How we cite our quotes: (Act.Scene.Line)
Quote #4
VOLUMNIA
Methinks I hear hither your husband's drum,
See him pluck Aufidius down by th' hair;
As children from a bear, the Volsces shunning him.
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 mail'd hand then wiping, forth he goes
Like to a harvestman that's tasked to mow
Or all or lose his hire.
VIRGILIA
His bloody brow? O Jupiter, no blood! (1.3.32-41)
You know how Volumnia likes to fantasize about her son's military exploits and the awesome war wounds he'll get in battle? Coriolanus' wife Virgilia feels just a wee bit differently. She's horrified that her husband might be injured or killed in battle. This passage not only highlights the differences between the two women's attitudes toward warfare, but it also shows us that war-loving Coriolanus has more in common with his tiger mom than with his pacifist wife.
Quote #5
VOLUMNIA
If my son were my
husband, I should freelier rejoice in that absence
wherein he won honor than in the embracements
of his bed where he would show most love. (1.3.2-5)
Note to moms everywhere: No sentence should ever start with the words "if my son were my husband." Full stop. Because then you get really uncomfortable things like Volumnia suggesting she gets more pleasure from seeing her son go off to war than she would get from going to bed him. If he were her hubby, of course. Gee. It's no wonder that psychoanalytic literary critics have such a field day with this play.
Quote #6
VOLUMNIA
When
yet he was but tender-bodied and the only son of
my womb, when youth with comeliness plucked
all gaze his way, when for a day of kings' entreaties
a mother should not sell him an hour from her beholding,
I, considering how honor would become
such a person—that it was no better than picture-like
to hang by th' wall, if renown made it not
stir—was pleased to let him seek danger where he
was like to find fame. 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. (1.3.5-18)
Oh, boy. No wonder Coriolanus is so aggressive and violent. Here, Volumnia brags about how she raised her son to be the deadliest warrior in Rome. She sent him off to war when most moms were insisting that their sons stay at home. According to Volumnia, the only way for Coriolanus to prove "himself a man" was for him to become a warrior—which made her happier than giving birth to her little "man-child." Passages like this are why so many literary critics get worked up over Volumnia's psychological impact on her son. Can you imagine what it would be like to grow up in a house where your only parent told you over and over again that you weren't really a "man" unless you went out and slaughtered a bunch of enemy soldiers? You might just grow up to be a killing machine.