preview

Marrying Shakespeare And Gender Analysis

Decent Essays
Open Document

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once stated,"The problem with gender is that it prescribes how [someone] should be rather than recognizing how [they] are."William Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet and Jeanne Gerlach, Rudolph Almasy, and Rebecca Daniel's article "Revisiting Shakespeare and Gender" explore the ideals of men and women in the sixteenth-century society of England and Italy. Shakespeare is telling a story set in Verona, Italy of how the two protagonists, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet’s, young love and the feuding of their families caused the deaths of them. The Elizabethan Era women are expected to show “obedience”,”weak[ness]”,and “silence” in regards to men, in Shakespeare’s plays he challenges the ideas that women cannot …show more content…

Juliet replies saying,”I'll look to like, if looking liking move; But no more deep will I endart mine eye Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.” ( 1.3.99-101) In other words Juliet is saying she will try to see if she likes him without saying to her mother that she doesn't want to be with him.Likewise, Nurse,Juliet's most trusted friend, tells Juliet that Romeo is from the Montague family, Romeo is her enemy, but she still chooses to love him. Juliet being flabbergasted, exclaims ” my only love, sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me That I must love a loathed enemy.(1.5.145-148) Both Romeo and Juliet know they come from opposing families and that their families would not approve of a relationship between the two, but they still decide to keep their relationship going. Similarly, Juliet Refuses to marry Paris.”I will not marry yet; and when I do, I swear it shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate, rather than Paris.”(3.5.125-127) Juliet is in love with Romeo and she is telling her parents the person she will marry is Romeo, Paris will be in the picture. In the English Renaissance period women were not only supposed to be compliant with men's needs and wants, but they were also stereotyped to be inferior than their male

Get Access