Three moments in the text where Juliet has little control over her own fate.
- In the play, Juliet has very little control when Capulet (Juliets father) says to her “For by my soul, I’ll never acknowledge thee…” if she refuses to marry Paris, he is directing her to. These words from Capulet to Juliet give us insight into the limited choices women in the 16th Century England had. Here, he is saying that unless she participates in the arranged marriage, he swear on his soul to disown her. In Elizabethan England, a women without a male figure to make decisions for her and look after her was put in a vulnerable place. Juliet forces exile from her family and therefore her life as she knows it, if she does not obey her father. We know that Juliet doesn’t have the skills to operate in the male dominated society because of her lack of action of ability to take action and therefore understands why she decides to obey her fathers instructions, offering us insight into the limited freedom of women in this time.
2. In the play, Juliet has very little control when she drinks the vial of poison. Before she drinks it she says “What if it be a poison, which the friar subtly have minister’d to have me dead?” She again, is not in control of her actions because –