Coriolanus and the Perils of People Pleasing
Was Coriolanus a “people pleaser?” If you’ve read this one or seen it performed, your first answer might be to say, no. Not by a long shot.
Coriolanus, as the play of the same name begins, is a great warrior of Rome who, born Caius Martius, earns his resonant cognomen as a laurel for—as Shakespeare narrates the feat—single handedly defeating the city of Corioles as his cowardly troops go the other way. On returning to Rome, beyond his new name, he is honored with a nomination to the role of consul, a position of authority and prestige. A ceremonial obligation is put to him, the fulfillment of which will allow for his election and elevation: show us and the people your wounds, tell us what wonders you have done for us. This is his reply:
“… Your honors’ pardon;
I had rather have my wounds to heal again
Than hear say how I got them.” (II. ii., 67)
But this is unacceptable. He is urged by all around him to relent, to give the people what they require, and he in turn will receive their adulation and their votes. He refuses. He will not beg for their love and he will not show them his wounds. For this, beyond being denied the high station of consul, he is, at first, threatened with execution by being thrown off a precipitous rock, then, instead, he is banished from Rome, from whence he goes, leaving behind mother, wife, child, and country for the wilderness (briefly) as a kind of animal or dragon who will not play the games of politics.
Coriolanus chooses banishment to pandering and self-promotion, the desert to the sacrifice of his convictions. These are not the actions of a people pleaser, it would seem. But there are still two acts left to go.
Critics who admire the play as a great work of art and an eloquent testament to Shakespeare’s mastery of tragedy often say the protagonist is a kind of brute or child. He is a mighty fighter unschooled in the ways of peace; he does not have the maturity to live in a society with people who hold values that he finds wanting and ignoble. His ideals are pure and rigid. He cannot “make it work” or “get along” with others unless they see the world as he does. These phrases make it work, get along, people pleaser, are from our time, of course, and not Shakespeare’s (late 1500s, early 1600s), much less that of the historical Coriolanus (fifth century BCE), and yet they are timeless in their meaning and offer a useful way to look at this figure.
From where we consider these matters in the twenty-first century, we generally agree it’s no good to be a people pleaser. To be one means to have compromised integrity, to crave approval rather than to accept the call to struggle for self-affirmation and to find and hold firm to one’s own convictions. But, that said, we also acknowledge that to be human is to be imperfect. To be a person in the world is to sometimes seek the approval of others, to doubt one’s own convictions, and to crave affirmation from outside of oneself. A person must be flexible, right?
Coriolanus, toward the end of the play—now a general who leads against Rome the Volscians, those ones whose city he laid waste and from which he earned his name—is likened by Cominius, his former commander, to a divinity:
“If
He is their god; he leads them like a thing
Made by some other deity than Nature,
That shapes man better; and they follow him
Against us brats with no less confidence
Than boys pursuing summer butterflies,
Or butchers killing flies.” (IV. Vi., 90)
Army at his back, Rome trembles before him. The city is his for the taking, for the burning. Nothing stands in his way; not Cominius, who asks that he stand down; not Menenius, the father-figure in his life, to whom he will not even speak.
He only gives in when his mother, Volumnia, comes to him, along with Coriolanus’s wife and child, a potent trinity, who get down on their knees to beg for mercy, for his love and duty as son, husband, and father. And suddenly he doubts. He too is human, not a god. He cannot help but want to please his mother. And, for this, people pleaser at last, he pays the ultimate price—as the citizens of Corioles, re-awakened to their hatred of this ravager of their city, and the Volscian soldiers, denied their revenge upon Rome, see in him a weakened, compromised figure and put him to the sword.
Image credit: Volumnia Pleading with Coriolanus, by Richard Westall, Oil on Canvas, ca. 1800. Source: Folger Shakespeare Library; LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection. License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC By-SA 4.0)