New Utrecht High School ENGLISH 220 ENGL 220 - Précis 1

Coppélia Kahn, in her essay “A Voluntary Wound” in 1997; studies masculinity and
femininity in the Shakespearean Julius Caesar play, focus on the various representations and
meanings of Portia’s voluntary wound as a desire to stands as an equal like man to Brutus, and
explores how does this details serves throughout the play to make Brutus a virtuous hero of
Rome. According to Kahn, Brutus is actually not as bloodthirsty as like the other conspirators
view him, because is all due to his reluctance of murdering Caesar at first, and on top Porta
sparklights to the audience his femenine side because Brutus only admits that the murder of
Caesar is done for the Rome’s good only to the audience, but Portia knows that Brutus is in guilt,
and Portia’s wounds is a representation, a symbol, and a metaphor of what Brutus is.
Kahn explains, that Portia knows her place as Brutus’s wife, but the voluntary wounds
she have done to herself are like a pass for her to stand equal as men to Brutus, because as Kahn
uses Gail Paster that explains, it is a women nature unable to control her unstoppable bleeding—
the menstruation cycle,— but when Portia purposely gives herself wounds because she had
control over this choices, is when she becomes a man. Another reason is the wound on Portia’s
thigh; they represent the male genitals, because in a patriarchal society she lacks it, and by
having a wound on her thigh it symbolizes that she was castrated like other men; and on using
Madelon Sprengnether words, Portia wounds are the representation of manliness throughout the
play, because it foreshadows Brutus and Cassius self wound to suicide.
Kahn explains that in literature, women are often portray like an object of marriage
exchange for alliance and this is how the power of Rome functions, but the political alliance
between the conspirators is portray by Brutus; so Kahn ask if Portia’s role in the play is the