Selfish Motives

Volumnia is attempting to educate her daughter-in-law in the ways of the world. She seems to be spurning the emotional attachment that Virgilia has to Martius. Virgilia doesn’t want her husband’s blood to be shed and Volumnia has taken it upon herself to show Virgilia that this would be an honor. I wonder at her motives. I agree with Anna’s idea that women in the Renaissance had the ability to mold their husbands/sons to fit into greater positions. I just don’t see a woman manipulating lives and futures as any less self-serving than men exchanging women to better than own positions. Though it was an opportunity for women to have some agency in their lives, I don’t see it as much of a positive, I guess. Selfishness is selfishness, coming from a man or a woman. Volumnia is perfectly willing to sacrifice her son’s life as long as he can “die nobly for his country” because his death would then benefit her. That doesn’t seem to be any better than a man giving his daughter in marriage to secure political or financial superiority without any thought to the type of husband her betrothed will make.