Juliet in Modern Times

This past week, we viewed Luhrmann’s modern film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet.  The Juliet from this film was a modern girl with modern love issues, who had an overbearing father and was caught betwixt a civil dispute between her family and the family of her lover.  This Juliet was not a subjugated young lady from the Renaissance Age.  This week we also read the words of John Knox in Against the Monstrous Regime of  Women which blasted Queen Regent, Mary of Guise.  In the piece, Knox quoted Augustine as stating that,

“’Woman,’ says he, ‘compared to other creatures, is the image of God, for she bears dominion over them. But compared unto man, she may not be called the image of God, for she bears not rule and lordship over man, but ought to obey him[…]The woman shall be subject to man as unto Christ. For woman,’ says he, ‘has not her example from the body and from the flesh, that so she shall be subject to man, as the flesh is unto the Spirit[…]’” (Augustine quoted in Knox 1558).

Luhrmann’s Juliet seemed to have a head on her shoulder and command of her will.  Even the domineering attitude of her father, particularly in the explosive moment when he overreacted to her refusal to marry Paris, came across as a frustration with a precocious child.  On the DB, I expressed my distaste for Luhrmann’s film because of the liberty it took with the historical context and the “slaughtering” of Shakespeare’s intent and meaning.   It did not highlight the trials and tribulations of an Elizabethan lass, nor that of a young maid of the Renaissance era.  However, it was a story of a young girl with modern or timeless (is it set in the future, present, or parallel universe?) issues.