In the play, "The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet", it's outcome is the death of two lovers. What saddened me the most about this play is that Juliet's own father, Lord Capulet, seems to only care about her "marriage" with County Paris rather than Juliet. This represents one of the major themes, 'Family Relationships', which has appeared several times throughout the play. Another theme that also appears is, 'Social Reputation', which is another major theme. 'Love' also appears as well and relates to the theme, 'Social Reputation'. Lord Capulet seems to only show interest in his family's reputation rather than Juliet. Lord Capulet's desire for a good family reputation had overcome his love for his very own daughter, Juliet, resulting in bad parenting which had indirectly caused her death.
'Family Relationships' takes a major role throughout the play. Looking at several scenes, Lord Capulet and Lady Capulet don't present themselves to be the best of parents. This shown through their actions, and how they react towards Juliet's actions. They basically forced her into marriage, but tried to assure her in a nice way by saying lines such as, "Well think of marriage now. Younger than you. Here in Verona, ladies of esteem, Are made already mothers. By my count I was your mother much upon these years"(1.3.75-78). Lady Capulet was literally 'forcing' Juliet into marriage by saying that she got married at a young age. She's basically hinting that Juliet should follow her footsteps, which isn't at all exceptional or gratifying.
'Social Reputation' and 'Love' takes a major role as a theme pair throughout the whole play. Juliet's love for Romeo may or may have not been real but Lord Capulet still took no concern to that and he wouldn't have been content about the idea either. Lord Capulet didn't really care whether or not Juliet "loved" County Paris or not, he was going to force her into marriage if he had to. Only for the 'joy' of a good social reputation for himself and probably what he thought Juliet would enjoy as well. "Death us my son-in-law; death is my heir", (4.5.44) is one of the lines Lord Capulet said about Juliet's death. It shows how much he cares about his 'oh so lovely' reputation, and his love for his daughter. Yes, his son-in-law is dead but what about his daughter, Juliet? His one and only key to a good reputation. Tybalt is dead, so Juliet was only key to the rest of his 'well-deserved' life. Now that Juliet was gone, what would happen to his family's rank? It upsets me how bad Juliet's parents were to her, and how it came as far as to her very own death.
"Can you love the gentleman?", (1.3.85) is the only concern Lady Capulet has shown throughout the whole play. She went along with Juliet's father when he practically insulted her because she didn't love County Paris and refused to marry him when it in fact should be her choice. Social reputation overcame 'love' in this play, and it made Romeo & Juliet's deaths more tragic. All the actions Lady Capulet and Lord Capulet took were like building blocks that led to occurrence of Romeo & Juliet's deaths.
All these 3 themes are relevant to one another because they all seem to involve Juliet's relationship with her family. She was practically pushed and ordered around in her everyday life. The Capulets did only what was best for themselves and their 'reputation'. They didn't give a care about anyone else, but Juliet wasn't paved to be that way. She was very well-educated by her only friend, the Nurse. The Nurse was the only one who cared for Juliet because she was the one who raised her. It wasn't Juliet's mom who did that because back then the biological mother 'wasn't allowed to' care for their natural-born children; it was basically frowned upon.
In conclusion, Juliet's death was indirectly caused by her relationship with her parents because if they had truly cared for her they wouldn't have forced her to marry Paris. If she wasn't forced to marry Paris, that party wouldn't have been held and she most likely wouldn't have met Romeo thus her death wouldn't occur at such a young age. Juliet's only true friend was the Nurse; who actually gave her advice and educated her to not follow society's rules but to follow what she feels is the best for her.
No comments:
Post a Comment