Romeo and Juliet - Research Paper Example

Because the play begins with a warning that the results of the play are due to the “parents’ rage,” the tragic fall-out of their youthful passions leads one to ask whether the teens were served well by their parents. The question of what role parents should play in the lives of teens during the critical formative years plays an important role in understanding the play. In this brief paper, this question will be considered in order to determine whether Romeo and Juliet’s parents were effective, and what might have been done to avoid the tragedy that occurred in the play.

The first concern that must be addressed in considering the question of how effective the Montagues and Capulets were in raising their children is a consideration of how families during Elizabethan times operated. It was a different era, with social expectations of young men and women that were unlike today’s era. Therefore, one must view the relationships between the parents and their children through the eyes of the time. In doing so, we find that women were generally seen as inferior to men for a variety of reasons including temperament and socialization, and the father played a controlling role in deciding how the family lived (Elizabethan Family Life).

Families often used marriage as a way to advance their social and economic interests. We see this during the play in the fact that the parents of Juliet were busy arranging a marriage for her to an aristocrat, Count Paris (Reed, n.d.). Harold Bloom calls this a “blatant commodification” of Juliet (p 76), meaning that Juliet’s parents were attempting to increase their wealth by, essentially, selling their beautiful young daughter to the wealthy Count. Despite this obvious economic misuse of their daughter, however, it is clear that Juliet’s parents loved her very much.

The father expresses great affection for her in Act 1, Scene 2, calling her the “the hopeful lady of my earth” and asking Paris to be gentle with her and treat her right. Additionally, the parents showed great remorse when she was found dead, weeping to an extreme degree. Therefore, while we may ask from a modern perspective whether it is right that Juliet’s parents attempted to benefit from arranging her marriage, it was clearly within the tradition of the times. In fact, one might even ask whether Juliet’s parents would have been acting appropriately on her behalf if they had not attempted to find her a wealthy husband who could take good care of her.

Before turning to a consideration of Romeo’s family life, it should be pointed out that, although they were likely acting to her benefit as a family of their status and era would be expected to do, Juliet’s parents did seem to be very strict. The fact that Juliet’s nurse was a closer confident to her than her mother may be another sign of the times, but it is also a signal that the parents did not particularly attempt to be involved in the emotional development of the daughter. They looked out for her economic interest (and also their own), but they did not seem terribly involved in providing guidance to her.

When she pleads to her parents to postpone the wedding, they refuse outright (Reed, p. 3). This may indicate that they knew the wedding might fall through if they showed any doubt in the pairing, and they wanted to secure the