Response: Virtus

This post is a response to the following comment made earlier:

"Volumnia is the direct challenger of Virtus. Volumnia is the sole representation of Civitas, order and a feminine connotation. And, without Volumnia, Coriolanus is unable to function. As discussed in class, behind every man there is a great woman. Rome is in a state of uproar because Coriolanus desires this sense of control, order, and masculinity, but he fails at this and is completely held up by the support of his voluptuous Volumnia.In conclusion, Rome displays the virtus but deep down it is simply a hysterical nation in a masculine disguise."


I thought this was really interesting (I'm not sure if Professor Little said this in class or if it was a student conclusion), but if Volumnia is supposed to be the embodiment of Civitas, she must be really bad at it. It's true that she's the one person who is able to prevent Coriolanus from leveling Rome with her maternal influence, but her conversation with Virginia in Act I contradicts the idea of her as civitas personified:

"To a cruel
war I sent him; from whence he returned, his brows
bound with oak. I tell thee, daughter, I sprang not
more in joy at first hearing he was a man-child
than now in first seeing he had proved himself a man." (1.3.I'd cite the lines, but the online version I'm using right now has no line numbers)

Volumnia spends the rest of the scene explaining that men are most glorious and beautiful when bloodied from war, insisting that "Hecuba/When she did suckle Hector, look'd not lovelier/Than Hector's forehead when it spit/forth blood/At Grecian sword, contemning man" (1.3).

Almost every line from Volumia in this scene is of a violent nature, therefore implying that she is at this point the embodiment of virtus, not civitas. Of course, all of her inclinations toward violence appear in speech alone, whereas her actions toward the end of the play betray a side of her perhaps more ruled by civitas. The only reason she becomes less violent, however, is because her own country is threatened; if the defense of Rome were not in question, she would probably still be behind Corialanus, urging him to bash someone's face in.

Volumnia is certainly influencial and multi-dimensional - expressed by even her name alone - but she appears to be driven by virtus, not civitas. Perhaps the tension between her and Coriolanus is similar to the tension between Coriolanus and Audifius: as Professor Little said, both men can't be the pitcher. If Volumnia is in fact an embodiment of virtus, then she is a competitor of Coriolanus who ends up topping. Her show of civitas near the end of the play, then, is perhaps only a facade to momentarily disguise her true masculine nature in a strange sort of reversal of Rome, which is merely a nation of civitas disgused as a nation of virtus.


Vanessa Yeh
Ian Hoch
1B