In this essay, I will explore the theme of gender roles in the play Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare. The points I will be discussing in this essay are how gender roles create societal pressure, how gender roles influence family dynamics, and how gender roles force people into positions they do not want to be in.
The first point I will be discussing is how gender roles create societal pressure in the world of Romeo and Juliet. We see evidence of this when Romeo and Juliet want to get married to each other but they must do it in secret because Juliet is a woman and therefore cannot choose who she marries, instead, her father chooses who she will marry and he has chosen for her to marry Paris. I believe that Romeo and Juliet would not have died if Juliet had the right to marry who she wanted because if they did not have to get married in secret Juliet could have gone with Romeo when he was exiled from Verona. This is how gender roles have created societal pressure within Romeo and Juliet.
The second point I will discuss is the ways that gender roles influence family dynamics within Romeo and Juliet. We can see
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In the play, Juliet is expected to marry Paris but does not want to do so. Throughout the play, Juliet expresses a clear disinterest in marrying Paris but her father has chosen for her to marry him, and because she is a woman she must marry the man of her father's choosing, this forces Juliet into a position where she must either marry Paris or be disowned. In the end, she does not have to do either of these things because she marries Romeo and then kills herself but if she had had the choice of who she married she would not have had to do either of those things and she could have taken her relationship with Romeo slower. This shows how gender roles force people into positions they don't want to be in within the