Romeo And Juliet Coming Of Age Analysis

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How strange is it if adults were acting as kids and kids were acting like adults? Ironically, this situation happens in the Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, a sad and tragic story. Throughout the story, Juliet, one of the protagonists of the story, begins showing signs that she was coming of age. In the beginning of the story, Juliet is described as the only daughter of the Capulets and she always depended on the Nurse, her mother, and her father. This all changed after Juliet fell in love with Romeo. When she met Romeo, she starts to change her behavior and begins to mature. Juliet clearly comes of age throughout the story as she begins as a naïve youth, who struggles to overcome challenges and begins making mature decisions. First, one way …show more content…

Juliet faces a challenge when she wants to know the name of the man whom she fell in love with and without Nurse discovering it. To find out the name of the individual, she misleads her Nurse, “In order to find out, she devises a cleverly indirect ploy, first inquiring from the Nurse about the identities of two other young men in whom she actually has no interest. Only after she has learned their names, and thus diverted the Nurse’s curiosity, does she ask about Romeo.”(Garber,47). Juliet starts showing signs of independence by asking questions after falling in love with Romeo. She is able to deceive the Nurse from suspecting that she fell in love with Romeo. Furthermore, Juliet struggles with another problem when her parents decide that she was to marry the Count Paris when she was already married to Romeo. When Juliet refuses to marry Paris, she states, “I will not even marry yet, and when I do I swear it shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate, rather than Paris.” (III.v.126). She is not obedient to her parents like she used to. She also starts to speak out on her behalf. These two examples indicate that Juliet is coming of age in the

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