"Romeo and Juliet"

Analytical Essay # 53892

Psychology > Freud
Shakespeare > Romeo and Juliet
Women Studies > Feminism

"Romeo and Juliet"

This paper analyzes Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" from Freudian and feminist perspectives.

3,030 words () | 2 sources | MLA | 2004 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper explains both Freudian and feminist theories agree that the play centers around two adolescents necessary separation from a paternal structure, which does not want to let them go. The author points out that both authors seem to see Verona as a malevolent, 'masturbatory' society that allows its seed (youth) to die pointlessly as it regresses into a state of near-barbarity, with an eye on its past. The author states that the feminist sees Juliet as a young woman who never really leaves her household and who finds a surrogate mother figure in her nurse, a subservient follower of the household's patriarchal structure. Juliet's love for Romeo is not a Freudian escape-fantasy from a state of incestuous regression, but rather a potentially positive expression of self-sublimation.

From the Paper:

"In Faber's work, the phallus is implicit. It often seems to me that the author uses symbols of enormity to illustrate his point of the unsated correlations which he proposes. This is a phallo-centric argument in itself, implicit in its semantic search for readerly approval by repeatedly stressing Romeo's "enormous anger, his enormous frustration and defiance". Bringing up enormity in an atmosphere of virility and potency is asking for this correlation. Potency is perhaps the semantic equivalent of the unstated phallus in Faber's work. Kahn is more open in her descriptions of Verona's society in which males are encouraged to compete with phallic objects in a violent manner rather than to enter into loving relationships with others. In her essay, the phallus is an explicit construction. One wonders whether or not Shakespeare simply meant a sword to be a sword, but such arguments are counter-productive. For now, it is sufficient to state that Faber ignores the representation of the phallus in the play, does not use feminine or neuter pronouns, and is impressed by enormity."