Juliet and the age of consent
Giovanni De sio Cesari
Among the singular news reported by the media, I saw one reporting that in a Missouri school, the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet had also been included among the books forbidden to students because they were considered anti-educational in terms of sexual morality. In fact, however, in the tragedy Juliet and Romeo do not have pre-marital relations at all: FIRST they get married regularly and THEN they spend their first (and only) wedding night. Zeffirelli also added some semi-nude, which obviously isn't present in the theater. In the 19th century, the myth of Romeo and Juliet was born: in the wake of romanticism, the story was interpreted as pure love, à la Cyrano de Bergerac. But in reality, in that story, sex is the basis of love, as it should be. The story is passed as the sublime example of love. But if you look closely, it is terrible behavior: Juliet marries a man the day after she sees him, secretly from all her relatives; What would you say if your 14 year old daughter did something like this? Today Romeo, with the friar who celebrated the wedding, would probably end up in prison, branded as monster rapists of minors, Juliet declared a victim and the marriage declared null and void. Nowadays it is accepted that a 14 year old girl has sex, but that she marries a stranger secretly from her parents would not be admitted by anyone: therefore, according to the modern vision, a minor can have sex, but strictly outside of marriage. The fact is that we moderns have distinguished sex and marriage: the rules, however, remain very uncertain. There isn't really a limit to having sex, just consent. Oddly enough, consent depends on the age difference. So a girl (or boy) can give consent to a partner of 18 years, but not 25 years. I wonder why the consent of a minor would only apply to a minor and not to an adult, just as a minor can have sex, but only outside of marriage. The rules seem a bit strange to me. The age of marriage has also changed, which depends on the culture in which one lives. In the past, since the fundamental task for women was that of being mothers, the limit of the marital union was the one in which one could have children, therefore around 13-14 years of age. Back then, life was short, but even more so, most of those born did not reach adulthood, so women basically went from breastfeeding to pregnancies without a break. Currently we think that women should train, study, mature, work and therefore we raise the age of marriage to 18 as a minimum, but in reality marriage occurs later and later, often I would even say too late, close to menopause. This seems to me to be one of the many reasons why we have the opposite problem: the birth rate decline, which for the moment is not felt much, but which in future generations could become an unsolvable drama. It seems that menarche has come much earlier, sometimes by 10 years, or even less. Once upon a time it occurred when the body was ready for pregnancy, as would be natural. Instead, male fertility has fallen significantly. I don't know what it depends on; I think from our diet, perhaps with too much estrogen. I don't know if there is any research on this. Consent to marriage has always been required without exception by Church or State; however, generally, it was once only formal because the choice was made by the family. But the woman could always refuse, but she risked never getting married again. In fact, the drama of fourteen-year-old Giulietta was that her family wants her to marry her cousin and she doesn't know how to refuse her having already married in secret. From this fact the tragedy arises. Currently, it seems that the family's voice or advice is almost an unacceptable interference to be rejected with disdain. The world changes, but not necessarily for the better: we need to evaluate on a case-by-case basis