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To probe the sizeable literature which has grown up around the tragedy of Julius Caesar is to discover a consistently glowing attitude toward Portia, in her relationship with Brutus, her voluntary wound, and even her self-inflicted death. As a matter of fact, the woman seems to have become one of Shakespeare's inviolable females, and so much so that the well-intentioned critic who feels obliged to confront this trend and to urge some serious reconsideration might very well run the risk of being branded an iconoclast. Note, for example, the adjectives selected to describe her character generally: “courageous and brave,”7 “noble and loving,”9a “heroic,”14 “stoical”1 and “great.”9b As for her union with Brutus, it is wont to call forth such epithets as “lovely,”6 “ideal”1a” and “perfect.”9c The gash in her thigh is customarily ascribed to her “heroism,”14 “constancy”7 and “fortitude,”2a and her suicide itself is usually regarded as the product of her “sensitive nature,”15b her “fragile … frame”9d and even her proud “resolution.”2b
What I would like to suggest here is that such views are at odds not only with what Shakespeare, via Plutarch, presents to us, but with what psychology has come to tell us about self-destructive personalities. In a word, I consider the traditional view of Portia to be essentially Victorian and no longer tenable.
In Renaissance times Portia was often set forth as a model of chastity by those who were disgusted at the notion of remarriage and delighted at the notion of suicidal wives refusing to outlive their mates; in fact, this popular view can be traced to such notables as Elyot3 and Vives,16 as well as to the seventeenth-century plays of Webster.17