Coriolanus’ exile.
(IV. vi. 129.)
You are the musty chaff: and you are smelt
Above the moon.
(V. i. 31.)
These are his authentic innate prejudices that he controls and represses by the help of his reason and his patriotism, when the emergency requires: but they are there; and he would be no more careful to restrain them in his familiar circle than a squatter at his club feels called upon to restrain his opinions about the Labour Party, though he may be very proud of Australia, and a very kindly master, and though he would neither publish them in an election address nor perhaps justify them in his serious moments to himself. And this, we may suppose, was the sort of conversation Marcius would hear as a lad from his old friend. There would be little in it to modify the pride and prejudice he derived from his mother.
And lastly, coming to the other possible corrective, would his wife be likely to soften the asperities of temper and opinion that were his by nature and by second nature? At first we might say Yes. She takes comparatively little pleasure in the brilliance of his career and is more concerned for his life than for his glory. When Volumnia recalls how she sent him forth as a lad to win honour, Virgilia’s heart pictures his possible death, and how would that have been compensated? For she loves in the first place not the hero but the husband, and her love makes her timorous. She has none of her mother-in-law’s assurance that his prowess is without match and beyond comparison. When “wondrous things” are told of him how characteristic are their respective comments:
Virgilia. The gods grant them true!
Volumnia. True! pow, wow.
(II. i. 154.)