Friday 29 January 2016

In Romeo and Juliet, how does Juliet feel about love?

Juliet is very young, barely a teenager, and has no experience of love before she meets Romeo. Yet the character's speech demonstrates that she is an intelligent and sensitive young woman with a rather mature take on love and romance. After falling in love with Romeo after meeting him at the dance, she stares out her bedroom window and speaks aloud of her love for him, not realizing that he can hear her. She complains about his name, because the feud between their families, the Capulets and the Montagues, means they cannot be together. She tries to think of ways to solve this problem. "Deny thy father, and refuse they name. Or if thou wilt not, then be but sworn my love and I'll no longer be a Capulet!"

She means that if they marry, her name will be the same as his and perhaps this will negate the feud. She appears to be displaying the impetuous and idealistic temperament of a young girl in love: first, by fantasizing about marrying a boy she has just met, and send, by assuming that the feud between two two clans could be erased by something so simple as changing her last name.


But once she realizes Romeo is there, she immediately warns him of the danger: "the orchard walls are high and hard to climb, and the place death, considering who thou art, if any of my kinsmen find thee here." She is both embarrassed that he overheard her, but also concerned for his well being. Her nurse calls her inside repeatedly, and she worries she will be found out. She is torn between her duty to her family and her newfound love, which inspires her to be impulsive. She is ready to submit to Romeo utterly and offers to marry him and go wherever he wants. "All my fortunes at thy foot I'll lay, and follow thee my lord throughout the world." For Juliet, love is all-consuming and infinite.


As the play goes on, Juliet's view of love is portrayed as wise beyond her years, and even grandiose at times, as when she speaks of Romeo while she waits for him, saying "Give me my Romeo, and, when he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars; and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night, and pay no worship to the garish sun." These words play on the "star-cross'd lovers" theme of the play, the notion that fate has destined them to be together, in this world and into eternity. Juliet believes she is destined to be with Romeo forever.

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