A scene of exclusively female characters sewing within the private sphere in I.iii is constantly preoccupied with the military events that concern the political state . In a series of replacements and displacements, domestic life is invaded by the violent imagery associated with maintaining political power. During the scene’s opening exchange between Volumnia and Virgilia, there are two levels of replacement as Volumnia initially speaks of her son as if he were her husband, and then displaces the son-husband role for that of state soldier: “If my son were my/ husband, I should freelier rejoice in that absence/ wherein he own honor than in the embracements of his/ love where he must show most love” (2-5). When Virgilia skeptically questions Volumnia’s preference for political honor over the life of her son, Coriolanus’ mother responds by, quite literally, replacing the role of son with the pride of military conquest: “ Then his good report should have been my/ son” (20-21).
At Valeria’s entrance at line 48, the domestic decorum with which the three ladies greet each other is starkly contrasted with the content of their subsequent conversation. While Valeria initially exchanges niceties (“ My ladies both, good day to you…How do both? You are manifest house-/keepers. What are you sewing here? A fine spot in good faith. How does your little son?” 48, 51-53), the conversation is immediately influenced by the violence of the war beyond the walls of the home. Volumnia describes Coriolanus son as preferring the “swords” and “drum” of the battlefield to his schooling (55-56), and Valeria likens the young boy to his father in relating the story of how he chased a butterfly before he “mammock’d” it, tearing it to pieces with his teeth (65). Here, the innocence normally associated with youth is displaced by violence, and in the likening of Coriolanus’ son to his father, we again see that the role of solider is superimposed on the domestic function of son. The remainder of the conversation as the women sew centers around news from the battlefield, and Volumnia and Valeria attempt to persuade Virgilia, “lay aside your stitchery” (69), in an effort to get Virgilia to leave the house with them. She ardently refuses, claiming, “ I’ll not over the/ threshold till my lord return from the wars” (74-75). Yet it is ironic that Virgillia rejects violating her domestic duty to observe events of the public realm, since it appears from the conversation of the three women in this scene that the private has already been invaded by the public, political sphere.
There is yet another level of replacement in I.iii that likewise conflates the domestic and martial domains. Volumnia and Valeria’s literary allusions, which implicitly compare Virgilia and to both Hecuba and Penelope, juxtapose motherhood and wifely duties with the violence of war. As Volumnia asserts the priority of military valor in a son, she cites the unsettling image of “Hector’s forehead when it spit forth blood/ At Grecian sword” (42-43). While Volumnia seeks to convince and comfort Virgilia, this bloody image is instead disturbing, and it highlights the violence superimposed upon the domestic bonds of mother and son implied by Volumnia’s rationality. Valeria’s replacement of Virgilia for Penelope and the “yarn she spun in Ulysses absence” (83) also highlights that the private role of wife is encroached upon by the political demands of wars fought by one’s husband. Both allusions conflate the public and private in a way which underscores the collapse of the two spheres in this scene of the play.
In IV.v, the converse of this superimposition of the public over the private occurs at the camp of Aufidius’ troops. As Coriolanus approaches the camp he is warned to “avoid the house” (23), and the domestic is juxtaposed with the public as the hearth is simultaneously the physical site of a household feast and a martial outpost. More than this though, the interaction between Coriolanus and Aufidius unfolds as a displacement of the relationship between husband and wife. Aufidius greets Corilanous with a physical embrace, “Let me twine/ Mine arms around that body” (106-107), and then proceeds to describe his relationship with Coriolanus—less in terms of their mutual roles as soldiers—but more in comparing his relationship with the former to that of his love for his wife:“Know thou first/, I loved the maid I married; never a man/ Sigh’d truer breath; but that I see thee here,/ Thou noble thing, more dances my rapt heart/ Than when I first my wedded mistress saw/ Bestride my threshold” (113-118). When Aufidius relates his dreams of meeting Coriolanus in battle, the description is coded in sexual terms, as the Aufidius imagines the two warriors “Unbuckling helms, fisting each other’s throat” (125).
The overt homoerotic undertones of Aufidius’ speech do not go unobserved by the servants still present on stage after Aufidius welcomes Coriolanus into the feast, and they complain, “Our general himself makes/ a mistress of him” (195). The scene ends in a similar conflation of sexual imagery and martial prowess that has been the subtext of the entire scene. As the servants discuss the advantages of war over those of peace, the second servant’s description of the advantages of war are imagined in terms of sexual potency: “as wars, in some sort, may be/ said to be a ravisher, so it cannot be denied but peace is/ a great maker of cuckholds” (227-229).
In both scenes, the public and private spheres become collapsed upon each other. In I.iii, conversations of the female characters are infiltrated by the war occurring outside the walls of the home. In a series of displacements, the domestic roles of husband, son, wife, and mother are constantly transposed on top of each other to reflect a preoccupation with the political valor of war. At the all-male battle camp of IV.v, a reverse superimposition occurs, as the roles of two soldiers are conflated with those of husband and wife in the speech of Aufidius. In these two scenes, the physical space of the play’s action, and what the audience expects to see occur, is contaminated by the pressures of a political life that does not allow for a separation of public and private spheres. This juxtaposition of domestic roles and the honor of military victory is related to the event that causes Coriolanus’ downfall and is the catalyst for the tragic ending of the play: Coriolanus’ subservience to his mother in V.iii. In this final conflation of domestic and political roles, because the two spheres have been mapped on top of each other, Coriolanus makes a political decision based on familial loyalty that ends in his own murder at the hands of the Volscian conspirators.
The text questions the relationship between the private sphere and political life and, in these examples, examines the consequences of a public realm in which the drive for military valor is conflated with familial duties and loyalty. If the body politic in Coriolanus is consistently figured as a diseased state, perhaps part of Coriolanus’ ultimate failure lies in Rome's continual conflation of domestic and political spheres in a political state that provides for no separation of public and private domains.
