Romeo & Juliet: Love or Lust?
Romeo and Juliet, one of the most notorious love stories, conveys the topic of young love in a rather harsh manner. After being rejected by his “one true love”, Romeo quickly goes searching for a new one and stumbles upon Juliet who he claims is the most beautiful girl he has ever laid his eyes on. He drops all thoughts of Roselin, and quickly works his way into Juliet’s heart the way that she had to him. Without knowing practically anything about her, Romeo is already to claim that Juliet was now his muse and he ever wanted even though he was just saying the same thing about Roselin no more than an Act ago. Now his attention is solely on Juliet and she in return gives him hers. This quick and meaningless portrayal of “love at first sight” falls under the lust category rather than love. Carolyn Butler explains the brain system of lust as “ primarily mediated by the sex hormone testosterone,” which at its peak during adolescence.
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Butler moves onto to speak about the system of romantic love that is “mediated by dopamine,” the feel good chemical that is released to the brains reward and pleasure centers and “is characterized by craving and focused attention for just one person at a time”. Though we are to believe that Romeo is completely over Roselin, such a quick focus of attention to a new girl could have not been such a meaningful relationship in the first place. The final system is attachment, which is associated with “the bonding and security you often feel when with a long term partner,”. This most definitely cannot be the case since the couple had only known eachother for a few days and could not have formed such a bond in such a short period of