"Base slave, did I ask you that?"

An interesting take on Coriolanus from Eurozine (almost as interesting as Dara's "McCain of Corioles" and Nicki's wonderfully sprawling riff on Greek maxims from "You shall not sin against philosophy twice" to "When life gives you hemlock, make hemlockade"):

To Virgilia, her daughter-in-law, she is not only the most insufferable possible mother-in-law, but the most soul-sapping: she would rather see her son slain in battle, and shows derision toward any desire Virgilia might have to enjoy her husband's caresses in bed. Her thorough influence over Caius Marcius is both obvious and frequently noted by his countrymen. (If one wanted to view her in another and more favourable light, one could accurately say that she valued a nobly led life above all other considerations.)

Caius Marcius has no father to guide him, nor did he have a mother with any trace of tenderness in her heart. For Volumnia, only the cold calculus familial and Roman honour mattered, and her single-minded determination to instil these values into her son met with success. Caius Marcius grew to embody genuine Roman nobility in a pure, almost inhuman form, going even so far as to refuse his mother's request that he show his wounds and ask the favour of the public for a well-deserved seat on the Council.

This is only tangentially related to the article's main thesis, but it's worth pointing out that Volumnia's take on manly honor is necessarily an outsider's; that's why it's so cartoon-simple, uncompromising, and inhumane. Masculine attachment to honor culture can be quite flexible, but only for people who are enough at home in it to move around. There is a feminine form of civic honor, but, as a woman confronted with Coriolanus's education, Volumnia is necessarily reduced to explanation.

The take-away lesson here is aimed at anyone who finds femininity too one-dimensional and rigid to be worth their time or respect. I'm not surprised that men see it that way. They would. I suggest that women not take a spectator's word for its simplicity.