Juliet's visible transformation to adulthood is revealed here . She transforms herself from the inexperienced girl of near fourteen to the brave, mature, and loyal woman who has been caught up into a train of passionate events and now stands alone prepared to face all the consequences for the sake of her love.
In the previous scenes, Juliet always followed the wishes of her parents or at least did not challenge them verbally. Later on, she verbally defies both of her parents by refusing to marry Paris . Even more boldly, she exclaims that she will not marry anyone other than Romeo. She holds firmly to her heart's desire despite the foreshadowing threats of her father:
This is exactly why the audience and the readers are against the parents who wish to control the young couple and why they are on the side of the lovers. We support love of Romeo and Juliet because our hearts plead for them. We accept the deceits by which a young woman truly in love outsmarts the tyrannies of her parents who want to marry her off to the wrong man.
Juliet's mother, Lady Capulet, has never been able to establish a sympathetic relationship with her daughter. She is a typical female character who has allowed herself
to be shaped and molded according to the conventions of the time. Although a woman, she is the same as her husband. She is made up under the influence of the system and cannot think beyond it. Juliet is supposed to accept the demands of her parents and only to stoop.
At first Juliet's maternal figure and confidant, the Nurse also turns her back on Juliet in the argument over marrying Paris . When Juliet, already rejected by her parents, turns to her for help:
“What say'st thou? hast thou not a word of joy?
Some comfort, nurse.” 20
the Nurse sides with the Capulets and recommends that Juliet marries Paris . For her, getting married has nothing to do with love.
Juliet finds it hard to believe that the Nurse would have her break both legal and moral laws in marrying Paris . She feels betrayed and thus ends her faith in the Nurse and her intimate ties as well,
"Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain." 21
Neither Lady Capulet nor the Nurse knows what real love is and what it is prepared to do. The two of them have never experienced the forcefulness of true love. No matter how much isolated from her environment, Julia remains faithful to her heart's messages and remains loyal to her intense emotions. Her final goal is to go to Friar Lawrence hoping that he may help her. She resolves to the idea that,
"If all else fail, myself have power to die." 22
Though defeated by the circumstances, Juliet does not revert to being a little girl. She recognizes the limits of her power and, if another way cannot be found, determines to use it: for a woman in Verona who cannot control the direction of her life, suicide, the brute ability to live or not live that life, can represent the only means of asserting authority over the self. The best mark of Juliet's maturity is that she's strong enough to be true to herself and to Romeo, even though everyone is against it, and the cost is very high.
The world of Romeo and Juliet is a world governed by tradition, desire for power, hate, revenge and fate. Romeo and Juliet's world of true love and their language of love fall upon the deaf ears of the other characters in that violent world of Verona . They lived in the time when love meant isolation not only from their parents but from the whole environment.
In Act IV, Juliet once again demonstrates her strength. She comes up with reason after reason why drinking the sleeping potion might cause her harm, physical or psychological,
“How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point!
Shall I not, then, be stifled in the vault,
To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes? ” 23
She chooses to drink it anyway. In this action she not only attempts to outwit the forces that obstruct her relationship with Romeo, but she also takes full responsibility for herself. She recognizes that drinking the potion might lead her to madness or to death. She drinks the potion just as Romeo will later drink the apothecary's poison. In drinking the potion she demonstrates a willingness to take her life into her own hands. What is more, she goes against what is expected of woman and takes action.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., Act III, v
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid, Act IV, iii
