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‘Juliet matures from docile child-bride to determined
tragic heroine in the course of [the play]’

Roma Gill’s description of the character Juliet is apt. For Juliet, love is the catalyst for her metamorphosis from an obedient, passive girl into an independent, determined young woman. The audience empathises with Juliet in her tragedy because she is an innocent victim of fate, a ‘star-cross’d lover.’

At the beginning of the play, Juliet allows her parents and nurse to control her future. They make life decisions for her and Juliet does not resent or challenge this control but passively accepts it. She is willing to enter an arranged marriage with a man she barely knows. When Lady Capulet proposes Paris as a suitor, Juliet only aims to please her parents, saying,
“I’ll look to like, if looking liking move;
But no more deep will I endart mine eye
Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.” (1,3 98-100) Juliet sees love as ‘affection’. She has never felt the passion of love so she does not see it as something worth fighting for.

When Juliet falls in love with Romeo, she experiences a whole range of emotions she has never known before.
“My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee
The more I have, for both are infinite.” (2,2 133-135) For Juliet, love is life changing and it makes her realise she wants true love and does not want to compromise with an arranged marriage. In the balcony scene, Juliet speaks of giving up her family for the sake of their love when she says, “And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.” (2,2 36) This shows that Juliet is becoming less childlike and more independent. In Juliet’s relationship with Romeo, as witnessed in the balcony scene, she is not afraid to express her desires and emotions, unlike in her relationship with her parents. She is self assured, demanding marriage, saying, ‘If thy bent of love be...