Skip to main content

What are Lady Capulet's reasons for trying to persuade her daughter to consider marriage?

In Act One, Scene Three of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet is subject to some unpleasant questioning from her mother. Lady Capulet wants to know what Juliet thinks of getting married, to which Juliet responds, "It is an honour that I dream not of." Lady Capulet thinks this is a ridiculous response and asks Juliet to re-consider. She cites several reasons, including the fact that many young women younger than Juliet have already been married and bore children (including Lady Capulet herself when she was Juliet's age):



...younger than you,


Here in Verona, ladies of esteem,


Are made already mothers: by my count,


I was your mother much upon these years


That you are now a maid.



Lady Capulet is also very enthusiastic about Juliet's suitor: "[t]he valiant Paris." Lady Capulet believes that Paris is a wonderful match for Juliet since he is handsome, young, and in need of a wife. Lady Capulet thinks Juliet, who is also fittingly beautiful, will obtain much admiration if she marries Paris--not to mention, she will "share all that he doth possess" by becoming his wife. His wealth, status, and appearance makes Paris an ideal husband... at least in Lady Capulet's eyes.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.