Romeo and Juliet Part 3: I Blame The Patriarchy

As we all know, the play ends with a double suicide. Romeo's motivation is difficult to pin down without resorting to fictional constructs like "true love" and "soulmates." I have developed, as an actor, a different understanding of his death, one that I will perhaps discuss later-- but it is as yet incomplete, and not strongly supported by the text.

Juliet's suicide is more readily understandable: she has been killed by the patriarchy.

Juliet's stated reason for suicide is simple grief at her husband's death. This is undoubtedly a factor, and the most visible one. But it is worth examining, I think, why Romeo's death should be so great a blow as to be literally life-ending. Romeo is, after all, a man she has known for less than a week. From where, then, comes the wild intensity of love and sorrow that drives the play?

In my experience, love tends to arise from familiarity--the longer you're around someone, the more you develop understanding, trust, attachment, affection. The more one has come to rely on someone, the more it hurts to lose them. It does not seem to me that Juliet has had time to really know Romeo as a person--everything about their relationship is overly hasty. The intensity of Juliet's grief over a man who is, by all rights, little more than an acquaintance is troubling: how did they become so codependent so quickly? At a shallow reading, she has lost little--Romeo's death simply puts her back where she started.

The answer is that the young lovers do not see each other simply as other human beings. They see each other as symbols, as living representations of their most heartfelt desires. What Juliet sees in Romeo is escape.

It may be true that Romeo's death only puts Juliet back where she started, but it seems that is a fate literally worse than death. Her mother is cold and distant, displaying no emotions but vengeful cruelty. Her father is affectionate but selfish and prone to fits of rage. Her life with her family is degrading and infantilizing. Worse, her sources of support-- Tybalt, whom she admires, and the Nurse, whom she trusts, are also lost to her through the action of the play.

It is scarcely surprising that when she awakes in the tomb, she chooses death rather than rescue.

Of course, her father is not the only man to blame for Juliet's condition. Paris is equally to blame, though he cleaves close to social convention. He is Juliet's other husband, and stands in stark contrast to Romeo. While Romeo's interactions with Juliet are sometimes problematic, he at least recognizes her right to choose her husband. He approaches her, while Paris approaches her father, seeking to buy Juliet like any other object. Paris is neither especially cruel nor immoral, merely blind to the suffering his careless actions cause in women, society's underclass.

A third man fails her too, though still more well-meaning. Friar Lawrence agrees to marry her not because he approves of her choices but because he can exploit her for political gain--admittedly in the service of a good cause. Still, his reluctance to jeopardize his own position compels him to keep Juliet's marriage secret for too long, ultimately sacrificing her life for his own sake. Even at the end, when he tries one last time to avert her death, he can only offer her retreat into a nunnery--hardly victory over patriarchy.

These three are the proximate cause of Juliet's death, and Shakespeare pulls no punches in the final scene. But every man in Verona plays his part in dooming the lovers, as will be discussed in part four.

Romeo and Juliet 2: Female Agency

Thus far I've been talking about Romeo, but of course the title of the play is Romeo and Juliet, so it's time to introduce the leading lady.

Fortunately, Juliet is a heroine modern feminists can be proud of.

In setting up the title characters' relationship, Shakespeare pulls something of a bait and switch. They first meet at the masked ball in 1.5 -- an exchange which is ludicrously overgendered.

ROMEO
[To JULIET] If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
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Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
ROMEO
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
JULIET
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
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ROMEO
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
ROMEO
Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.
Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.
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JULIET
Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
ROMEO
Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.
JULIET
You kiss by the book.

This exchange casts Juliet firmly in the feminine-passive role, and it seems we are in for a straightforward courtly romance.

Not at all! Consider their next meeting, in scene 2.2

This is the infamous balcony scene. romeo overhears Juliet speaking of him from her balcony. He comes out to greet her, and, after a brief confirmation of their identities and their mutual attraction, they get down to business. Juliet says this:


JULIET
[...]O gentle Romeo,
If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully:
Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won,
I'll frown and be perverse an say thee nay,
So thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world.
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In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,
And therefore thou mayst think my 'havior light:
But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true
Than those that have more cunning to be strange.
I should have been more strange, I must confess,
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But that thou overheard'st, ere I was ware,
My true love's passion: therefore pardon me,
And not impute this yielding to light love,
Which the dark night hath so discovered.

In short, Juliet has figured out that traditional courtship and passivity give women a raw deal. She's not ashamed to have expressed her desires, though she knows some may find it improper. This is very significant, since, as I will argue later, the central struggle in this play is the efforts by both Romeo and Juliet to cats off societal expectations. Just as romeo is told true manhood requires violence, Juliet has apparently been taught that true womanhood demands passivity. Like romeo, Juliet wants to escape the role she has been assigned.

Juliet continues to surprise and gratify the feminist reader throughout the play. A few lines later, she gives an excellent example of negotiation and boundary-setting:

JULIET
Well, do not swear: although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract to-night:
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say 'It lightens.' Sweet, good night!
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This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.
Good night, good night! as sweet repose and rest
Come to thy heart as that within my breast!

In scene 3.2 she expresses explicitly sexual desire, a rarity among Shakespeare's heroines. She also chooses her loyalties (it's a rare Shakespearean heroine who truly rejects parental authority. they may temporarily be at odds with parents, but in the end, the father almost always approves of the husband.) In act 4, she actively seeks out the Friar's help. And, of course, at the end, it is she who chooses to die.

Her decisions aren't numerous, nor are they especially effectual-- she doesn't get what she wants or, ultimately, have much control over her fate. But she tries to live her own life, and tries pretty admirably, too. She is a clear victim of the patriarchy, spending the last half of the play being bought sold, and fought for by a group of powerful men-- a fate she eventually decides is literally worse than death.

The specific blend of patriarchal forces that drives her to suicide will be the subject of part three.

Romeo and Juliet 1: The Virgin-Whore Dichotomy

I've decided that my feelings about Romeo and Juliet are complex enough to merit a couple of posts worth of exploration.

Romeo and Juliet 1: Virgins and Whores

The early parts of Romeo and Juliet establish a strong virgin-whore dichotomy in the culture of Verona.

The show opens with a display of ugly misogyny.

SAMPSON
True; and therefore women, being the weaker vessels,are ever thrust to the wall: therefore I will pushMontague's men from the wall, and thrust his maidsto the wall.
GREGORY
The quarrel is between our masters and us their men.
SAMPSON
'Tis all one, I will show myself a tyrant: when Ihave fought with the men, I will be cruel with themaids, and cut off their heads.
GREGORY
The heads of the maids?
SAMPSON
Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads;take it in what sense thou wilt.

The servants of Lord Capulet view (their enemies’) women as no more than sexual objects. This objectification of women is immediately linked to the cultural demands of masculinity—this conversation is interrupted by the appearance of Montague servants, leading to a violent brawl. This straightforward objectification is echoed later by Mercutio.

Romeo, meanwhile, also begins the play unable to see women as people. He has rejected the bawdy acquisitiveness of the other men of Verona but replaced with romantic idealization. At the beginning of the play, he is pining away for "Rosaline" a young woman he scarcely knows. He is explicitly compared to the poet Petrarch. Like any "Nice Guy" he's more interested in writing poems and speeches as exercises of his own romantic prowess than actually getting to know her, and seems rather miffed at the thought that she makes her own life decisions.

Itwould be a mistake to think Shakespeare encourages these misogynist attitudes. Friar Lawrence calls Romeo out for his misogyny at his first appearance, but it's the other title character, Juliet, who really drives home the fact that women are people in their own right.

Stay tuned for part 2: Female Agency

Good Things, Part 1

I am overwhelmed, sometimes, by the amount of misfortune in the world. To be a feminist and follow current events is often acutely painful. But there is also good in the world, and feminists have come a long way. So I've decided to try, about once a week, to remember something I came across that made me smile-- something gender-related, of course.

I'll start with Romeo and Juliet.

I've been with a theater company that does Shakespeare for four years now, and in that time I've been exposed to a lot of his plays. Many of them are truly problematic from a feminist standpoint. Thus, I was quite pleased to learn that Romeo and Juliet was the play we would do this year.

Since I've been looking for good cultural reference points to introduce my friends to feminism, I was overjoyed. The more I look at the play, the more I like it. Some highlights:

-- the destructiveness of the feud illustrates the damage done by male gender roles
-- The interactions between Romeo, and Mercutio illustrate homosociality
-- Juliet makes her own decisions, and even possesses explicitly sexual desires
-- the abusive, controlling father is revealed for what he is-- abusive and controlling
-- Romeo's downfall is caused by his murder of Tybalt -- motivated explicitly by a desire to conform to masculinity

I'm sure everyone here knows this already; I know there is a substantial body of gender-based Shakespeare scholarship. But I've got to post something, and this makes me smile.

Now I should go finish learning my lines...