The Role Of Parents And Children In Relation To The Revenge Plot In Titus Andronicus
The term revenge is defined as the action of hurting or harming someone in return for an injury or wrong suffered at their hands. In William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, many acts of revenge take place – in particular, revenge between families. One may assume that a parents’ main priority is to look after their children, this is certainly not the case in Titus Andronicus, as the parents put themselves before their beloved children. An example of this is when Tamora and Titus become so caught up in their vengeance, that they use their children to their advantage and also have each other’s child either abused or killed as an act of revenge. To an extent, Tamora and Titus’ children become their very own soldiers; whom are used in order for Tamora and Titus to achieve their goals. At the very beginning of the play, Titus is shown to have lost all of his sons who fought and died in the ten-year battle against the Goths. A symbolic battlefield is presented at the very beginning of the play, one that becomes incredibly bloody indeed. By comparison and unforeseen to the reader, the evil moor Aaron appears to be the most selfless parent of the three.
When the audience encounters Tamora for the very first time, there are no signs of brutality in her actions or her words. The audience, instead, are presented with a desperate mother, pleading for her son’s life; to quote: “And if thy sons were ever dear to thee, O think my son to be as dear to me”. Tamora believes that by mentioning Titus’ sons that he will feel remorse and empathise with her, she is incorrect, instead, this fuels Titus’ revenge, uncompassionate, he has her son killed before her very eyes. In Titus Andronicus, the protagonists are “driven to madness by the experience of grief” (Dillon Chapter on Titus Andronicus) – the closeness between the family members and their love for one another is portrayed. Due to both Tamora and Titus’ actions, their revenge is fuelled and subsequently their actions spiral out of control. Furthermore, on the Royal Shakespeare Company website, in the Synopsis video, Nia Gwynne (Tamora, Queen of the Goths) and Hannah Morrish (Lavinia, Titus’ daughter) summarise the plot of the play. They also speak about “Titus vowing to take revenge” and that “Tamora presents herself as the embodiment of revenge to Titus and tells him that she will help him revenge all his foes if he can get Lucius to call of his invasion” (against the Emperor and the Emperor’s).
With that being said, and craving revenge on Titus, Tamora becomes a tyrant. When Titus’ daughter, Lavinia, pleads Tamora for mercy, she too like Titus, is cold-hearted and unsympathetic and so ignores Lavinia’s pleas. Tamora explains that; “hadst thou in person ne’er offended me, even for his sake am I pitiless.” Due to Titus being persistent, Tamora cannot spare his daughter, nevertheless, Lavinia herself is not to blame. In the Shakespeare Quarterly journal article it expresses that; “Lavinia’s insulting treatment of Tamora in Act 2 and her active participation in her family’s revenge plot in Acts 3 through 5 are either ignored or viewed as imposed on her”. To an extent, Lavinia’s actions are seen to be fuel Tamora’s revenge.
Besides, Tamora misleads Chiron and Demetrius by saying that Lavinia and Bassanius, Lavinia’s husband, were harassing her and thus she orders them to “revenge it as you love your mother’s life, or be you not henceforth called my children”. She also states that; “Your mother’s hand shall right your Mothers wrong”. Here, Tamora is seen to play with her son’s love to her own advantage and she even goes to the extent of claiming that they are obligated to do what she wishes if they still want to be “called her children”. She manipulates her children as an act of revenge. As a result, her children kill Bassianus to highlight their loyalty to their mother. They then proceed to carry Lavinia off to “satisfy their lust”. However, in the journal article entitled: Lavinia as Coauthor of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus on pages 282-283, it states that “Lavinia’s survival of rape is integral to her emergence as a coauthor.” And that “When the rape forcibly removed her from the narrative of personal and Roman purity, the play uses her to necessitate recognition of its many other narratives.” Although Lavinia is mutilated in such a terrible way and unable to tell anyone who perpetrated this crime due to having her tongue cut out – shown in the stage directions: “Enter DEMETRIUS and CHIRON with LAVINIA, ravished; her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out”, she is an ironic mouthpiece for all women, in that, in spite of the fact that women had no power, she embodies all women with the sense of being stripped of their femininity and rights as a woman.
Titus, by comparison to Tamora, also appears to care for his children to some extent. An example being, when Marcus presents the molested and handless Lavinia to him. Titus here appears very upset and states that he will “chop off his hands too”, as they are of no use to him since his prayers did not prevent the violent assault on his daughter. Later on, in the play, Titus does in-fact cut off his own hand, however, it is not for his daughter but for his sons, in order to have them released – Shakespeare highlights Titus’ family honour and a sense of his compassion towards his beloved children. To quote from the Shakespeare Quarterly journal article, it states that: “Early Modern dramatists considered revenge from multiple viewpoints and examined it in the context of changing notions of honour and shame. They wrestled in sophisticated ways with the unstable relation of revenge to justice and repeatedly asked what the “private man” should do in response to a wrong when the Gods are silent and the state too weak or corrupt to bring about just solutions.” From this quotation, it is evident that Titus is the “private man” and that due to his prayers not being answered in relation to his children’s safety, he is left to cut of his own hand as an act of succumbing to insanity and helplessness. Nevertheless, Titus’ son’s delivered heads and Lavinia’s violent assault gives him more than one reason to avenge Tamora. Titus exclaims that his son’s heads are symbolic and so he pronounces that he “shall never come to bliss, till all these mischiefs be returned again.” (Dramatic work from the text of Johnson and Stevens) in other words, he will not repose until he has truly taken revenge against Tamora.
Despite the fact that Titus uses his children as a justification of disposing of Tamora and her family, he himself, arranges everything, including the execution of the act. Titus kills Demetrius and Chiron and cooks their remains in a pie. “The play as a whole is taken to be structured around the spectacular display of the female body, written on by violence, while violence against the male body is ignored”. One would assume that the body remains being cooked in a pie would be just as significant as Lavinia’s rape, yet this is somewhat overshadowed by the treatment of Lavinia, a female. Titus, unlike Tamora, does not involve his children in his vengeance. Yet, he instead, justifies his acts with religion and sees that what he is doing is better for his family and their reputation. Consequently, his original outlook appears more important to him than his children – he, in other words, is overridden with his sense of revenge and thus chooses to kill Lavinia because “with thy shame thy father’s sorrow die”. In Titus’ eyes, he believes that if Lavinia is dead, she can no longer be a burden/embarrassment to their family, and as a result, his pain will vanish. This is backed up by a quote that comes from the Shakespeare Quarterly journal article ; “Titus and the other male members of his family are represented as ducing Lavinia to an object, silencing her, or subjecting her to a patriarchal script.” This is backed up further by Critic Cornelius A Lapide, who in 1638 stated that “women are excellent ornaments of men”. Shakespeare presents Titus as a selfish and crude man, who only thinks of himself, and in the end, does not place his own children as his main priority. One could liken Titus to that of the character of Ebenezer Scrooge, from Charles Dickens’ novella A Christmas Carol, in that he too was a selfish, miserly and unpleasant man. To quote, Scrooge says; “If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
In Titus Andronicus, neither Titus or Tamora could be considered ‘good parents’ since they let their revenge and madness overcome them and as a result, their own needs become more significant than their own children. An Irish University Review backs up my previous point in that; “In a gruesome final scene which leads to the deaths of virtually all the major characters, ‘mad’ Titus invites Tamora and Saturnine to a feast. Having first ritually slaughtered Lavinia because she has been dishonoured, he then reveals that the pie which Tamora has been feasting on contains the remains of her own sons. Titus has his revenge but in doing so he has merely continued the cycle of violent retribution that he himself initiated. Moreover, in the process, he has destroyed the ones that he loves most dearly.” By comparison, with regard to Aaron, he appears to be the only one who, does in-fact, put his son before him. In Titus Andronicus, Aaron states that “this before all the world do I prefer; this maugre all the world will I keep safe”. Aaron’s son is his main priority, unlike Titus’ children. Aaron vows to keep safe and he forces Lucius to swear that he will “save boy, to nourish and bring him up”. Howbeit, Aaron was the organiser behind the evil acts of the Goths, and he dies at the end, similarly to Titus and Tamora, his son lives on because of his untainted and unselfish love. In chapter 12 of The Politics of Mobility: Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Jan Vos’s Aran en Titus and the Poetics of Empire it conveys that “Lucius’s succession at the end of the play seems to herald a new era of imperial justice, peace and prosperity”. Thus, backing up the point in that Aaron’s son is the only character free from evil and corruption.
