How is the Relationship Between Romeo and Juliet Represented?
Relationships can be tricky, especially if both families don't approve. Us as humans tend to go for and want things more if we know we can’t have them. However, depending on how badly we want it, we will go to extreme measures to get it. Romeo and Juliet's relationship is represented as more lust than love throughout the majority of the play, if not, the whole play. They’re relationship is mainly around the concept of ‘I want what I can’t have’.
Within the play in Act 2 we can see how Romeo really sees Juliet and his true intentions with her which shows the way he sees Juliet isn't out of love, but merely out of pure lust. ”O wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?” (2, 2, 125) In this scene it shows how Romeo’s first proper conversation mainly talks about everything revolving around lust and never truly something about love and them having actual feelings for eachother. The keyword in the quotation used is the word ‘Unsatisfied’ In this sentence, Romeo speaks about how Juliet will leave him unsatisfied which is showing how Romeo only sees Juliet for merely lust, and not love. It proves how Romeo only sees Juliet as someone who can only satisfy him and not someone who he can really love. When reading the play, especially this act and quotation, we see the use of a rhetorical question. This quotation shows a deeper and more emotional meaning in the quotation. As we can see in the quotation, that he feels if he doesn’t get what he wants it’ll feel like a lose.In this scene we can see that a soliloquy is used when Romeo is speaking to Juliet since this isn’t something one would say to another within the first few days of meeting them. During the time of Shakespeare, it was heavily normalized that women were just there to work and serve for their husbands such as cooking, cleaning, giving birth, etc. Women weren’t seen as almost human-like. Especially when it was normalized for men to marry much younger girls/women without even knowing them for more than a week. Shakespeare shows exactly that in his play.
In the book, we can really see Romeo’s and Juliet’s intentions with each other. In the book we can see Romeo wanting Juliet for more lust, rather than love. However, we can see in the play that Juliet truly does love Romeo with everything in her heart. Especially when she admits it by saying, ”I will confess to you that I love him.” (4, 1, 25) In that scene we see how Juliet really loves Romeo by disobeying her parents and their wishes by loving Romeo and even confessing it to the nurse. In the quotation there’s the word ‘Love’ which really expresses her emotions when she talks about how she loves Romeo. The word ‘Love’ is more of an extreme way of liking someone, if not it might even be considered a completely different emotion. When Juliet talks about Romeo she always tends to use the word ‘love’. Which just shows how much she truly likes him. In the play we can see that Juliet disobeys her family which can be foreshadowing into her doing something sinful or disobeying her families wishes since we can already see her disobeying her family and even confessing it proudly. This can be foreshadowing that she might do something that might affect her or her family with any action she does. In this quotation we see the use of dialogues used when Juliet expresses how she truly feels, which is loving Romeo. She expresses her feelings in a dominant manner and says it out loud proudly. At this time, women were expected to obey their families, especially their fathers. In this we see Juliet disobeying her fathers wishes and orders by admitting that she loves Romeo. During the time of Shakespeare, girls and women were only allowed to marry someone their family chose, most their fathers chose for them. Shakespeare shows exactly that in this Act.
In the book we see a lot of different views of Romeo's and Juliet’s relationship with mostly Juilet loving Romeo for love and little to no lust. at the end of the book we see how much Juliet truly loves Romeo and how she is willing to do anything for him, even when she decides to take her own life for him.
Go get thee hence, for I will not away. What’s here? a cup clos’d in my true love’s hand? [ …] I will kiss thy lips, Haply some poison yet doth hang on them, To make me die with a restorative. Thy lips are warm. (5, 3, 160-167)
In this scene we see how Juliet takes her life for her love for Romeo since she knew deep down they could never be together. The only way she saw her and Romeo being together was being together in the after life. In the quotation, the phrase “My love’s” is used which shows the mix of emotions Juliet is going through where she is about to die but she still has the feeling of love for Romeo in her heart that she can’t let go of, even if that is the reason of her death. The imagery used in the quotation helps us envision Juliet's point of view, where she is going through a tragic moment in her life, with a mix of intense emotions and thoughts. In this quotation we see the use of an aside which when she is speaking about her death and Romeo's. Only the audience hears it and the other characters don’t. At this time it was a sin to kill yourself, which Juliet did. Back then it was heavily looked down upon to take your life yourself. Which impacted her whole family after the death.
Romeo and Juliet’s relationship is full of a few ups and a handful of downs. It ends in a tragic state with both not living to see another day. Their relationship is full of lust and barely any love from Romeo's side, however, when looking from Juliet’s point of view, we see how much she really cares from Romeo. Some might say Romeo and Juliet's relationship is represented as more lust than love throughout the majority of the play, if not, the whole play. Which proves that thier relationship is mainly around the concept of ‘I want what I can’t have’.
Work Cited
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. Edited by John C. Crowther, Spark Pub., 2003.
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