Essay: Juliet is the tragic hero of Shakespeare’s play

Shakespeare’s tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, follows the two eponymous characters as they navigate the destruction and devastation true love can bring. Juliet begins as a wide-eyed, innocent young girl, merely 13 years old, yet throughout the course of the play, Shakespeare portrays the development of Juliet’s character indirectly through the language she uses, the language used about her and the relationships she forms with the other characters. Shakespeare often contradicts many of the accepted values of the Elizabethan era, such as the patriarchal society in which they live.
Even from the very beginning of the play, it is clear that Juliet has a defiant, rebellious streak. Shakespeare presents this through the language and tone used in act 1, scene 3. When asked by her mother about marrying Paris, Juliet replies: ‘I’ll look to like, if looking liking move;’ meaning that she will obey her mother’s wishes and look out for Paris at the ball; however, she doesn’t expect to find true love and doesn’t intend to look for it. Shakespeare uses this language effectively, showing that she is forced to do what society expects of her; yet, she is becoming a strong, independent woman who can think and speak for herself.
Juliet is shown to be a passionate, impulsive character at certain points in the play. Shakespeare uses soliloquies to allow us to see her thoughts and feelings. When she has been given the potion by Friar Lawrence that will send her to sleep, Juliet takes drastic action based on the strength and passion of her love for Romeo: ‘Romeo, Romeo, Romeo! Here’s drink – I drink to thee.’ Shakespeare’s repetition of Romeo’s name at an emphatic end position in the soliloquy shows that Juliet’s actions and impulsive, drastic decisions are for or about Romeo and their marriage. Additionally, where Romeo, before he commits suicide, has a long soliloquy in which he ponders how he has run out of options: ‘O, what more favour can I do to thee than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain to sunder that was thine enemy?’ Here, he asks what more he can do than kill himself. In contrast, Juliet says a few swift words before she fatally stabs herself: ‘O happy dagger, this is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die.’ Shakespeare uses this speech to highlight Juliet’s impulsive, passionate nature, showing that she didn’t take the time to consider every other action before death. This also emphasises the deep connection Romeo and Juliet had – the fact that there seemed no other option than for Juliet to die without Romeo.
As well as being impulsive at points throughout the play, Juliet is intelligent and able to take a step back in order to think and evaluate her position. When talking to Romeo about her love for him, she describes her own feelings as: ‘too rash, too unadvised, too sudden.’ and their love as: ‘too like the lightning which doth cease to be’. This direct, concise language is a contrast to Romeo’s gushing, romantic vocabulary: ‘with love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls, for stony limits cannot hold love out,’ and, whilst Romeo is ready to fall head-over-heels in love with Juliet, her use of the word ‘too’ shows that she is almost asking herself whether she has made the right decision, as she has had no experience with true love before. The comparison of their love to lightning shows her that as lightning is a force of nature, so is their love – they were meant to be together. Through the considerate language that is used, Shakespeare presents Juliet as an intelligent and self-aware character, but also someone who is caught up in a love affair that was always meant to happen, whether she wants it or not, as proven by the comparison of their love to a flash of lightning.
Shakespeare also builds on the contrast between Romeo and Juliet, giving Juliet characteristics that in the Elizabethan era would typically be associated with men and masculinity. She says to Romeo, in talking about their love: ‘O swear not by the moon, th’inconstant moon,’ She tells him this as the moon is fickle and ever-changing, whilst Juliet wants to be sure that they will never hesitate to love one another. Here, Juliet is completely in control of the conversation, a position that would usually be held by a man. Moreover, at the time, the men were seen to be the ones who knew what to do and were able to take charge if something happened to go wrong. However, in Romeo and Juliet, Juliet is the one who takes matters into her own hands by asking Friar Lawrence for the potion to send her into a deep sleep: ‘Give me, give me! O tell me not of fear.’ Finally, she kills herself in a violent, sudden manner – stabbing herself with a sword. This can be seen as the more ‘male’ of the two ways to commit suicide. As well as Juliet taking over the traditional masculine role, we also see Romeo adopting a more feminine attitude. In act 3, scene 3, Friar Lawrence makes a comment: ‘Art thou a man? … Thy tears are womanish,’ and in one of the final scenes, Romeo uses a softer, less brutal way to end his life: drinking poison.
Shakespeare presents Juliet as a victim of the society in which she lives, meaning that her relationships with the people around her – Lord and Lady Capulet, and her Nurse, help to shape the person she becomes over the short four-day period of the play. Her impulsiveness and impatience are mirrored by her own father’s. Before the Juliet is due to get married to Paris, Capulet moves the wedding forward from a Thursday to a Wednesday: ‘Send for the county, go tell him of this. I’ll have the knot knit up tomorrow morning.’ This shows his impatience, and his impassioned outburst at Juliet, after she tells him she does not wish to marry Paris, shows his impulsive reaction upon hearing the news. Juliet may have been influenced by her father’s qualities, which could explain the impulsive, rash decisions she makes throughout the play. Shakespeare presents these character parallels to demonstrate the effect Juliet’s upbringing and surroundings have had on her future.
Juliet’s nurse acts ‘in loco parentis’, having taken care of Juliet since she was a young child. It was very common in noble families at the time to have a distant, formal relationship between mother and daughter, so this situation would have been familiar and well recognised among a Shakespearean audience. However, Juliet and the nurse have conflicting views on love, and what it means to be in love. When talking about this, the nurse states: ‘A man, young lady! lady, such a man as all the world – Why, he’s a man of wax.’ This shows that the Nurse’s priority is that Juliet is married to a handsome gentleman, whether they are truly in love or not. She then goes on to make crude jokes and innuendos about love and sex: ‘No less! nay, bigger women grow by men.’ By this, the nurse is referring to pregnancy. Shakespeare here shows that the nurse thinks of love as mainly about sex and looks, so when Juliet fell deeply in love with Romeo, she was clueless as neither her nurse nor her parents had prepared her. This naivety and vulnerability in love shaped the actions and decisions she made later on in the play.
Romeo compares Juliet to the sun; bright and brilliant: ‘Juliet is the sun.’ He commands Juliet to ‘kill the envious moon,’ implying that the Diana, the Goddess of virginity, who was always personified as a moon in ancient Roman mythology, is jealous of her, and that she should lose her virginity to him. In act 1, scene 1, Romeo describes Rosaline by saying: ‘she hath Dian’s wit;’ likening her to Diana. By saying that Juliet makes her jealous, we see how great Romeo’s love for Juliet is. Furthermore, Romeo describes Juliet’s eyes as: ‘Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven’ and goes on to say: ‘her eyes in heaven would through the airy region stream so bright’ Here, he is saying that Juliet has the ability to brighten even the darkest nights, and for Romeo, Juliet is a shining light in a world and society that is otherwise dark and dull. Shakespeare presents Juliet as captivating and life-changing to Romeo through the language and imagery he uses.
Juliet is a character who defies the patriarchal values of Elizabethan society in the play. In Elizabethan England, the father had the right to decide whom his daughter would marry, and marriage at the time was seen as an act of business between the two families, rather than an act of love. It is suggested that Juliet marry Paris, a young nobleman of Verona: ‘The valiant Paris seeks you for his love.’ Later, Juliet begs her father for her not to marry Paris, to which he responds furiously: ‘Hang thee, young baggage, disobedient wretch!’ As he is the patriarch of the family, Lord Capulet believes that his daughter must obey his every command and is shocked when Juliet goes against his wishes. Furthermore, she is the one to initiate the idea of marriage between her and Romeo: ‘If that thy bent of love be honourable, Thy purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow,’ Society then, and even society today, dictates that the man is the one in a relationship who proposes marriage. For an Elizabethan audience, especially women at this time, seeing a young woman defy the patriarchal society would have been refreshing and inspiring.
Overall, it can be said that Juliet is the tragic hero of the play, with her tragic flaw being her loyalty to Romeo. Her love for him is so deep and great that when he died, she had to die too, in order to be with him. At only 13 years old, Juliet stands between adolescence and maturity. We see glimpses of her defiant and decisive attitude from the beginning of the play, and these traits develop and become a more prominent part of who she is. Ultimately, the events that take place over the four-day period in which the play is set propel her into adulthood, even if she is never truly ready to handle the pressure and responsibility that comes with such powerful destructive love. Shakespeare presents Juliet’s characteristics and builds them up throughout the play effectively, and an Elizabethan audience would have been inspired and interested by a unique young female character who defies the traditional patriarchal stereotypes of society at the time. However, even though there was a largely patriarchal society, the Monarch at the time was Elizabeth I, a strong woman who ruled successfully without a husband.
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