A Queer Reading of "Romeo and Juliet"

Queer theory emerged from tides tossed up by the ebbing and flowing of second-wave feminism throughout the late eighties and the nineties, gaining recognition through the voices of contemporary gender theorists such as Judith Butler, Eve K. Sedgwick, and Siobhan B. Somerville. The practice draws its name from the word "queer"; sometimes pejorative, sometimes innocuous, the word "queer" is used to suggest a curving of the rigidly constructed social lines boxing in gender, race, and (as you might have guessed) sexuality. The study sets out to "[call] into question the stability of any categories of identity based on sexual orientation."(1)

The two lovers, lost 

Rampant with sexual suggestion, carpe diem, forbidden love, and sodomy (in a nutshell), Romeo and Juliet is a play about the poor fate of the two titular star-crossed lovers, but it is also about their "queer romance" and how it proves as a critique of the "heteronormative" society surrounding them in Verona where, in opposition to what queer theory envisions as "good," everything is required to mean the same thing and abide by normative rules.

Romeo and Juliet, by falling in love, become the "queers" of the play; instead of sticking to their own respective kinds (e.g. the Montagues and Capulets) the two lovers transgress and fall for each other instead, which is, of course, strictly forbidden by their feuding families.

One important function of queer theory is to call formed "identities" (both hetero and homo identities) into question. In regards to this function, one of the most important passages in Romeo and Juliet comes within the balcony scene (Act II, Scene II), during which Juliet questions the philosophical weight of names and identity:

Jul. Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself though, not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O! be some other name:
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet[.]

Juliet is not just lamenting the happenstance that her beloved was born a Montague; she calls into question the fickle performativity behind all names, that Romeo would still be Romeo no matter what his family name would be--that her love transcends whatever constructed system gives him the name of an enemy.

This is an crucial component of queer theory: one main goal shared by all theorists is to break down the "sexual identities"of both of heterosexuality and homosexuality created by social culture, showing that the label are nothing more than the labels of sweet-smelling roses, that they serve no purpose but to police the line dividing what is "normal" or "natural" (heterosexuality) and what is "deviant" (homosexuality.) The love that Juliet feels is not just a result of Romeo being a male Montague; rather, it transcends both his maleness and his name, encapsulating a very queer function in the play.

Although acting through a heterosexual relationship, the queerness of Romeo and Juliet's tragic love story becomes obvious even after just the tiniest reading into the play's subtext. As we discussed in class today, the play gets even more "queer" later on by the way the text suggests sodomy (such as when Romeo claims he will cram Death's "detestable maw" with more "food" in Act V, Scene III). These sexual and sodomitical suggestions haunt the play until its very end, which happens to be the end of the eponymous Juliet and her Romeo. Their deaths function in two ways in two different readings: in one way, the two, by dying, rob their "normal" sexualities of the chance for reproduction, succumbing to a definite end of death. In another way, these two characters, surrounded by sodomitical or queer (rather than heteronormative) identities, have nothing left to do but die, being surrounded by a society that deems their romance "forbidden." The queer characters, as many queer characters seem to do, kill themselves because of the pressure of the normative. Though this double suicide takes on a haunting new weight in our contemporary world, it seems that Shakespeare too saw something dangerous in the construction of such rigid social categories.

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(1) Somerville, Siobhan B. Keywords for American Cultural Studies. Eds. Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler. New York, NYU Press, 2007. 187-191.