On The Matriarchal Thirst For Power In Shakespeare’s Coriolanus And Racine’s Britannicus

This thesis aims to analyse a significant aspect in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus and Racine’s Britannicus, that is, the thirst for power. This phenomenon involves two crucial secondary characters; Volumnia and Agrippine, mothers respectively of Caius Marcius Coriolanus and Britannicus. Both Coriolanus and Britannicus are political tragedies re-enacting the politics in the Roman Empire. Shakespeare and Racine use history to convey realism. Plutarch’s The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (1579) is Shakespeare’s most obvious source in writing Coriolanus, while Racine relies on (as he explains in his preface) the Annals of Publius Cornelius Tacitus as the main historical source for writing Britannicus. The struggle or thirst for power is nothing new but one unique aspect in Coriolanus and Britannicus is that certain female characters are no less sly, avaricious, or immoral than their male counterparts. Volumnia in Coriolanus and Agrippine in Britannicus are such characters. This thesis aims to analyze their character in terms of their wickedness in designing for power.The Chapters below will show that Volumnia and Agrippine share a thirst for power and authority, driving them to take control of the situation they are in, and how these two characteristics help them become the complex protagonists they are: protective and loving mothers on one side and cunning and domineering on the other. This double personality they show makes them intriguing non-Manichean characters.The thesis consists of five chapters:Chapter1introduces how William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus and Jean Racine’s Britannicus deal respectively with the two power-driven mothers Volumnia and Agrippine.Chapters2,3and4will analyse both Volumnia and Agrippine’s thirst for power. Chapter2will shed light on where their ambitions for power and authority come from by analysing particular moments in each play where the two mothers show intentions in acquiring more power than they initially have. Freud’s Oedipus complex theory will help understanding Volumnia and Agrippine’s driving force, and I will explain how literary critics attribute the two matriarch’s thirst for power either to the Roman society or to psychoanalytical reasons.Chapter3discusses the two matriarchs’ tactics when designing for power. The previous chapter explains the reasons Volumnia and Agrippine are greedy for power, this one emphasises more on how they use their status as caring-mothers to scheme to accomplish their only true objective: acquiring more power.Chapter4focuses on the consequences of Volumnia and Agrippine’s designs for power and how they affect the plot and the major character as Caius Marcius Coriolanus, Britannicus, Nero and Junie. This chapter will show how the two matriarchs influence the development of the previously mentioned major protagonists.Chapter5concludes that Volumnia in Coriolanus and Agrippine in Britannicus are two matriarchs driven and motivated only by their thirst for power and plotting to quench this thirst no matter what the consequences are.