What Does Lavinia Want? (Sample Blog Post)
It is remarkable that although Lavinia is at the center of the action in act 1 of Titus Adronicus, she has only two speeches in the entire act, one starting at 1.1.157, and the other at 1.1.272. In all, she gets 10 lines of speech. That Lavinia says so little is one reason we also don’t have a good idea of what Lavinia wants in all this act. For example, when Saturninus proclaims he will marry Lavinia–“Lavinia I will make my empress” (1.1.241)–it is Titus who replies to Saturninus, not Lavinia.
Her next reply, and the last speech she has in the act, comes when Saturninus then seems to change his mind, and implies that he wants to marry Tamora, whom he assures, “Madam, he comforts us / Can make you greater than the Queen of Goths.” How will Saturninus make Tamora even greater than queen of the Goths? He has already told the audience in an aside that he’d rather marry Tamora than Lavinia (1.1.261-262), but even though Lavinia has not heard this aside, she must wonder if Saturninus means that he wants to make Tamora empress of Rome, which would indeed make her greater “than the Queen of Goths.” Or perhaps she understands him to mean that he’s just going to treat her very well, somehow, short of marrying her. She might still wonder why Saturninus is being so nice to the enemy of her father and of Rome. But rather than protesting, when Saturninus asks, “Lavinia, are you not displeased with this?” (that is, Saturninus’s kind treatment of Tamora), Lavinia seems to answer in a friendly way: “Not I my lord, sith true nobility” / Warrants these words in princely courtesy” (1.1.272-73).
Does Lavinia put up with first her father’s offering of her to Saturninus and then with Saturninus’s possible flirtation with Tamora because she’s very obedient to the men in her life? Or is she smarter than that, and is just waiting for her moment to flee with Bassanius? When Saturninus flirts with Tamora, is it even better for her, since she anticipates she won’t have to marry Saturninus, and so answers him politely? But then why doesn’t Lavinia say anything when Bassanius or her brothers claim she’s already in love with and betroathed to Bassanius? Relatedly, what would we imagine her doing when her brothers try to protect her from Titus and Saturninus? And, most of all, why is it so hard to figure out what Lavinia wants?