Mothers of martyrs: Rethinking Shakespeare’s Volumnia’s collective motherhood from a Palestinian perspective

Abstract

This paper analyses the discourse of sacrifice in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (1608) from a presentist, Palestinian perspective. I propose that Coriolanus stages for Palestinian readers and audiences their construction of mothers as the breeders of fighters, the mothers’ roles of teaching and preparing their sons for sacrifice which they receive with congratulatory celebration through the noble mother, Volumnia, who raises her sole son, Coriolanus, as a warrior and sacrifices him for the sake of Rome. I contend that Volumnia and some Palestinian mothers of martyrs live through their sons, receiving honorary titles of fame and pride. Virgilia’s worry about her husband resonates with the Palestinian mothers who oppose martyrdom and express their condemnation of the acts of martyrdom. In both the fictional world of Coriolanus and contemporary Palestine, women who defy the ideology of martyrdom are stigmatised by their societies, for they imperil the structures of Roman and Palestinian cultures.