For her entire life, 's greatest loyalty has
been to her family. She first appears in act 1, scene 3, as a dutiful daughter, so anxious to
obey her parents' wishes that she will not only marry the man of their choice but will take
their advice on how much she should love him. She has always been particularly devoted to her
cousin , and when the nurse tells her in act 3, scene 2, thathas killed him, she immediately
curses Romeo bitterly:
O serpent heart, hid with a
flowering face!
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant! fiend
angelical!
Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!
However, when the nurse criticizes Romeo far more mildly than this, Juliet turns on her
and instantly regrets her former anger, saying,
O, what a
beast was I to chide at him!
In reply to the nurse's
protestations, Juliet asks who will defend Romeo when she, his wife, pours imprecations upon
him. Then she shows how truly conflicted she is:
But,
wherefore, villain, didst thou kill my cousin?
That villain cousin would have kill'd my
husband:
Back, foolish tears, back to your native spring...
My husband lives,
that Tybalt would have slain;
And Tybalt's dead, that would have slain my
husband...
Juliet finally decides that Romeo deserves her
loyalty more than Tybalt and that his banishment is a more serious matter for her than Tybalt's
death. However, her first reaction shows that her family loyalties are not so easily overcome.
They are only surmounted by a greater loyalty, which the marriage service explicitly states is
intended to be stronger than family relationships. Seeing this struggle, therefore, increases
our appreciation of the loyalty that is a vital element in Juliet's
character.
No comments:
Post a Comment