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    52 Coriolanvs no Aristocrat

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    * 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/