Romeo and Juliet

Nig

Family overall argument`

Violent authoritarian institution, prioritises honour obedience and social control - old fashioned, fail to act responsibly and destroy wellbeing of romeo and juliet

Family as violent public identity

Rooted in violence, individuals expected to uphold honour regardless of personal morality

Opens with servants asserting familt loyalty to agression
“i will bite my thumb at them; which is disgrace to them, if they bear it” - sampson, so deeply ingrained, even low status characters feel entitled to provoke violence

Escalates into public brawl - “three civil brawls, bred of an airy word / by thee, old capulet, and montague” - prince

Family loyalty irrational and self perpetuating “airy word” - reduces cause to something triviial, feud has long since lost moral justification
Servants and elders alike participate, culturally inherited

Entire families punished - family identity replaced personal responsibility -romeo and juiet born into conflict withiout choices

Capulet’s conditional love and patriarchal authority

Capulet initially reasonable, but authority rooted in patriarchy - affection dependent on obedience

“My child is yet a stranger in the world; / She hath not seen the change of fourteen years “ - suggests concern
but something to be “wooed” and eventually transferred, capulet has authority
but juliet refuses later - “hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch!”, “and you be mine, i’ll give you to my friend; / and you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets”

Paternal “care” collapses into coercion. earlier patience not evidence of respect for autonomy, but delay until marriage becomes socially convenient
once she resists, he reasserts absolute control, reducing her identity to obedience or exclusion

Extremity - family operates on conditional love, juliet valued as she complies with patriarchal expectations, forces her into silence and isolation, makes honest communication impossible

Juan luis vives conduct book 1523 - bleak view of love, “it ebcometh not a maide to talke, where hir father and motherbe in communicacion about hir mariage” - not exactly progressive

Failure of family and turn to secrecy

Becomes authoritarian rather than supportive, drives young people towards secrecy and surrogate authority, escalating risk
“if all else fail, myself have power to die” - juliet rejects parents
seeks help from friar instead, replaces guidance with dangerous deception
Juliet rejection is not impulsive rebellion, it is logical response to emotional abandonment. her parents have removed every safe option, obedience means emotional death, resistance means ruin

Tragedy caused not by secrecy(arthur brooke) but conditions that make secrecy necessary. family role has failed

family - ending, reconciliation through loss

Reconciliation acheived only through destruction

“See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, / That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.”
father respond by offering public monuments
punishment - families have been corrected, but too late
grief is sincere, instinct still to memorialise honour publically rather than reflect privately

family authority remains intact leaving the audience uneasy