own way and then crushes them with male figures. It is so clever for it emulates what life was like in the Elizabethan era. Conversely, I also feel that Shakespeare tries to be slightly rebellious as he writes only two women in the play, yet they are so outspoken and aware of the evil that surrounds them.
Portia is an interesting individual for she embraces her own power when she takes her own life in a way that is so ruthless. She is stricken by the lack of respect she has received by Brutus, for all she wants is for him to confide in her. Again, just as Caesar, the idea of losing one’s masculinity and forgetting their ego gets in the way and ultimately leads to their demise. Before taking her own life she comes to the understanding that because she is woman she is less than, however, she is more than her counterparts for she is the daughter of a noble man and married to a powerful husband. I am left with the feeling of dissatisfaction when he hear of Portia’s suicide, because I felt she was trying to be a good wife and a good human.
PORTIA
I grant I am a woman; but withal
A woman well-reputed, Cato’s daughter.
Think you I am no stronger than my sex,
Being so father’d and so husbanded?
Tell me your counsels; I will not disclose ’em.
I have made strong proof of my constancy,
Giving myself a voluntary wound
Here, in the thigh. Can I bear that with patience.
And not my husband’s secrets? (2.1.215-325)
Portia and Calpurnia cannot rise against the society they reside in, however, I am still pleased with the representation of having at least two women in a play. I also like that although they are not taken seriously, they are still heard. In my opinion I think they make the play, for it is Calpurnia that foreshadows her husband’s fall. Her warning made cesare feel inferior, the idea that he listened to his wife disrupted his makeup. Portia was the first to start what felt like the never ending suicides, for I feel that it does take some courage to take your own life. Especially take your own life in a way that is so brutal. (Get it, brutal.. Brutus).
The world of Julius Caesar is definitely misogynistic, and I think the men’s need in the play to constantly assert their masculinity eventually leads them all to ruin. In the play, women like Calphurnia are highly perceptive, while the men are driven by their violent impulses. Caesar’s act of ignoring his wife at the beginning of the play is a clear instance of Caesar’s trying to assert his masculinity, and not allow a woman to impact his decisions. Misogynistic societies are upheld by the idea that women cannot be trusted, and therefore all the trust is put into men. Ultimately, an element of Caesar’s downfall is due to the fact that he refuses to listen to and believe women. The chaos in this play results from men constantly fighting for power, and by the end no one is truly victorious.
Shakespeare’s portrayal of women is consistently fascinating to me, and often really exciting. I think a big complicating factor in how his women are perceived is the fact that he’s writing them in the roles they occupied in the given time period of the work–roles that are more likely than not going to be inherently sexist. The thing that’s so exciting, though (and that I think a lot of modern writers could take a couple cues from, to be honest), is that he writes them as full people who are being confined and are aware of their confinements. There’s something to be said for the idea that there’s something iffy about having so many Cassandra-esque female characters who know some great truth but remain ignored, but I personally think it’s one of the more subversive elements of the way he wrote women–he’s showing us that, a lot of the time, if the women in the plays had more power, the events of the plays might not even take place to begin with. Not that women are some magic bullet that can end all strife, but more in the sense that so many of the conflicts ARE hyper-masculine ego-trips, and that so many of the women DO get at the heart of the problem, often in a very pithy line or two. There’s something dangerous about them in that way, and by giving us what little we have of their perspectives, Shakespeare’s not only showing the world what it loses through the silencing of women, but also the ways in which they threaten the status quo in the first place–what it is that makes them such a threat to an oppressive, power-hungry patriarchal society.