Romeo And Juliet Women Analysis

Interpreting the role of women in Renaissance family and society through William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

Dreher points out that “studies of marriage and the family in Shakespeare have opened up a lively debate about Renaissance sex roles” (p.2). Gerlach, Almasy, and Daniel claim that “although Shakespeare reflects and at times supports the English Renaissance stereotypes of women and men and their various roles and responsibilities in society, he is also a writer who questions, challenges, and modifies those representations.”

Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet gives an insight into this patriarchal society dominated by men. It helps us understand how traditions, rank, and their fathers’ or husbands’ will affected women’s everyday life, their opportunities, as well as the decisions they had to make. On the other hand, the story of Juliet is also a great example to demonstrate the problems of this system along with the -often tragic- attempts to break out of it and make a change. “Juliet Dusinberre also maintained that Shakespeare’s women challenge traditional sex roles, that Shakespeare saw ‘men and women as equal in a world which declared them unequal’.” (Dreher, p. 2.)

“Women of Verona are considered to be a completely

She obviously plays a role and has two different lives. The name says it all, as we can read in this in probably the most famous passage in the play said by Juliet herself: “O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo? / Deny thy father and refuse thy name; / Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, / And I 'll no longer be a Capulet” (Act II, Scene II 33-36). There’s Juliet, who has her own wishes, dreams and feelings; and Miss Capulet, who has to live up to her family’s expectations and fulfil their goals by giving up all these in one person. The heroine knows she has to be both at the same time, and these contradictions tear her