In this essay I shall be discussing and analysing how Shakespeare and Austen present Juliet and Elizabeth’s views on romantic relationships. Shakespeare was a playwright who lived and wrote his plays in the 16th century whereas Austen wrote only novels and lived in the 19th century. I think that the times that they lived was a contributing factor to how their views on romantic relationships were portrayed as the times that they lived in influenced their characters, plots and style of writing. The characters that I shall be focussing on in this essay shall be Juliet from Shakespeare’s classic love story’ Romeo and Juliet’ as well as Elizabeth who is a character from Austen’s well-loved novel, Pride and Prejudice. Juliet is a quiet, well-mannered girl to begin with but she then meets her beloved Romeo and everything changes. At the mere age of 14 she makes choices that will affect her life forever, but no necessarily for the better. On the contrary, Elizabeth Bennett is considerably older, at about the age of 20. She is feisty and not afraid to speak her mind however, she is challenged when Mr Darcy comes to the town. I am going to try to show exactly how Austen and Shakespeare portray Elizabeth and Juliet’s views on Romantic Relationships.
Firstly, I shall compare Romeo and Juliet’s first meeting with Lizzie and Darcy’s first meeting. In Romeo and Juliet, we have only been introduced to the characters that same morning and by the evening they are hopelessly in love with each other. In their first moment to together Romeo questions that there is ‘sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my kiss again.’ The word ‘sweetly; suggests to the reader that Romeo thinks that Juliet is sweet and that she is the most beautiful thing that he has ever seen. Shakespeare also uses the technique of foreshadowing in this scene because they are so hopelessly in love,