On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
52 Coriolanvs no Aristocrat
Untitled Article
* Hear me profess sincerely : Had I a dozen sons , each in his love alike , and none less dear than thine and my good Ma * rcius , I had rather eleven die nobly for their country , than one voluptuously surfeit out action / That means ,, as plainly as words can speak , < A son who has no power of action is to me as a girl , and a girl is of no value because she has no power . ' She tells her daughter-in-law , Virgilia , whom it is clear she despises for her softness , ' If my son were my husband , I should frealier rejoice in that absence wherein ne won honour , &c . Virgilia replies ,
' But had he died in the business , Madam , how then V Therein , in that one remark , she proves herself the direct opposite of Volumnia in her character . Both women are selfish in their way . Volumnia would give her son to the public service because only thus could he reflect honour upon her . Virgilia would not give her husband to the public service , inasmuch as it were so much private love lost to her . But Volumnia spoke out , while Virgilia , as became the nature of her love , was a coward . Good training would have made both characters excellent ; but while Volumnia would have ever remained the most magnificent woman , Virgilia would have been capable of far the most devoted love and affection . As it is , she is somewhat mawkish . She would keep her husband about her as she would a kid or a kitten ,
or her child , and pine the moment he were away . She seems to possess no intellect , nothing but blind instinct , and her fears are of the most ignorant kind , like those of a green school girl of the € bread and butter tribe' of modern days . She is formed to love without knowing why , and to dread with as little reason . She cannot comprehend Coriolanus , save that he is somewhat awful to most people , and very kind to her ; and one is tempted to think that his love to her springs partly from her softness when compared with Volumnia , and partly from the very helplessness
which stands so much in need of a protector . But of a surety there is no perfect sympathy between them . There are many thoughts which come across his mind in which she cannot share , and she evidently has no thoughts of her own . Volumnia is speaking of her son :
* Methinks I see him stamp thus , and call thus , — Come on , you cowards , you were got in fear , " Though you were born in Rome : His bloody brow With his mailed hand then wiping , forth he goes ; Like to a harvest-man , that ' s tasked to mow Or all , or lose his hire / On this Virgilia , in a fright , remarks , 4 His bloody brow ! Oh , Jupiter , no blood ! ' ,
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1834, page 52, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2629/page/54/
-