Gender Roles In Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet

Literature and Performance 2015 - 1st Assessment

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet presents the struggle for individual recognition, as characters undergo a process of self-fashioning as a means of definition in a restrictive, patriarchal society. Emerging out of the Liebestod myth, the play sees the impossible union of young lovers whose attempt to defy the obstacles in their path leads to their downfall (Levenson, p.2). Yet, Shakespeare’s play is not a universal tale of “star-crossed lovers”, rather its tragedy is inseparable from the societal and familial restrictions of the sixteenth century. Ultimately, it is only in death that Romeo and Juliet can finally escape the roles laid out for them, emerge from their families’ identities, and rank as individuals.

If Romeo and Juliet is marked by the artifice of self-fashioning, the young lovers express a desire for individual recognition within the confinement of Elizabethan society. According to Greenblatt the sixteenth century saw an appearance of an

Tragedy is governed by fate, Shakespeare presents no fatal flaw; rather the lovers are “death-marked” (9). With her “faith in heaven” (3.5.205) Juliet’s love for Romeo ties her indelibly to death – her husband may be “on earth” yet she cannot be with him in this lifetime. Yet, Juliet’s ‘fate’ is to live within the patriarchal conventions; her refusal to do will seal her doom. As Juliet cries “ancient damnation” at her plight, Levenson suggests that damnation is not merely purgatory but “also the cause of perdition” (300, n.7). While Juliet may be ‘damned’, her fate predetermined, so too do her actions bring “damnation” by disrupting the “ancient” patriarchal traditions in which she lives. If Romeo and Juliet are therefore both by fortune and societal restrictions ‘doomed’, Shakespeare suggests the only escape is to “have power to die”