Mother Figure In Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet

Juliet’s words in this passage reveal that she desires a mother figure and loves and trusts Romeo.
Juliet lacks a good mother figure and needs one to guide her and help her get over her anxieties about marriage and all that it entails. While Juliet has a mother, Lady Capulet, they are distant and don’t have a very good relationship. Furthermore, she wouldn’t be able to help Juliet in her current situation, as she would strongly disapprove of it. The mother figure she does have, her Nurse since she was a baby, is not a very good one. She keeps secrets from Juliet just for the sake of knowing something Juliet doesn’t, and fails to give Juliet any advice; after telling Juliet where to marry Romeo, the only words she offers is a sex joke. The

result of this mother figure ill-suited to the role is Juliet’s anxiousness on her wedding night. Juliet, at only thirteen years old, is nervous about what will happen when Romeo comes to her room. She doesn’t know what will happen, as she has never done it before. She imagines the night as a “sober-suited matron” (3.2.11), an older woman, and asks it to teach her how to “lose a winning match” (3.2.12), lose her virginity but gain pleasure and a deeper connection with Romeo, her husband, at the same time. This is all advice she hasn’t been given from her mother, as a result of their distant relationship and the fact that she wouldn’t approve of Juliet marrying a Montague, nor her Nurse, who is too immature to offer any good advice.
Juliet manages to overcome this challenge of having no good mother figure and talks herself through her concerns, staying excited for Romeo to come to her.

In the beginning of the scene, she urges the sun to set and night to come. She not only asks the night to guide her but also to hide her so she can “grow bold” (3.2.15). She wants to be passionate and please Romeo, in spite of her nervousness. As she is speaking, she realizes that there is nothing wrong with having sex with a loving husband. When she has this revelation, her longing for Romeo is renewed. While calling out for him, she refers to him as “day in night” (3.2.17), reminiscent of Romeo referring to Juliet as the Sun and saying that if her eyes were stars birds would mistake the night for the day. Juliet is as in love with Romeo as Romeo is with her. She is waiting for him to come to her room, for him to stand against the darkness “whiter than new snow upon a raven’s back” (3.2.20). He and she will glow with their love for each other, making up for the lack of light in the night. Juliet also trusts that Romeo has not been immodest with other women in the past. When asking night to help her, she says the match is being played for “a pair of stainless maidenhoods” (3.2.13), meaning both her pure virginity and Romeo’s. She trusts that Romeo’s virginity hasn’t been profaned previously. She manages to talk herself out of her nervousness by being poetically exuberant in expressing her romantic feelings towards Romeo,

and it makes her anticipate eagerly the romantic connection she and Romeo will develop through the consummation of their marriage.