THEY'RE HERE FINALLY. My faerie xweetok fandragon!
Go give them a smooch
One of their kind by the way. This project made me work for it.
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THEY'RE HERE FINALLY. My faerie xweetok fandragon!
Go give them a smooch
One of their kind by the way. This project made me work for it.

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Sometimes i feel like younger queer kids are getting a bit to bold with openly talking to people they donât know In The Context Of:
More than once i have had a younger/same age queer person come up to me in public settings and say something about âfinding other gaysâ or clearly clocking me as nonbinary and Iâm like :)))))))) hey buddy Iâm here with my conservative parents can you fucking not out me :))))))))
Just say you like my outfit or hair and move on, fuck even tell me you like my shoelaces. Donât call me gay and limp your wrist at me when you donât even know me? Especially when thereâs a bunch of ppl around?
i was out with my ex once when three *very* young queer kids, like thirteen years old, came up to us and asked us âare you guys, you knowâŚâ and did the limp wrist thing at us. one of them loudly exclaimed that it was so cool to meet other queer people in real life. this was in public in an unbelievably conservative area - we didnât even feel safe holding hands because we were surrounded by Mormons. we got lucky that day, but Iâm begging yâall to remember that the world doesnât work like the internet. other queers are real fuckin people. donât do this shit. OP is right; tell me you like my jacket, or my patches, or the rainbow spokes on my wheelchair, but donât out either of us!
in the process of making an updated ref for a neopet and accidentally made a shirt i now actually very much want
DA: 1579-8606-8350, island called Dax created by @/wildforest.crossing on instagram! one of the best camping themed islands iâve ever seen, very cool and prettyđ
WELCOME TO NEOPIA!

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How is it is supposed to work: your emotions are a response to your situation and surroundings. It is OK to feel the emotion. Now take that emotion and use your logical brain to decide which parts of the emotion fit the facts of the situation and which do not and why, and how you're going to respond to said emotions (which is what tweet said, and what therapists say)
How people seem to interpret it: any emotional reaction is perfectly fine and I am not responsible for what I do out of emotion.
social media has really warped our perception of creativity and hobbies. Stop doing things to post them. Just write. Just journal. Just sketch. Just read. Just annotate. Just sing. Just crochet. Just do the thing youâre going to do with the assumption no one will ever see or know you did it. Stop performing. Just enjoy it.
Pet: Zega
Owner: panda_bear_394
When I was in middle and high school I was ridiculed by my peers for watching shows that they considered to be âimmatureâ for my age.
It was the early-to-mid 2000s, and my classmates were watching shows like American Idol, The OC and Greyâs Anatomy. I was watching kidsâ cartoons like SpongeBob, Fairly OddParents and Jimmy Neutron. These kids often bullied and pressured me into watching the shows they liked. Even my school counselor said that I had to watch the shows my peers were watching if I wanted to have friends, and I mentioned to her that I was lonely and wanted some friends.
My mom didnât allow me to watch The OC, so I started watching Greyâs Anatomy and American Idol instead. I was starting to fit in with my peers at school, but it severely cost me my mental health. In my sophomore year, I became even more depressed than I already was. It was like my personality just completely changed in just a year.
To this day, itâs still hard to enjoy an episode of SpongeBob or any of the other shows I liked back then without being reminded of the times where I was ostracized for liking those shows.
I hate that neurodivergent kids are always being pressured into acting as close to neurotypical as possible by not only their peers, but the adults around them.
Leave. Neurodivergent. Kids. Alone.
I donât normally add on to these posts but I have my own story thatâs relevant that happened this week.
I work in a big toy store, and I was checking out a customer who was casually talking to me. She was telling me that she was tying to wean her 3 year old off peppa pig, because it was time for her to get into ââgirlyââ things like barbie because thats what all her friends were getting into to. And she kept repeating this like it made the most sense in the world.
Now Iâm a Barbie supporter and I donât like Peppa Pig, but I also donât think its any harm for a kid as young as 3 years old to keep enjoying programming that was made for them. Not to mention the expectations that a girl is expected to get into ââproperââ things like Barbie.Â
This isnât the first time Iâve seen the expectation for kids to grow up fast. Iâve had parents ask me if spider-man is too old for a 6 year old, despite the characters huge presence in multiple successful media for all ages. Iâve had parents say their kids are too old to get excited for our toy catalog, when their kid was 8.
People say kids are growing up too fast, maybe its because we force them to grow out of ââchildish thingsââ too fast. It happens to neurotypical kids but thereâs so much more pressure on neurodivergent kids as they get older. When I get a parent asking me is a toy is too young for their kid, I just tell them I donât see an age limit on toys if theyâre still enjoyed. Whats the harm in people of any age enjoying something ââchildishââ if it makes them happy?

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Iâve said this before and Iâll say it again but it is absolutely an example of civilizational inadequacy that only deaf people know ASL
âoh we shouldnât teach children this language, it will only come in handy if they [checks notes] ever have to talk in a situation where itâs noisy or they need to be quietâ
My mom learned it because she figured sheâll go deaf when she gets old
My family went holiday SCUBA diving once, and a couple of Deaf guys were in the group. I was really little and I spent most of the briefing overcome with the realization that while the rest of us were going to have regulators in our mouths and be underwater fairly soon, they were going to be able to do all the same stuff and keep talking.
The only reason some form of sign language is not a standard skill is ableism, as far as I can tell.
For anyone interested in learning, Bill Vicars has full lessons of ASL on youtube that were used in my college level classes.Â
https://www.youtube.com/user/billvicars
and hereâs the link to the website he puts in his videos:
https://www.lifeprint.com/
Update: you guys this is an amazing resource for learning asl. Bill Vicars is an incredible teacher. His videos are of him teaching a student in a classroom, using the learned vocabulary to have conversations.
Not only is the conversation format immersive and helpful for learning the grammar, but the students make common mistakes which he corrects, mistakes I wouldnât have otherwise know I was making.
He also emphasizes learning ASL in the way itâs actually used by the Deaf community and not the rigid structure that some ASL teachers impose in their classrooms
His lesson plans include learning about the Deaf community, which is an important aspect of learning ASL. Knowing how to communicate in ASL without the knowledge of the culture behind it leaves out a lot of nuances and explanations for the way ASL is.
Lastly, his lessons are just a lot of fun to watch. He is patient, entertaining, and funny. This good natured enthusiasm is contagious and learning feels like a privilege and not a chore
And itâs all FREE. Seriously. If youâve ever wanted to learn ASL
imagine the most meanspirited, unlikeable, rude, bitter, self centered, negative person you can think of. not a rapist, not a murderer, not an abuser. just a charmless, tactless, dyed in the wool asshole you wouldn't want to spend two seconds with. now assume they get sick, not with the flu, but with a long term, serious illness that limits their ability to provide for themself. a society in which that person is left to die alone because nobody likes them on a personal level is a failed society.
and the thing is, no matter how likeable or charming or cute you are, peoples' patience runs out. the friends who drop everything to rush you to the ER the first time you shit blood tell you to stop being so tmi the fourteenth time. people might give you a couch to crash on the first week after your shitty ex kicks you out, but by week eight, you better have another place to stay. people run out of time, patience, money, compassion, energy. there needs to be an impersonal option, a real safety net that isn't going to dump you when you become inconvenient
denying yourself enjoyment of things because you don't want to be 'cringe' is the most cringe thing you can do actually. like what are you, catholic?
like, you're going to refuse to engage with anything that feeds your emotions with rich and delicious new sensations in case you fall to the temptation of unironically having fun? okay john harvey kellogg jr.
gays arenât âstarved for representationâ you just refuse to watch anything that isnât a marvel movie
âbut gay representation still hardly exists in the mainstreamâ gay rep will NEVER exist in the mainstream if you donât support indie lgbt projects, if you donât prove the demand for depth for complexity for love, if you donât just fucking google actual lgbt films
seeing a couple people on this post talking about how thereâs no media about lgbt people of colour. hereâs a list of over 100 films with lgbt protagonists of colour.
protagonists of colour only, off the top of my head but still compiling. recommendations welcome!
Oh if your so smart then where is my happy ending lesbian film that isnât a period piece, only featuring teenagers, or set in like the 80s/90s????
I could list at least 30 films like this you definitely havenât seen but Iâm not going to make it easy for you bc you ship snarry and sound like a cunt
anyway q*eer is a slur and privileged liberals made everyone believe its OK to call everyone that cause they watched a Ted talk in 2017. and if you don't know why at this point that's a you problem. look it up. or better yet, go the fuck out and talk to a LGBT person older than 30. unacceptable.
Hi, I'm a queer person over 30. Queer was fully reclaimed before I even hit puberty. Most non-radfem folks in the community will tell you the exact same thing. Making queer back into a slur is a radfem psyop and completely ahistorical.
Hello from another queer person over 30. Can confirm that âqueerâ has been reclaimed for decades. âGayâ was in fact the bigger slur in my part of the world when I was growing up. As was âlesbianâ/âlesboâ.
Speaking as a queer nearer to 50 than 30, I would like to suggest OP take a moment to go fuck themselves. đđź
Yet another queer person well over 30 agreeing that queer was a reclaimed word well over 30 years ago. Stop listening to radfem/TERF psyops. Alternately if you are a radfem/TERF please kindly go fuck yourself.
Queer has been a reclaimed word for decades and it's 100% true that people who are telling you that it's a slur are doing so in order to indoctrinate and manipulate people for their own ends.
When someone tries to tell you something like 'privileged liberals made everyone believe', they're making an assertion. If they don't give you any evidence to back up that claim, be skeptical of it. You can do your own research and see if they're right or if we're right.
If you do the research on this one, you will see that we are 100% correct.
The LGBTQ+ rights organization Queer Nation was founded in 1990, well after the term was already in common use.
Queer has been reclaimed so successfully that it's a fully accepted term in academia. You can get degrees in queer studies because of the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
One of the classic LGBTQ+ slogans is, "We're here, we're queer, get used to it!"
People like the OP have no evidence for any of their claims. Like, seriously, they're honestly claiming that queer people call ourselves queer because of a fucking TED Talk from 2017.
Yeah, right, and I suppose asexual people didn't exist before the year 2000, trans people didn't exist before WW2, and they really are trying to make the fucking frogs gay.
Like, seriously, have you heard a more ridiculous claim than, "privileged liberals made everyone believe its OK to call everyone that cause they watched a Ted talk in 2017"? I mean, it's completely laughable.
Anyways, the people that make these claims are authoritarians in the LGBTQ+ community. They might be radfems, they might be TERFs, they might be some other kind of conservative right-wing type that just thinks they have to control what other people think to feel good about themselves.
Find people who don't tell you that your identity is a slur. Find people who don't try to teach you to hate others. Find people who aren't emotionally stunted children in the bodies of adults.
Learn our history.

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steam game, bought on sale, never played
Concerning Julietâs age
I find a big stumbling block that comes with teaching Romeo and Juliet is explaining Julietâs age. Juliet is 13 - more precisely, sheâs just on the cusp of turning 14. Though itâs not stated explicitly, Romeo is implied to be a teenager just a few years older than her - perhaps 15 or 16. Most people dismiss Julietâs age by saying âthat was normal back thenâ or âthatâs just how it was.â This is fundamentally untrue, and I will explain why.
In Elizabethan England, girls could legally marry at 12 (boys at 14) but only with their fatherâs permission. However, it was normal for girls to marry after 18 (more commonly in early to mid twenties) and for boys to marry after 21 (more commonly in mid to late twenties). But at 14, a girl could legally marry without papaâs consent. Of course, in doing so she ran the risk of being disowned and left destitute, which is why it was so critical for a young man to obtain the fatherâs goodwill and permission first. Therein lies the reason why we are repeatedly told that Juliet is about to turn 14 in under 2 weeks. This was a critical turning point in her life.
In modern terms, this would be the equivalent of the law in many countries which states children can marry at 16 with their parentsâ permission, or at 18 to whomever they choose - but we see it as pretty weird if someone marries at 16. Theyâre still a kid, we think to ourselves - why would their parents agree to this?
This is exactly the attitude we should take when we look at Romeo and Julietâs clandestine marriage. Today it would be like two 16 year olds marrying in secret. This is NOT normal and would NOT have been received without a raised eyebrow from the audience. Modern audiences AND Elizabethan audiences both look at this and think THEY. ARE. KIDS.
Critically, it is also not normal for fathers to force daughters into marriage at this time. Lord Capulet initially makes a point of telling Julietâs suitor Paris that âmy will to her consent is but a part.â He tells Paris he wants to wait a few years before he lets Juliet marry, and informs him to woo her in the meantime. Obtaining the ladyâs consent was of CRITICAL importance. Itâs why so many of Shakespeareâs plays have such dazzling, well-matched lovers in them, and why men who try to force daughters to marry against their will seldom prosper. You had to let the lady make her own choice. Why?
Put simply, for her health. It was considered a scientific fact that a womanâs health was largely, if not solely, dependant on her womb. Once she reached menarche in her teenage years, it was important to see her fitted with a compatible sexual partner. (For aristocratic girls, who were healthier and enjoyed better diets, menarche generally occurred in the early teens rather than the later teens, as was more normal at the time). The womb was thought to need heat, pleasure, and conception if the woman was to flourish. Catholics might consider virginity a fit state for women, but the reformed English church thought it was borderline unhealthy - sex and marriage was sometimes even prescribed as a medical treatment. A neglected wife or widow could become sick from lack of (pleasurable) sex. Marrying an unfit sexual partner or an older man threatened to put a girlâs health at risk. An unsatisfied woman, made ill by her womb as a result - was a threat to the family unit and the stability of society as a whole. A satisfying sex life with a good husband meant a womb that had the heat it needed to thrive, and by extension a happy and healthy woman.
In Shakespeareâs plays, sexual compatibility between lovers manifests on the stage in wordplay. In Much Ado About Nothing, sparks fly as Benedick and Beatrice quarrel and banter, in comparison to the silence that pervades the relationship between Hero and Claudio, which sours very quickly. Compare to R+J - Lord Capulet tells Paris to woo Juliet, but the two do not communicate. But when Romeo and Juliet meet, their first speech takes the form of a sonnet. They might be young and foolish, but they are in love. Their speech betrays it.
Juliet, on the cusp of 14, would have been recognised as a girl who had reached a legal and biological turning point. Her sexual awakening was upon her, though she cares very little about marriage until she meets the man she loves. They talk, and he wins her wholehearted, unambiguous and enthusiastic consent - all excellent grounds for a relationship, if only she werenât so young.
When Tybalt dies and Romeo is banished, Lord Capulet undergoes a monstrous change from doting father to tyrannical patriarch. Juiletâs consent has to take a back seat to the issue of securing the Capulet house. He needs to win back the princeâs favour and stabilise his family after the murder of his nephew. Julietâs marriage to Paris is the best way to make that happen. Fathers didnât ordinarily throw their daughters around the room to make them marry. Among the nobility, it was sometimes a sad fact that girls were simply expected to agree with their fathersâ choices. They might be coerced with threats of being disowned. But for the VAST majority of people in England - basically everyone non-aristocratic - the idea of forcing a daughter that young to marry would have been received with disgust. And even among the nobility it was only used as a last resort, when the welfare of the family was at stake. Note that aristocratic boys were often in the same position, and would also be coerced into advantageous marriages for the good of the family.
tl;dr:
Q. Was it normal for girls to marry at 13?
A. Hell no!
Q. Was it legal for girls to marry at 13?
A. Not without dadâs consent - Friar Lawrence performs this dodgy ceremony only because he believes it might bring peace between the houses.
Q. Was it normal for fathers to force girls into marriage?
A. Not at this time in England. In noble families, daughters were expected to conform to their parents wishes, but a girlâs consent was encouraged, and the importance of compatibility was recognised.
Q. How should we explain Julietâs age in modern terms?
A. A modern Juliet would be a 17 year old girl whoâs close to turning 18. We all agree that girls should marry whomever they love, but not at 17, right? Weâd say sheâs still a kid and needs to wait a bit before rushing into this marriage. We acknowledge that sheâd be experiencing her sexual awakening, but marrying at this age is odd - sheâs still a child and legally neither her nor Romeo should be marrying without parental permission.
Q. Would Elizabethans have seen Juliet as a child?
A. YES. The force of this tragedy comes from the youth of the lovers. The Montagues and Capulets have created such a hateful, violent and dangerous world for their kids to grow up in that the pangs of teenage passion are enough to destroy the future of their houses. Something as simple as two kids falling in love is enough to lead to tragedy. That is the crux of the story and it should not be glossed over - Shakespeare made Juliet 13 going on 14 for a reason.Â
Romeo and Juliet is the Elizabethan equivalent of  âwonât someone please think of the childrenâ  itâs a romantic tragedy  not a romance  romantic in that itâs a love story  but not a romance in the sense that it is supposed to be emulated  and is likely a social commentary of something happening at the time  whether it was ongoing religious feuds  which did tear families apart  uprisings across the country  or just general malaise with how the world was going in the 1590s  itâs also worth noting that R+J was based heavily on a poem writen  some 30ish years prior  by Arthur Brooke  known as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet  which in turn was based on the work of Matteo Bandello  who supposedly based most of his work on real life events  making his association to Lucrezia Gonzaga  an Italian noblewoman  who was married off at the age of 14  likely to solidify some sort of alliance during turbulent times all the more poignant  Shakespeare was and never has been the reserve of the intellectual and elite  that we are taught his work without historical context  robs us of the true value of his work social commentary  and this social commentary would like to have a few words with your false ideas of âhistorical accuracyâ (via @thebibliosphere)
I saw this in my emails and couldnât see why Iâd been tagged in it (all the while nodding vehemently along) and then I saw my tags and ah. Yep. Still forever mad at how badly Shakespeare is taught in most schools.
Wait but then why does Julietâs mother talk about being already married younger than Juliet currently is?
Likely because her match to Julietâs father was an arranged match to solidify family names and houses in order to avoid conflicts or to establish wealth. (It also serves to denote the tragic undercurrent of the play ie love is secondary to wealth and power.)
It wasnât so uncommon for children of royalty or nobility to be betrothed from birth, or even symbolically married, in order to make alliances. But that doesnât mean they were engaging in the kind of adult relationship we envision when we think of marriage today.
Which isnât to say some people didnât buck the norm and do horrible things Margaret Beaufort is a prime example of this, which the Tudors would likely be aware of. Her first marriage contract actually happened when she was one year old. It was later dissolved and she was remarried at the age of 12, and her second husband, Edmund Tudor, did in fact get her pregnant before dying himself. She was 13 years old when she gave birth, and it caused major health issues for her and nearly killed her. When she survived it was considered miraculous. Which should tell you just how not normal this kind of thing was thought of even back then.
I agree with absolutely everything in this thread of discussion. Even so, my long-standing fascination with both Shakespeare and late medieval / early renaissance history makes it impossible for me to to reblog without throwing in my extra few cents:
I. Margaret Beaufort
In my mind, there are few cases that better demonstrate the tensions between medieval norms and medieval realities than that of Margaret Beaufort. Like many other women of her time, she had only one child surviving to adulthood: Henry Tudor (later Henry VII and the founder of the Tudor dynasty). In that, Margaret wasnât so remarkable: infant mortality made this a common enough outcome, though undoubtedly a tragic one.
Where Margaretâs case was exceptional is that Henry was also her only known pregnancy, without so much as a stillbirth, infant death, or even another pregnancy ever being mentioned in connection to her. In her own time, it was commonly assumed that her experience of childbirth at a very young age was what accounted for her barrenness, and even to us today, it doesnât seem implausible to assume some kind of physical trauma that prevented later pregnancies from taking place, given all the medical knowledge weâve accumulated about the risks of childbirth at either extreme of age.
But there was more to this. The vast Beaufort estate that came with Margaretâs young hand were so valuable that, to 15th/16th century English minds, it perfectly explained Edmund Tudorâs motives for having been so reckless with the health of his wife: having an heir of his own would ensure that her lands would stay with him, in the name of any children they might have together, whereas the lands would pass to someone else if she should die before having a child. Of course, most men in that situation would have waited anyway, as a child whose mother died in childbirth was much less likely to survive anyway, so contemporaries portrayed Edmund Tudorâs actions as short-sighted and foolhardy at best, amoral and cruel and worst. But Fate must have a sense of irony, because Edmund died before his son was even born, while Margaret lived, and as aristocratic women tended to do in those circumstances, she was remarried to Henry Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham.
Since Margaret was Staffordâs first (and only) wife, he would have depended on her to give him any heirs at all, to whom he could pass on the lands he already had, let alone any of Margaretâs own (and it would be logical to assume that the Beaufort inheritance would have been no less tempting to Stafford than it was to Tudor). He must have at least hoped for children from her, and at the time, there wasnât any reason to expect she was totally barren either: there was the traumatic birth to consider, but she was more physically mature when she remarried, and there was room to hope that widowhood had given her time to recover. And yet, despite all this, it seems few people (if any) were surprised that Margaret did not bear any more children. It didnât seem to doom her relationship with her second husband either: on the contrary, Margaret enjoyed a happy relationship with Stafford for well over a decade until his death, so if there was any bitterness on his part over his lack of heirs, he must have managed it well. Even in the contemporary sources (who donât tend to be charitable towards female figures), any blame for her barrenness is laid squarely at the feet of the various men who were her guardians in her early life, who clearly abused their authority over her for their own benefit, rather than to safeguard Margaretâs well-being as guardians are supposed to do (one of them being Edmund Tudor himself⌠he wasnât supposed to even be in the running for her wardship, but Henry VI actually outright broke a promise he had made to Margaretâs father to let Margaretâs mother be her guardian in the event of his death).
This indicates to me even more strongly that late-medieval / Tudor people would have not only been sympathetic towards what Margaret and women like her had suffered, but also understood that neglectful attitudes towards the health and happiness of dependents have consequences. Shakespeareâs own words make this clear, at the beginning of the play:
Paris: Younger than she are happy mothers made. Capulet: And too soon marrâd are those so early made.
Tudor audiences would have understood these lines as the words of a benevolent father protecting his daughter from the advances of an overeager young suitor, invoking what seems to have been a Tudor-era trope that early marriages do not make for happy endings⌠not for the woman, not for her family or husband, and certainly not for the children she might otherwise have borne. Because Capulet came off as the âgood fatherâ in the beginning of the play, it makes it all the more shocking when his attitude changes and he becomes the all-too-familiar figure of the cold, uncaring patriarch who regards his children only as pawns*. I imagine the juxtaposition would have invited Tudor audiences to feel Julietâs sense of betrayal as if it were happening to them.
* Jane Grey, the famed ânine daysâ queenâ was also rumored to be such a victim of her parentsâ ambition: they also saw fit to force her into a marriage that she seriously objected to, and historical records point a fairly consistent picture of their callous disregard towards her wishes and genuine happiness.
II. Consent in Medieval Marriages
Twelve and fourteen are actually also important numbers in their own right, and Shakespeareâs choice to place Juliet between those two ages has an important symbolic meaning. Late medieval Catholic doctrine defined marriage as a sacrament, like the Eucharist (Communion), or Holy Orders. Many of the sacraments require those who receive them to understand what theyâre getting into for the sacrament to have the desired effect. To guarantee understanding (at least from a theological perspective), you would have to be above âthe age of reasonâ, the age at which you were considered to be able to think for yourself. Conservative definitions of the âage of reasonâ sometimes defined it as the age of fifteen or fourteen (or older), but was later fixed at twelve. Since marriage was one of these sacraments, a marriage where both spouses had not fully and knowingly given their consent was no marriage at all.* Therefore, twelve was considered the absolute lower age limit at which a person could marry without compromising the very spiritual foundation of the marriage itself, while fourteen was considered a safer age at which to assume the person had full control of their reasoning capacities.
The other side of the âconsentâ coin when it came to marriage was that consent wasnât just a necessary condition to finalize a marriage, it was also sufficient condition. If a man and a woman had given their knowing consent to marry one another, and if they had intentionally verbalized this promise to one another and consummated their marriage, then no earthly power could invalidate this pact for any reason (outside of a few very specific ones, like incest) without risking damnation. Witnesses were convenient as a way to prove that the marriage had taken place, if a family member or some segment of society disapproved of the match, but they werenât needed in order to make the marriage spiritually valid. Basically, the Catholic Church at this stage somehow ended up putting the idea of consent at the very heart of the idea of what made a marriage valid or not, and this had consequences not only because of the threat of hellfire, but also because Church law was secular law when it came to domestic matters like marriage and divorce. And then it came to pass that the English Reformation left this specific area of the doctrine mostly untouched, so the Tudors would have had similar ideas surrounding the question of consent and marriage as did their late medieval forbears.
This theological point is not only the whole raison dâetre for the most central plot device in the play, but also adds an extra note of pathos to Julietâs situation and an extra layer of moral judgment towards Lord Capuletâs behavior. If she did not insist on keeping her marriage vow, or if she married Paris knowing full well that she had already been married, both of those would be mortal sins for which she would risk damnation. And by extension, because he used duress against Juliet to try to make her comply with his sinful wish, Lord Capulet has also damned himself (albeit unknowingly, but even so, the narrative clearly presents forcing his daughterâs marriage as something he should know better than to do, anyway).
Until this point, Julietâs marriage is characterized as an impulsive decision such as only foolish youth could make, but ironically, in that confrontation with Lord Capulet, this slip of a young girl is now portrayed as conducting herself with far more spiritual maturity and grace than any of the adults around her. Her parents are failing in their duty towards her by putting their dynastic concerns ahead of her health and happiness (when itâs been made clear they already know this is a Bad Idea), and her Nurse, who actually knows about the secret marriage and all the reasons why it cannot be taken back, is actively pleading with her to just forget it and pretend Romeo never was. Julietâs choice here is monumental, because it involves not only disregarding her parents, but also an active decision to completely break with the woman who has been with her for literally everything in her life up to that point, a break so thorough that even Nurse herself doesnât know that itâs happened. This dramatic turning point is a bittersweet portrait of the girl losing her innocence and growing up into an adult, from one angle, and from another angle itâs a paean to the pure-hearted idealism (different from the limpid innocence of childhood in that itâs willful and risk-taking, and fiery in quality) that can only be found in the young. Either way, it does Julietâs character AND Shakespeareâs dramatic talents a massive disservice to portray her situation as something so simplistic or reactionary as lovelorn pining after an absent boyfriend, or rebelling against her parents, or âstaying true to her own heartâ.
This wasnât just a plot device for the stage: many real-life lovers leaned on this feature of the Churchâs teachings, when faced with the opposition of their families and communities, and in many cases, the Church was indeed forced to side with the couple, however reluctantly. Margery Paston, the daughter of a genteel landowning family in the 15th century, and Richard Calle, the Paston familyâs longtime housekeeper, were one such case of a real-life Romeo and Juliet: they mutually fell in love, and married in secret when they came up against heavy opposition from Margeryâs family. The Pastons responded by separating them, firing Calle from his job and having him sent to London, while Margery remained in Norfolk under house arrest. There, she seems to have been subjected to ongoing and intense pressure to walk back her marriage⌠if the couple had been married formally in church, this would not have been possible, but secret marriages were vulnerable to challenges like this because they were secret. A witness would have helped her and Calleâs case and made it more airtight, but even if the couple had had any, apparently the Pastons had succeeded in intimidating them into silence.
But even though the Pastons seemed to be winning, itâs hard to believe that bystanders wouldnât have objected to at least some of what the Pastons were doing to try and get their way. Otherwise, Calle could not have written Margery in 1469, during their separation, saying âI suppose if you tell them sadly the truth, they will not damn their souls for usâ. Their situation was objectively quite bleak. For the months they were apart, it was made very clear to both Margery and Calle that, if the couple continued to insist on their marriage, the Pastons would disown Margery and throw her out of the house, therefore leaving her with few options for survival, let alone to find her way to Calle over a distance of a hundred miles. He mournfully acknowledges that their gamble might fail, and their worst fears might come true, but there is also defiance in his resignation, as he concludes, âif they will in no wise agree [to respect our marriage], between God, the Devil and them be it.â
Margery, for her part, was no less determined. When Margery was finally brought before the local bishop, he turned out to be sympathetic towards the Paston family, and gave Margery a long speech about the importance of pleasing her family and community (so much for the theological importance of consent, but then, clerical hypocrisy was nothing new to medieval people). But Margery remained steadfast (in fact, I am inclined to think from her next words that the bishopâs words only goaded her to greater resolve) and when she spoke, she not only continued to insist that she had said what she had said, but according to her mother she âboldlyâ added, âif those words made it not sure [âŚ] she would make it surer before she went thence, for she said she thought in her conscience she was bound [in marriage to Calle], whatsoever the words were.â Her wording left absolutely no room for doubt in the mind of even the most flexible theologian. And when Calle was cross-examined and his testimony found to match that of Margeryâs, the bishop of Norfolk had no choice but to rule in the coupleâs favor.
Margeryâs mother did indeed make good on her word: she did both disown Margery and throw her out of the house. She seemed to have done it more to save face, however, than to actually punish her daughter, since she does seem to have made arrangements behind the scenes for Margery to stay with sympathetic neighbors. In the end, Calle was right, the Pastons were not willing to risk their own souls. Margery and Richard Calle got their happy ending, and had at least three children (and we know about them because we know Margeryâs mother left them money in her own will).
* This also meant that Edmund Tudor actually would have been Margaret Beaufortâs first husband, not her second. It was true that she had already been âin a marriageâ before being married later to Tudor, but strictly speaking, it was only a precontract (what we today would think of as an engagement) with signficance limited to the secular realm; there are a lot of reasons this would not have really been considered a marriage at the time, but the most theologically pertinent one is that the brideâs consent could not have been involved, because she was too young to be able to give it. Consequently, this paper marriage was easily dissolved as soon as her guardians thought it more politically expedient to marry her to Edmund Tudor. And for all intents and purposes, Margaret Beaufort herself considered Tudor to be her first husband, not John de la Pole.
tl;dr: the study of Shakespeare cannot be separated from historical and societal understanding of the times he lived in, and frankly, itâs a terrible shame that English classes donât emphasize this more, because then youâre throwing out about 80% of the meaning his works actually hold.
Sorry to keep reblogging this long post but holy shit this is an excellent addition. Thank you for taking the time to write all that up.
I will forever be grateful to my eleventh-grade English teacher, Mrs. Shaw, who taught us that when analyzing literature it is not only wise but absolutely essential to consider not only the authorâs other works, but also the historical context in which it was written.
I was today years old when I learned that I was taught Romeo and Juliet wrong even AFTER being in the play.
@thebibliosphere do you know if itâs common for people to know the age of Juliet solidly and then think that the reason everything was dodgy was because Romeo was like 17/18 years old? Cause likeâŚ
Anyone I asked about Romeoâs age said âheâs like. An adult. A young one but an adult.â So for all my life I assumed Romeo was 18 going on 19 or 17 going on 18 while Juliet was just hardly a teenager.
Oh man, this is an old, old post.
Full disclaimer: Iâm obviously no expertâjust a former Shakespearian theater kid with a love of historyâbut no, Romeo is not eighteen, and nor was he considered an adult.
Thatâs a very modern perspective, and I suspect it comes from people latching onto the idea that if Juliet was considered legally old enough to be married at fourteen, then Romeoâs slight advantage in years must mean he was considered an adult when this is not at all how a Tudor audience would have viewed it.
Also, I donât know where the idea that Romeo is eighteen/fully an adult came from, because Romeoâs age is unspecified in the original text, though the consensus is that heâs between the ages of fifteen at a minimum and seventeen at most. Neither an adult by our terms nor by Tudor ones.
As noted above, the minimum legal age for marriage in the Tudor era was twelve years old for noble girls, but what we did not mention was the legal age for boys, which was fourteen. So if we take the stance that Romeo is intended to be fifteen to sixteen, possibly hovering on the verge of seventeen, in the context of the times, heâs still considered barely old enough to marry, same as Juliet. He still needs the permission of his parents to marry because he is not considered legally old enough to make this decision himself.
His behavior isnât that of a predatory adult pursuing a child (weâll get to that) but that of a young man in the midst of his teens pursuing someone in both a suitable age range and social class for his standing. And from a thematic standpoint: the age and social class where your family might orchestrate a match to solidify alliances or to end a blood war if only they had their shit together.
This becomes very clear when you take into consideration the added context that most commoners didnât marry until their mid-to-late-twenties when theyâd had a chance to become financially established and also become both physically mature and strong enough to survive childbirth. There were, of course, always exceptions to this rule, but weâre speaking in generalities here. Only the rich married their kids off young, and most of the time there would have been clauses in place to prevent the girl from getting pregnant too young and dying in childbirth.
Basically, the entire Tudor audience, both noble and common, would have been watching this tragedy unfold on stage, clutching their pearls and going âOh god theyâre babies. Where are the parents?!â
To which the answer is âembroiled in a blood feud and not paying attention to the things that are happening under their nose until itâs too late.â
Paris, on the other hand, the suitor Julietâs father wants to pair her with, and letâs be clear here, the man making it very clear heâs interested in her sexually, is twenty-five.
That line up above about âhappy motherâs madeâ? Thatâs Paris, a twenty-five-year-old man looking at a fourteen-year-old girl and announcing that he not only wants to bed her but considers it fine for girls even younger than fourteen to become mothers. The man is a one-man parade of red flags, and thatâs also what makes Julietâs father switch so villainous. Heâd rather marry his child off to a full-grown man who doesnât care for her safety in the marital bed than resolve the feud with the Montagues, and the Tudor audience would have been deeply uncomfortable with this narrative, same as us.
So no, Romeo and Juliet isnât a mess because Romeo was an adult. Romeo and Juliet is a mess because both Romeo and Juliet are functionally children trying to act like adults because no one else is. Not their parents, not the priest. And thatâs the root of the tragedy.
Itâs not a moral about problematic age gapsâthough that is highlighted through Parisâitâs a moral about allowing vengeance to cloud your judgment and letting the children, the innocents who donât know any better, try to behave like adults because youâve left a void and would rather seek death than a peaceful resolution.
And I (still) really wish it was taught better in schools.