Gender Roles In Romeo And Juliet

Romeo and Juliet Essay
Shakespeare’s eminent play, Romeo and Juliet is a classic love story. Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet are two young kids who fall in love. Their families have an on-going feud and cannot stand each other. The two star-crossed lovers rush to their marriage and end this family feud through an unexpected turn of events. Shakespeare writes this novel to criticize and exaggerate young love. In the novel, Romeo and Juliet, written by William Shakespeare, young love is made to seem impulsive through how rapidly the two characters manage to “fall in love”, the roles in which each gender takes, and the brevity of the play entirely. Romeo, one of the main characters in Romeo and Juliet, falls too hard and too fast for women. As the play opens, Romeo is infatuated with a girl named Rosaline. He believes that this infatuation is love. Romeo speaks in paradoxes showing how love can be both, bad and good, harmful or helpful. Rosaline is a girl who is becoming a nun, which restricts him from being able to marry her. Having trouble accepting
this, Romeo is caught in his dark room, crying about Rosaline and does not come out. His dear friend Benvolio, suggests to crash the Capulet’s party to help Romeo realize that Rosaline is not the most perfect and most beautiful girl as he thinks she is. Romeo agrees to going to the ball when he hears his beloved Rosaline will be there. When Benvolio, Marcutio and Romeo arrive at the party, Romeo spots Juliet. He immediately “falls in love.” He approaches her and they kiss. This is a very famous scene called “The Palmers Kiss Scene.” When Romeo tells his confidant, Friar Lawrence, about his new found love for Juliet, Friar Lawrence immediately suggests that Romeo doesn’t understand what love actually is. Friar Lawrence, in response to Romeo defending himself about his love for Rosaline, says, “For doting, not for loving, pupil mine” (2.3.87). Friar Lawrence symbolizes that Romeo wasn’t in love, but he was obsessing, This indicates Shakespeare making a comment on young love and how it is premature. When, Shakespeare shows Romeo falling out of love with Rosaline so quickly, this hints to us his opinion on untimely love. The roles of the genders are reversed throughout Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
Juliet is more of a realist throughout the play. Juliet is head strong and is not afraid to voice her opinion which is not common for an Elizabethan woman of that time. This is very prevalent by the fact that she is fourteen and is still not married, which is unusual for a woman of her time. Romeo is not a stereotypical Elizabethan man. Romeo’s effeminate behavior display’s Shakespeare’s opinion about young love being unripe. Shakespeare states his opinion through Marcutio, “Why, is not this better now than groaning for love? Now art thou sociable. Now art thou Romeo. Now art thou what thou art—by art as well as by nature, for this driveling love is like a great natural that runs lolling up and down to hide his bauble in a hole” (2.4.90-95). Marcutio talks about Romeo being weak. Showing that he falls too hard as if he is a
girl. Romeo and Juliet takes place over a five-day period. Shakespeare uses the length of the play to denounce young love. The young lovers meet Sunday evening and are married Monday afternoon. Shakespeare makes the point that this young love isn’t love but attraction. While the play was concise and may seem romantic, Shakespeare proves how young love will end in tragedy. They were married for three days and killed themselves because of each other. As Fransons writes in "Too soon marr'd": Juliet's Age as Symbol in Romeo and Juliet,” “Through a counting of letters, words, lines, stage entrances, and hours, be transforms her age into a force that drives the play to its catastrophe. Attention to her premature introduction to adulthood, in turn, shifts much of the blame for the disaster to the Capulets, Paris, the Nurse, the Friar, adults who pressure and manipulate Juliet into marriage while she is still a child. The care with which Shakespeare Romeo, being the hopeless romantic, takes more of the female role than Juliet” (Franson 258). This proves that Juliet in all, is too young to get married and is not yet mature. It is the reason for such tragic endings. Romeo finds Juliet “dead” in a casket and takes his life by drinking poison as he says, “Here’s to my love! (drinks the poison) O true apothecary,/Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die” (5.3.119-120). In this quote Shakespeare makes a comment not only about this unrequited love, but about Romeo being more feminine than Juliet. While Romeo drinks poison to kill himself, when Juliet wakes up and finds Romeo dead she kills herself with the sword in Romeos belt. Young love is unreciprocated and damaging. William Shakespeare writes the novel, Romeo and Juliet as a symbol to display that young love is meaningless and harmful which is shown by the speedy change in heart of Romeo, the characteristic of each character compared to their gender and how fast the play takes place. Romeo is a romantic man who doesn’t understand the difference between love and attraction. Juliet is not a typical woman of her time shown by her voice of opinion and her fearlessness. The length of the play exaggerates young love and how it is pushed to extremes. Young love in some aspects can be good but in Shakespeare’s point of view it is merely a joke.