In Shakespeare’s play Juliet is only 13, an age that is regarded to be adolescence by the characters in the play, the audiences at the time and at present, she is at an age between immaturity and maturity, childhood and adulthood. At the beginning of the play she seems merely a child; obedient and naïve, a typical “Lady Capulet” who everyone expects her to be. Juliet is not interested in marriage, although many girls her age are married, and has no experiences of falling in love. When mentions ’s interest in marrying Juliet, she dutifully responds that she will try to see if she can love him. “I’ll look to like, if looking liking move, /But no more deep will I endart mine eye, /Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.” (Act 1, Scene 3).
Although the above quotation can also suggest her Juliet’s determination and offers the audience an idea of the woman she will become during the 4 intensive and chaotic days of Romeo and Juliet. In her speech Juliet agrees to try to love Paris, but only to consider Paris as a possible husband to the degree her mother desires. This can also be read as a passive refusal, as the rules of the society made sure that Juliet can not directly disobey her mother.
However it is the first meeting with Romeo that transformed Juliet into an adult almost instantly, after Romeo is banished for killing Tybalt, Juliet does not follow him blindly, because she understands her responsibilities as a daughter and the expectations of social, which is very different from today. However in Act 3, Scene 5 she finally makes a logical and heartfelt decision that her loyalty and love for Romeo must be her guiding priorities, and that she can not unite with him unless she separates from her social moorings- her nurse and her parents, and loses her social status.
Juliet’s cleverness is displayed through the conversation with her mother, who fails to recognise the ambiguity in Juliet’s language and mistaken her disguised claims of love to Romeo for the grief over Tybalt’s death. “Feeling so the loss, /I cannot choose but ever weep the friend.”(Act 3, Scene 5). Furthermore, Juliet’s decision to disconnect from her Nurse, the friend and counsellor she felt the closest to, and to exclude her from her future plans due to her betrayal is another sign of her maturing. Juliet’s nurse symbolises her childhood, her inability to be independent; by abandoning her nurse Juliet steps fully out of girlhood and into womanhood.
Juliet feels so strong that she defies her father, but while she may have power over her nurse, who is a servant and therefore below her in status, she realised that the limit of her powers can only go that far. Lord Capulet, as the patriarch of the family, although loves his daughter dearly, is not well acquainted with Juliet’s thoughts or feelings, he believes Paris to be a good match for her and therefore expects Juliet to be obedient and respectful to his choice. “I think she will be ruled in all respects by me; nay more, I doubt it not!”
When Lord Capulet first enters the scene he appears to be a kind and generous father who questions humorously why Juliet is crying. “How now a conduit girl, what still in tears/ Evermore showering in one little body?” But when the news of Juliet’s refusal to marry Paris is broke to him by Lady Capulet, he instantly becomes extremely angry and starts to throw various insults at Juliet, “Out you green-sickness carrion, out you baggage, /You tallow-face.”, both out of frustration (as he has promised Paris that Juliet will not disagree) and also in an attempt to frighten Juliet into accepting the marriage.
Although now a women, Juliet is still in a male-dominated world. Modern day audiences would expect her to take her father’s offer to disown her and go to Romeo in Mantua to live happily ever after, but that is simply impossible at the time. Juliet being a woman cannot leave society, and her father has the right to make her whatever he wishes. At the time the play was set, the idea that marriage should be based on the free choice of loving partners was seen as “politically incorrect”. As Lawrence Stone, an historian and sociologist said, “To an Elizabethan audience the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet…lay not so much in their ill-starred romance as in a way they brought destruction upon themselves by violating the norms of the society in which they lived.”
The encounter allowed Juliet recognizes the limits of her power and is determines to use it if there is no other way. For even the woman with the lowest status at the time, she has the ability to live or not live her life, and that is Juliet’s last option. Juliet’s development from a wide-eyed girl into a self-assured, loyal, and capable woman is one of Shakespeare’s early triumphs of characterization. It also marks one of his most confident and rounded treatments of a female character.
Romeo and Juliet is a richly paradoxical play, full of deliberate contrasts; In Act 3, Scene 5, Romeo and Juliet both use a range of imageries to show the contrasts between light and dark in terms of night/day. “It was the nightingale, and not the lark” Here Juliet, not wanting Romeo to leave for Mantua in the morning, is attempting to change the world through language: she claims the lark is truly a nightingale. However, they cannot change time and by using the nightingale and the lark, both birds and therefore symbols of nature, it suggests that their love for each other is disapproved even by nature. The dialogue between the two lovers ends with a rhyming couplet, “O now be gone! More light and light it grows. /More light and light, more dark and dark our woes.” The fact that this is completed by the two of them symbolises their unity and emphasis upon that they have both made contributions to create this final tragedy.
As Romeo bids farewell to Juliet from the bottom of the balcony, Juliet experiences a vision that foreshadows the outcome of the play; as she looks out of her window she seems to see him dead already: “O God, I have an ill-divining soul! / Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low, / As one dead in the bottom of a tomb. / Either my eyesight fails, or thou look’st pale” Indeed, this their last moment to see each other alive. When Romeo next sees Juliet he will think she is dead, and when Juliet next sees Romeo he will be dead.
This is only one of the many prophetic images used by Shakespeare in this play. In the same scene Lady Capulet comments about Juliet's refusal to marry Paris: "I would the fool were married to her grave". This is highly ironic as the phrase does come true soon after, when Juliet dies still married to Romeo.
All the foreshadowing adds up to the idea of the inevitability of fate. This is first introduced to the audience by the Chorus in the Prologue which states that Romeo and Juliet are “star-crossed lovers”, saying that their fate is written in the stars. This sense of fate is felt not only by the audience, but the characters themselves also: Romeo and Juliet constantly see omens. In Act 3, Scene 5 Juliet asks “Is there no pity in the clouds” after her dialogue with Lord Capulet, suggesting that heaven is opposing their love. This is also evident in the events happening around the lover; for example, the feud between their families and the tragic timing of Romeo’s suicide and Juliet’s awakening. These events are not mere coincidences, but rather manifestations of fate that help bring about the unavoidable outcome of the young lovers’ deaths.
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet affects the audience with the use of oxymorons (the parallel positioning of light and dark), paradoxes (in its view of love, a ennobling experience or simply lust?), and double entendres. The intense pace of its action, which is compressed from nine months into four days, adds to the tension of the play, provides a powerful enrichment to the story’s thematic aspects.
The play represents a pradox in its views of love(asking ‘is love a supremely ennobling experience or merely a mystification of lust?
One of the most powerful aspects of Romeo and Juliet is the language. The characters curse, vow oaths, banish each other, and generally play with the language through overuse of action verbs. In addition, the play is saturated Even the use of names is called into question, with Juliet asking what is in the name Romeo that denies her the right to love him.
