#and would you look at that I'm disrespecting the rules of anatomy again

[arisefairsun]

i'm the only one in my friend group who really loves romeo and juliet and doesn't think they're just "dumb teenagers" and i just want to thank you for your blog and your rants and all that good stuff. i really love reading all of it and we interpret the play so similarly!! it really keeps me sane whenever someone puts down r+j after i tell them it's my favorite shakespeare play. i love sensitive romeo and intelligent, capable juliet and yeah i just wanted to thank you for loving them too!!

Thank you so much! I’m happy to hear that you like my blog!

People react the same way when I mention that I am a Romeo and Juliet enthusiast. They roll their eyes as if they were saying, “pfft, she likes that stupid play about dumb teenagers!”. But oh man, I find the whole culture of Romeo and Juliet being “dumb kids” really disrespectful because (1) it dismisses their emotions simply because they are young and therefore cannot be thought of in earnest because oh, young people are too ignorant to know what they want and feel, and (2) it refuses to acknowledge their attempt to free themselves from the toxic environment they were raised in.

Romeo and Juliet covers a lot of issues that are still relevant today: violence, prejudice, hate, the atrocities that people are willing to commit solely to prove their superiority over others, murder, misogyny, toxic masculinity, gender roles, isolation, people’s unwillingness to forgive and to listen to others, resentment, pride, rage, abusive families, the reluctantly to value young people’s ideas, the tendency to overlook their problems and feelings, etc. I could go on. It’s a play about social oppression, about how a society that thwarts people’s freedom and imposes highly toxic ideals on them will irrevocably destroy itself.

Both Romeo and Juliet are bound to being what their parents want them to be. Their world forces them to give up their real aspirations, their real selves, in order to preserve those toxic ideals. Romeo is Montague’s heir, and he must behave as such. The feud is a great opportunity for men to show off their bravado and their masculine egos (the thumb-biting dialogue that Tumblr loves so much is a good example of this). And Romeo is expected to perpetuate such behavior. Look at Mercutio’s words:

Alas poor Romeo! He is already dead; stabbed with a white wench’s black eye; shot through the ear with a love-song; the very pin of his heart cleft with the blind bow-boy’s butt-shaft: and is he a man to encounter Tybalt?

To him, Romeo cannot be a real man so long as he prefers poems over swords. Friar Lawrence tells him that he is an “unseemly woman in a seeming man” because his tears “are womanish”; the Nurse states that if he were a man, he would “stand up”. In 2.4, Mercutio believes that Romeo is only truly Romeo when he is jesting with his male friends: “Now art thou Romeo; now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature.” (Little does he know that the reason Romeo is being so positive is because he spent the previous night talking to Capulet’s daughter about the insignificance of names.)

This mortifies Romeo. Look at his words in 3.3, right before attempting to kill himself: 

O, tell me, friar, tell me,In what vile part of this anatomyDoth my name lodge? Tell me, that I may sackThe hateful mansion.[Drawing his sword]

This is heartbreaking. His social identity instills so much anxiety in him that this boy even craves death if that will permit him to extirpate such oppression from himself.

Juliet also struggles with the dynamics of her society. Nobody listens to her. Her parents harass her, Paris doesn’t care about her feelings, and even the Nurse turns her back on her at the end. But Romeo absolutely, wholeheartedly loves listening to her (“How is’t, my soul? Let’s talk; it is not day”), and entreats her to express herself continuously (“Ah, Juliet. If the measure of thy joy / Be heaped like mine, and that thy skill be more / To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath / This neighbour air.) Basically, he treats her like a human being. This is why Romeo and Juliet’s relationship is so important. They help each other. They save each other. The way he talks about her denotes such transgression, such liberation from the limits of the world: “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? / It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.” She is a light forcing its way through the obstacles imposed by Capulet’s house. She is literally the sun growing forcefully and killing the shadows. Juliet realizes there is something infinite inside her—she is as boudless as the sea, and she assures her screams could “tear the cave where Echo lies.”

Living in a society where names are everything, Juliet rejects all of that and builds a whole new identity for Romeo—one that is independent from the feud. I know the “wherefore art thou” speech is overused, but it makes so much sense that it is the most well-known part of the play, because it’s so revolutionary. “What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, / Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part / Belonging to a man.” It’s like she is saying “fight me, try to tell me that his whole existence must depend on a mere word.”

They are just so, so good to each other. They are friends, as Juliet puts it. They are children living in a scary world full of hate and violence, but they can fearlessly let out their real selves when they are together, notwithstanding the chaos that is Verona. I can understand why some 19th-century guy decided to read the play as a cautionary tale against youth and love, but right now? In 2017? While people want to build walls between countries out of prejudice? While violence is so present in our daily lives? I can’t tolerate that reading, because I can’t ignore the hate that was promoted by Romeo and Juliet’s society, and I can’t ignore the fact that the lovers cling to each other in a really desperate attempt not to become what their parents want them to be. I can’t ignore the fact that they were so weary of their world that they conceived suicide as a way to escape. It’s selfish to ignore what they’ve gone through and claim that they killed themselves out of stupidity. 

Their story is certainly not meaningless. It’s the tale of two young people who decide to break the rules and defend their actual, real identities, and thus try to get rid of the labels and chains their society tries to force on them. It’s a story that warns you about the dangers of any kind of oppression. It’s a story that tells you that your opinions, your dreams, your voice deserve to be heard, and that you should fight for yourself. And if Capulet and Montague were able to apologize and thus recognize Romeo and Juliet’s effort, then I think someone teaching this play in 2017 should stand up for those who were so terribly oppressed by their society. (Because the decontextualization of the story I blame mostly on how poorly teachers explain the play.) If someone mocks you for liking Romeo and Juliet, let them know that referring to them as two horny teenagers who got themselves killed is a very disrespectful way of ignoring the effects that violence, abuse, prejudice, and oppression have on their victims.

P.S. Thank you again for this sweet message!

#iuliet #thoughts #answered #Romeo and Juliet #Shakespeare #I'm sorry for such a long answer omg I just have so many feelings about this and your message really moved me! #<3 #I'm so happy to hear that you also like sensitive Romeo and capable Juliet!!! #you know my ask box is always open for you to message me!! #lovely messages