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At the heart of the new slave family is Spartacus’ beloved Varinia, the
fictitious character from the novel, played by incandescent British actress
Jean Simmons, who starred as Ophelia in Olivier’s celebrated Hamlet, for
which she earned an Oscar nomination, and as Diana in The Robe (1953).
When Varinia’s refined bearing piques the interest of Crassus, she describes
herself to him as a slave from Britannia, educated for her first
master’s children. At the ludus, Varinia has special status as a household
slave in whom Batiatus has invested a great deal of money; even so, Batiatus
sends her to service the gladiators sexually, though she is reserved as a
prize allotment because of her beauty and quality. Thus when Varinia first
meets Spartacus in his cell, her sexuality is associated with her slave duties,
and though she is intrigued by his gentleness, she sullenly reminds him
she is not an animal either. In the epic film context, she is “unconventionally
experienced in sexual matters and equal to the hero in her desire for
liberty” (Wyke, 70). In their reunion scene after the escape from Capua,
Varinia and Spartacus joyously assert their freedom from slavery: “Nobody
can make you stay with anybody,” they repeat after each other. Yet
her declaration of love for him reveals another hierarchy between them
and elicits a new form of bondage. “Forbid me ever to leave you,” she
commands him, and he obeys: “I do forbid you.” As the “wife” of Spartacus,
she yields to him and willingly reserves her sexual expression solely for
him, thereby maintaining the traditional structure of gender relations
(Futrell, 2001, 103–4). Yet Varinia remains above Spartacus in terms of
her intelligence and experience, so when Spartacus laments his ignorance
about the world, it is Varinia who shares her knowledge with him.
Varinia’s sexuality continues to be a dynamic part of her characterization
throughout the film, and located as part of the natural world, as in
the scene in the forest pool where she actively entices her husband with a
display of rounded breasts in the transparent water. Before an intense kiss,
Spartacus draws a fern leaf suggestively through Varinia’s mouth. In their
scenes together, Varinia wears dresses in skin-tone shades of rosy beige
and apricot, highlighting her nude flesh as a “natural” woman. Just as
Spartacus is the father of the rebel movement, Varinia is their symbolic
mother; as a child grows in Varinia’s womb, the swelling ranks of the slave
family continue to expand (Futrell, 2001, 107). Later in the film, as she lies
on the battlefield and is discovered by Crassus, with her sunken eyes and
bedraggled hair revealing a touch of un-epic visual realism, Varinia’s rustred
cloak signals her wounded state, indicating both the blood of her new
maternity and the violent loss of Spartacus. Seized by Crassus and taken to
the unnatural milieu of his Roman villa, Varinia expresses her power over
110 SPARTACUS (1960)