The Power of a Woman

Cleopatra embodies the east, she is mysterious, extravagant, sensual, and beyond compare. While Cleopatra is the east, the Antony of old is the west. Before reading Shakespeare’s Antony, we have the pre-conceived notion of a warrior, strong and able. Shakespeare acknowledges Antony’s past glory in Caesar’s lines in act 1 scene 4,

“Antony,
Leave thy lascivious wassails. When thou once
Wast beaten from Modena, where thou slew'st
Hirtius and Pansa, consuls, at thy heel
Did famine follow; whom thou fought'st against,
Though daintily brought up, with patience more
Than savages could suffer: thou didst drink
The stale of horses, and the gilded puddle
Which beasts would cough at: thy palate then did deign
The roughest berry on the rudest hedge;
Yea, like the stag, when snow the pasture sheets,
The barks of trees thou browsed'st; on the Alps
It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh,
Which some did die to look on: and all this--
It wounds thine honour that I speak it now--
Was borne so like a soldier, that thy cheek
So much as lank'd not.”

However, this is the Antony of the past, Shakespeare’s Antony seems to have gone soft, and is no longer this capable soldier Caesar describes. Antony seems a slave to his love for Cleopatra, he follows her everywhere, be to Egypt or fleeing from battle. He also indulges her constant desire to be told how much he loves her, or how beautiful she is, he obeys her every wish.

This change in Antony makes us feel that either Rome is not as masculine and powerful as it once was, or that Antony is not as Roman as he was in the past. Cleopatra seems to have stripped him of the qualities he was most glorified for in his past. Shakespeare gives us a vivid image of her actually stripping away his manhood in act 2 scene 5, “Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst / I wore his sword Philippan.”, where she is literally recalling taking and wearing his clothes and sword. While Antony is becoming more feminine Cleopatra is becoming more masculine. She is in control of their relationship, and she is even braver in her suicide than Antony was.

I think this sense of a more powerful, leading woman is something that distinguishes between east and west. In the east Cleopatra is queen, she controls her country, she loves who she pleases, and governs her own decisions. In the west however, women are treated as commodities to be traded and bartered. Octavia’s freedom and empowerment is non-existent when compared to Cleopatra’s independence. We see Roman men using their women to cement their own alliances, as illustrated by Antony’s marriage to Octavia in act 2 scene 2.

“To hold you in perpetual amity, / To make you brothers, and to knit your hearts / With an unslipping knot, take Antony / Octavia to his wife”

Octavia tolerates this role, but when Caesar means to use Cleopatra for his own means she rebels. She refuses tolerate being drug into Rome as a trophy, or to made a mockery of. Instead of standing by and accepting her fate, as it seems a roman woman would, she kills herself. She views death as a happier alternative than to be a pawn of men.

It is clear that there are many differences between the Egyptian east and the Roman west. These differences are especially clear in the roles and characteristics of women in the east versus the west. Eastern women have more power and independence, while Roman women seem weak and tolerant by comparison. Perhaps Antony was so easily stripped of his strength and masculinity because he was not used to such strong natured women as Cleopatra.