Romeo And Juliet Parent Child Relationships

Shakespeare and Heaney are world acclaimed writers, producing work in a vastly differing cultural and historical context. The relationships between parents and their children is a key theme woven throughout Shakespeare’s fictional Romeo and Juliet, and in studying this play I have come across several examples which illustrate this. Indeed this theme becomes integral in explaining the narrative as the play progresses. In this essay I will be focusing on the words spoken and range of literary devices that Shakespeare uses to present emotions involved in the relationships between parents and children and more specifically between the mother/surrogate mother and their children. Heaney is renowned for the strong autobiographical threads in his

Although the play is several hundred years old, these relationships are quite similar to those between adults and teenagers in contemporary society. Initially it is worthwhile to note that Romeo and Juliet have very formal relationships with their parents as was the case in that time period, and the distinct lack of effective communication between the two generations is obvious; the Capulet and Montague parents cared very much for their children but there was an emotional distance. Heaney’s focus on the mother son relationship is much more complex and complicated with, in sharp contrast, an emphasis on a close loving

In fact they are so engrossed in each other’s company in a shared silence that they are brought back to their senses only by the little ‘splashes’ (onomatopoeic effect)made by the potato peels falling one by one into the bucket of water they are using. In this poem Heaney utilised the technique of Petrarchan sonnet in which he transformed the traditional subject to speak of family.

In Romeo and Juliet the significant relationship lies with the surrogate mother, the Nurse. The Nurse also appears to act as mediator between mother and daughter as Lady Capulet says; “Nurse leave awhile, we must talk in secret. Nurse come back again I have remembered me, thou’s hear our counsel”. There is a double benefit here for Lady Capulet as she recognises the close bond between the nurse and her daughter and she sees in the nurse an ally to support her views on marriage. A reminiscent monologue by the Nurse ensues which exemplifies her close ‘mothering’