Such is the root of Caesar's downfall. He has taken on too many feminine characteristics. His prowess is in the past and is only momentarily evident in Act II, Scene 2 when he refuses to listen to Calphurnia's worries about what will happen if he goes to the Capitol. "Caesar shall forth. The things that threatened me / Ne'er looked but on my back; when they shall see / The face of Caesar, they are vanished." However, he is convinced, bowing to her hysteria and his mind is changed only after Decius embarrasses him. "[I]t were a mock / Apt to be rendered for someone to say / 'Break up the Senate till another time, / When Caesar's wife shall meet with better dreams.'" On to his own death.
Portia is a much more interesting character on her own and yet she, too, is really only portrayed through her relationship with men. Her relationship with her husband is clearly one of intimacy and respect. She speaks openly with him about the unrest he has recently exhibited and forces him to speak to her and tell her what is going on.
Note, however, how she does this. Brutus does not want her to know what is going on. She changes his mind by pressing him to define her in one of the two ways in which a woman can be defined in this society: She is either a good Roman woman worthy of his secrets, well-wived and well-fathered, or she is "Brutus' harlot." Faced with this distinction, Brutus can only choose to tell her what is happening. Unfortunately for Portia, the knowledge that he imparts is her downfall. In Act II, Scene 4 Portia complains that she has "a man's mind, but a woman's might." She has been given access to a man's knowledge but because of her position as a woman, she is unable to use it and must sit and wait for the outcome of men's affairs. Such knowledge is too much for her and she commits suicide in the very garden in which she first heard Brutus' secrets.
With this, Portia is gone from the play, and the reader never again sees a female character. What the audience does see, however, is a transference of Portia's feminine qualities to her husband by means of his relationship with Cassius. At the beginning of the play, the relationship between these two men was less than profound. They are connected by a common desire to overturn Caesar's tyranny but have entirely different motivations. In addition, Cassius' approach toward convincing Brutus to join him has been cynical to say the least.
