In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, women are treated as second class citizens, objectified, expendable, and essentially servants their fathers, brothers, and husbands.
Women in Romeo & Juliet are often the victims of objectification. Throughout the play, men dehumanise women into objects for their use. The banter in the beginning of the play between Samson and Gregory shows the utter sexism in Shakespeare's time, with Samson saying “Therefore women, [are] the weaker vessels...” (I.i.14). Juliet is constantly being pressured into marriage and childbirth, especially to Paris. Lady Capulet, her own mother, has no recollection of Juliet’s birthday, yet she wants her daughter to become a mother. Paris and Lady Capulet express “Younger than she are happy mothers made” (I.ii.12). While we would like to think Romeo was the one to “save” Juliet from a future of objectification, this isn't the case. If Friar Laurence’s plans had gone accordingly, Juliet would be in Mantua with her husband, Romeo, and one or more children at the age of…show more content… Much like other women in the play, Juliet is only wanted when she is blindly following what she is told. When she so much as questions her sudden marriage to Paris, her father goes into a blind rage and bellows, “Disobedient wretch! / I tell thee what: get thee to church o' Thursday, / Or never after look me in the face: / Speak not, reply not, do not answer me .../ And you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets, / I'll not be forsworn” (III, v, 149-168). Sadly, Lord Capulet's threats could hold true, and Juliet could very well starve and die in the streets. Women in the late 1300s, when Romeo and Juliet is said to take place, “could own no business without special permission, and could not own property of any kind unless they were widows” (Trueman). This made it almost impossible for women to be anything other than mothers or
