Romeo And Juliet What Age Gap Is Acceptable

559 Words3 Pages
In the 1300s, the time period where Romeo and Juliet is set, thirty-year-old men would marry adolescent girls. For example, in the play, Paris proposes to Juliet. He is estimated to be in his early thirties, while Juliet is merely thirteen years old. Even Romeo was sixteen, which is still a three-year age gap. In the modern United States that would never be acceptable. However, this poses the questions; What age gap is acceptable? And why was it acceptable hundreds of years ago but not today? The legal age for a girl to get married was twelve and a boy fourteen in the time period of Romeo and Juliet. In the thirteen-hundreds, women were still seen as property. It was common for higher class families to wed early because the women were able