Juliet's Flaws

'Romeo and Juliet' is a tragic, cautionary, yet romantic play by William Shakespeare. Juliet is a memorable character because of the dramatic character change she experiences, her tragic flaw and the pathos of her demise. Juliet's flaw is falling in love too fast, being too passionate and impulsive with her emotions. Shakespeare presents Juliet as an innocent child in Act 1, but as the play develops, she becomes increasingly isolated and desperate. The playwright makes Juliet memorable through his use of foreshadowing, which warns us that something will go wrong due to her character flaw, which ultimately leads to her death.

The audience's first impression of Juliet is that she is innocent, obedient and childlike. Juliet's childhood is

However, her cluelessness and naiveness emphasise her character flaw, once she meets Romeo, she changes completely, and Romeo and marriage consume her thoughts.

When Romeo and Juliet first meet, they instantly fall in love triggering a dramatic character change in Juliet. Despite it being their first meeting, they can complete a joint sonnet suggesting their love is pure and true, allowing them to connect instantly. The images of religion further imply their love is heaven-sent and sacred as Romeo feels he is unworthy of Juliet. However, once Juliet discovers Romeo is a Montague, she says:

"My only love sprung from my only hate."

By loving Romeo, Juliet realises the danger she’s putting herself in, but she is too in love with Romeo to worry as she only wants him, even if it means losing her family to be with Romeo. However, their first meeting isn’t sweet as Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin hates Romeo and wants to kill him. His remark about how their love seems sweet right now will turn sour and go wrong foreshadows the danger. This scene changes Juliet entirely as she has become a young woman blindly in love with a boy from a family whom she has been brought up to

When Juliet finds Romeo dead, she sees the vial of poison in his hand, she snaps and tries to find some of his poison so she can die with him, but the only poison left is on Romeo’s lips, she says:

“Haply some poison doth hang on them,

To make me die with a restorative...

Thy lips are warm.”

This links back to Romeo’s vision of his death from Act 5 scene 1 as his vision comes true as Juliet kisses Romeo to try and commit suicide as he did however when Juliet finds him, he’s already dead as he believes she was already dead. When the Prince and Romeo and Juliet’s families find them dead, the prince calls Montague and Capulet forward to show them the consequence of their feud and how their feud is responsible for Romeo and Juliet’s death, at the end of his speech he says:

“All are punished”

This shows everyone has lost someone due to the feud between the Montagues and Capulets as Juliet’s tragic flaw of loving Romeo so much that it leads her to die for him and both their death caused loss for both the families. At the end of the play, Shakespeare shows Juliet’s character flaw of loving too much and too fast as she loves Romeo so much that she killed herself for him which makes her