Zeffirelli’s version of Romeo and Juliet is probably my favorite. Olivia Hussey plays a wide-eyed, breathtakingly beautiful Juliet who is innocent yet headstrong. She is coy, but knows what she wants. She is subservient but doesn’t hesitate to talk back to her mother and her nurse. On this week’s Discussion Board I talked about how Juliet was torn in her devotion to her father and her husband. In some ways, according to Renaissance society she is correct by choosing to align with her husband, Romeo, because she is her father’s property while she is a maid and her husband’s when she is no longer. However, she had not been given permission by her father to marry Romeo, therefore, that marriage would not have been honored. She was in a tough bind; one which she would not have won. If she had succeeded in her scheme to run off to Mantua, I imagine that if or when Lord Capulet found out that she was indeed alive and well living in wedlock with Romeo Montague, she would be dragged back by her toenails to be punished by death, perhaps. Renaissance men did not take kindly to disobedience by their daughters. As Juliet admitted to her father, “I am forever ruled by you” ( 4.2, 21). She is right: the only door to her autonomy is through death. It surprises me that Friar Laurence believed that his interception would somehow enable a transcendence of the social norms of the time, or would even repair the schism between the two families--he should have known better.
Nonetheless, Zeffirelli captured the innocence and purity of a noble maid; the coarseness of an enslaved nurse who had no life of her own except to serve her noble family; the adoring eyes of a mother (Lady Montague) whose sole surviving child is a prized son; and the envy, suspicion, and slight bitterness of a woman (Lady Capulet) who was imprisoned in a dutiful marriage before her time when she was merely a ripe young maid. No, I do not envy any of these women.
No comments:
Post a Comment