Juliets Emotional Currency in William Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet :: Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

In an endeavor to push away from medieval love conventions and her fathers authority, Shakespeares Juliet asserts sovereignty over her informality. She removes it from her fathers heavens and uses it to capture Romeos love. Critic Mary Bly argues that sexual puns color Juliets language. These innuendoes were common in Renaissance literature and would have been recognized by an Elizabethan audience. Arguably, Juliet uses sexual name when speaking to Romeo in order to make him aware of her sexuality. When he comes to her balcony, she asks him, What satisfaction canst thou have tonight? (2.1.167). Bly asserts that satisfaction in her hands, becomes a demure play on the sating of desire (108). Following this pun, Juliet proposes marriage. She teases Romeo with sexual thoughts and indeed stipulates that marriage must precede the consummation of their love. Juliet uses death in a similar sense. She asks night to Give me my Romeo, and when I shall die / Take him and crook him out in little stars (3.2.21-22). Death holds a dual intend in these lines. It connotes both ceasing to be and erotic ecstasy (Bly 98). Based upon this double meaning, one can infer that she sweetly asks civil night to teach her how to lose the enlivened of love she is about to play for her virginity (Wells 921). She tells her nurse, Ill to my wedding bed, / And death, not Romeo, take my virginal membrane (3.2.136-137). Placing death opposite Romeo highlights the irony of the situation both death and Romeo should rent her maidenhead together. These sexual puns reveal Juliets awareness of her sexuality. She entices Romeo, forcing her sexuality to act as emotional currency.   After her marriage to Romeo, Juliet speaks about her virginity in objective terms O, I have bought the mansion of a love / But not possessed it, and though I am change, / Not yet enjoyed (3.2.26-28). In line 26, love is an object to be bought and sold. In the next line, she recognizes th at she sold herself. Juliet understands that she sold her virginity for Romeos love.   Juliet rejects all previous standards for women. She will not be check to a relationship with Romeo that adheres to the courtly love tradition.