Erika Salomon “Women in the Patriarchy”:

Romeo and Juliet is a typical Renaissance drama in that it has very few female characters.  The only ones that are ever seen are Ladies Capulet and Montague, the Nurse, and Juliet.  Rosalind is the only other significant female in the play, and she disappears immediately upon the meeting of Romeo and Juliet.

However, Romeo and Juliet differs from all of the plays preceding it by giving sexual independence to one of its characters: Juliet is the first virgin to make self-referential sexual puns.

The puns that Juliet uses are very obviously sexual, and she often speaks plainly of sex, especially in her opening speech in III.ii.  Examine these lines:

 . . . Romeo

Leap to these arms, untalked of and unseen:

Lovers can see to do their amorous rites

By their own beauties, or if love be blind,

It best agrees with night.  Come civil Night,

Thou sober-suited matron in all black,

And learn me how to lose a winning match,

Played for a pair of stainless maidenhoods.

Hood my unmanned blood, bating in my cheeks,

With thy black mantle , till strange love grow bold,

Think true love acted simple modesty.

Even though we no longer use the same words or phrases to refer to sex, it is easy to see what Juliet wants.  “Amorous rites” may be outdated, but I think any modern reader would know that it implies intercourse.  “Lose a winning match, played for a pair of stainless maidenhoods” reinforces her desire in the reader’s mind.  The last three lines are a little less obvious, but carry the same meaning: “Unmanned” means not having been touched by or exposed to a man. Her “unmanned blood” refers to her maindenhead.  “True love acted” is intercourse.

The nurse also makes sexual puns, but her situation is much different:  she is no longer a virgin and she belongs to a much lower class than Juliet.  She is not as bound by the social rigors that attempt to confine Juliet to the role of innocent virgin. 

The women in Romeo and Juliet fall into four roles: daughter (virgin), wife, mother, and nurse.  Juliet, as the virginal daughter is supposed to act simple as a tool for political bargaining for her father, who depends on her as his means to extend his wealth and power.  Ladies Capulet and Montague have mostly fulfilled their purpose as women.  They have been married to wealthy and important husbands and have borne children.  Their responsibilities now lie solely in being obedient wives.  They are figureheads for their husbands’ position.  As mothers of a certain class, they don’t even need to raise their own children.  This duty falls to their nurses.  Juliet’s nurse is a typical loud, bawdy, lower-class woman who mostly takes over the role of Juliet’s mother, being the one who breast-fed Juliet.

The women in Romeo and Juliet have almost no power, not even within their homes: Juliet must marry Paris, Lady Capulet must convince Juliet to do so.  Juliet attempts to live outside the patriarchal power-structure, but does so at the expense of her life.  Rosalind is more successful: she chooses to assert power in a way that conforms to the patriarchal ideals surrounding her, by claiming her virginity as her ultimate virtue, she ultimately denies possession of it to any man that would have it.

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