The Oppression Of Women In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
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“To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman.” explains Mahatma Gandhi, contributing to a feminist exploration. Feminism is an argumentative subject that has been debated over it’s credence for centuries. Its involvement in Caesar is displayed through the women’s nominal and tenuousness involvement in the play. In William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, women are viewed as ineligible.
The first woman, Calpurnia, is Caesar's wife, and she is the epitome of sexist Elizabethan understanding of woman. Instead of being controlled, she controls. She exists as a vitriolic burden for her husband's character by inveighing on him. The first contact with Calpurnia is during the feast of Lupercal. Antony is asked by Caesar to…show more content… Brutus begins to attract feminine qualities that were transferred from Portia to himself after her death. Brutus’s anger comes from the grief over Portia's death. It is to Cassius that Brutus extinguishes grief. The grief that he feels, the loss, the betrayal are all translated into anger toward this friend, and after those emotions are extinguished, the two men are closer in some ways than Brutus ever was with Portia. The latter relationship shares the alike respect for each other and the same sharing of intimacy, yet it is a relationship that operates in the same spheres because it encompasses a level of equality not possible between a woman and a man. This combination of the masculine and the feminine in her character was appropriate considering it was unworkable given the way the Roman world worked. The flip side was Caesar's behavior. His composition of femininity and masculinity was further unworkable. With their deaths, Brutus is able to incorporate both aspects of their personalities, most directly from his wife, given her increased moral nature. With women gone in the world, there is an unworkable balance that is evident after Brutus'