- Kahn, Coppélia. "Coming of Age in Verona."
- Modern Language Studies 8 (1977-78): 5-22. Rptd. in The Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Ed. Carolyn Ruth Swift Lenz, Gayle Greene, and Carol Thomas Neely. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1983. 171-193.
Thesis: "I shall argue that the feud in a realistic social sense is the primary tragic force in the play -- not the feud as agent of fate, but the feud as an extreme and peculiar expression of patriarchal society, which Shakespeare shows to be tragically self-destructive" (171).
- The feud demands that the young men be fighters, not lovers, so Romeo feels ashamed of himself for not fighting Tybalt, and "Mercutio mocks not merely the futile, enfeebling kind of love Romeo feels for Rosaline, but all love" (177).
- It is patriarchal family values which threaten to keep Juliet from becoming an independent woman. For example, the Nurse's longest speech "epitomizes the way in which, in the patriarchal setting, woman's subjugation to her role as wife and mother is made to seem integral with nature itself" (182).
- The themes of Love and Death are so often intertwined because "the two families have established a state of affairs whereby their children are bound, for the sake of family honor, to kill each other" (186).
- Some academic jargon. For example: "In the early moments of their love, both of them seek to mold social reality to their changed perceptions and desires by manipulating the verbal signifiers of that reality" (179).
- Some overheated psychoanalytic analysis. For example: "Later, in Friar Lawrence's cell bemoaning his banishment, Romeo curses his name and offers literally to cut it out of his body as though it were merely physical and its hateful consequences could be amputated. Symbolically, he is trying to castrate himself . . . . (179).
- The assertion that Romeo "murders Tybalt" (175). It was a fair fight, which Romeo won and Tybalt lost.
Bottom Line: Too long, but worthwhile.