Please see the links below that show different interpretations of Juliet. I tend to disagree with most of those readings. Of course, any analysis of a work of literature is totally subjective. It's instructive to note that Shakespeare was basing his play on a story that was already well known. He had no choices in how to plot the story, yet it could be said that he shows a young girl who changes and matures throughout the course of the drama.
Even though she is only 13 years old Juliet could be considered the strongest character in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. At the beginning we meet a young girl who is both polite and obedient. She is the dutiful daughter of parents who barely know her. She is basically raised by her Nurse who is the person she depends on the most until the Nurse betrays her in Act III. In fact, we lose faith in the Nurse because she advises Juliet to give up Romeo and marry Paris. The Nurse doesn't understand the strength of Juliet's love.
When she meets Romeo she is instantly in love and we know, through later events, that her love is genuine. Unlike Romeo, who seems to fall in love with any pretty girl he sees, Juliet is thoughtful about her love for the son of Montague. In the balcony scene she tells Romeo to wait and to take some time to consider the love the two obviously feel for each other. She says, in Act II, Scene 2,
Although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract tonight.
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say “It lightens.” Sweet, good night.
This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.
Romeo, of course, is not to be put off. He is impetuous and urges her to marry him right away. Not wanting to lose him, Juliet agrees. Some may say that she too is impetuous, but it could also be said that Juliet knows what she wants and doesn't want to risk losing it. For the first time in her life she makes a decision on her own despite knowing it would be against her parents' wishes. Unlike most women of her time, she thinks for herself. Her life is simply not a pawn to be manipulated by her father.
Later in the play when Juliet's father wants her to marry Count Paris, she stands up for herself and refuses. Even though she risks everything she weathers the wrath of her father and stays loyal to Romeo. Even when the Nurse advises her to give up her love she stands fast and seeks out counsel from Friar Lawrence.
The truest example of her strength is demonstrated in her willingness to go along with the Friar's plan. Not many young girls would trust in a plan that involved drinking a potion which would place them in a deathlike state. In the best soliloquy of the play Juliet describes her fears and shows her steely determination to again be reunited with Romeo. In Act IV, Scene 3, she says,
O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environèd with all these hideous fears,
And madly play with my forefathers’ joints,
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud,
And, in this rage, with some great kinsman’s bone,
As with a club, dash out my desp’rate brains?
O look, methinks I see my cousin’s ghost
Seeking out Romeo that did spit his body
Upon a rapier’s point! Stay, Tybalt, stay!
Romeo, Romeo, Romeo! Here’s drink. I drink to
thee.
Finally, at the end Juliet again displays her determined love when she takes her own life in the wake of Romeo's poisoning. She goes from being a girl ruled by her father to a woman who can make her own decisions and go after what her heart tells her is right.
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