Portia Thigh Analysis

For years women have been searching for gender equality. In our generation, authors tend to write about a certain subject containing their bias. Each author differentiates between two topics; women's roles positively changing or women's roles are the same. For example, Carol Kuruvilla wrote about how the female role in society positively changed overtime. while in past generations, Elisabetta Sirani’s painting exemplifies what a women must do in order to gain the respect from men. The two authors write about the same topic but in different aspects of what they think about women's roles in society. Finally, The Awakening talks about Edna’s hope for becoming her own individual, but ended up taking her own life to become her true self. Each …show more content…
In the painting it shows a woman deeply cutting her thigh while there are men who are not paying attention to her. She cut her thigh so she could gain the attention respect of the men. Whitney Chadwick commented about the painting saying “She demonstrates, finally, that women who prove their virtue through individual acts of bravery can come to be recognized as almost like men.”(Inspired by Art Herstory: Elisabetta Sirani’s ‘Portia Wounding her Thigh” (1664)). She states that women must go through drastic measures to gain the “political trust” of men. Sinari responds to the non existent attention for women by revealing her bias for the topic. The image she created exemplifies Portia “Stabbing herself deeply in the thigh, Portia has to prove herself virtuous and worthy of political trust by separating herself from the rest of her sex […] Removed from the private world of women to the public world of men, Portia must assert her control over speech before she can claim exceptional status.” to show her need for gender equality. She wants a society where women should not need to be separate from the same sex, nor do any self harm in result for bravery. She wants women to be seen as a automatic individual who is