Alan Reinstein English 221 Reinstein February 7, 2006 (revised May 5, 2009) Romeo and Juliet Personal Essay CRUSHED: A HEART-POUNDING REJECTION FROM A SWEDISH KIBBUTZ VOLUNTEER The play Romeo and Juliet introduces the title male character as a moping teenager who is depressed because a girl he likes, Rosaline, tells him that she doesn t like him back, at least not in the way he wants. Depressed people tend to think that time passes slowly. The first thing Romeo says in the play when Benvolio, who is trying to discover his problem and says good morning to him is Is the day so young? (1.1.154). When you ve got a crush on someone who doesn t return the feelings, it s hard to get the thoughts out of your mind. The crush that Romeo has over Rosaline is an important part of the play for three reasons. First, this is the first time the audience is introduced to Romeo, and we see him for all his romantic urges in addition to his immaturity. Second, of course, it spurs the plot forward, since Romeo s rejection by Rosaline gets Benvolio to encourage Romeo to go to Capulet s ball. Finally, Romeo s crush on Rosaline invites a comparison to his feelings for Juliet and, by extension, the inevitable question of just what love is. I remember a time when I had such a crush, but it wasn t something that happened in junior high school or high school. For me this crush occurred when I was thirty-three years old, while I was working in Israel on a kibbutz. I had a crush on a twenty-year-old volunteer worker from Sweden named Malin Wiren. She was my Rosaline: I liked her terribly, but she didn t return the feelings, and I was a wreck. But then, just like Romeo, I got over my crush by meeting the woman who became my wife, another volunteer who came to the kibbutz after
Malin returned to Sweden, this time from France. Her name was Viviane Viros. She is my Juliet. The crush that Romeo has over Rosaline is an important part of the play for three reasons: it introduces us to Romeo, it spurs the play forward, and it invites the comparison to Romeo s feelings for Juliet, opening the question of just what love is. First, this is how we get to see Romeo for the first time, as someone who is not involved in the opening fight at all not like the servant Abram, who is at the center of the fight, or like Benvolio, who tries to stop it. He is crushed by his infatuation for Rosaline, thinking only about her. When he sees Benvolio, he notices the consequences of the opening fight. O me! he says, What fray was here? / Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all (1.1.169-170). Clearly, Romeo is sick of the fighting caused by the feud and can only think about his being in love with Rosaline. Second, there is the plot. Romeo s meeting Juliet depends on his going to Capulet s feast, and the only reason he goes is that his cousin Benvolio encourages him to. At this same ancient feast of Capulet s / Sups the fair Rosaline whom thou so loves, / With all the admired beauties of Verona (1.2.83-85), Benvolio tells Romeo after the illiterate servant has asked them to help him with the invitations. Go thither, he urges him, and with unattainted eye / Compare her face with some that I shall show, / And I will make thee think thy swan a crow (1.2.86-88). Romeo would not have made it to the ball without this crush on Rosaline and without Benvolio s encouraging him to go and would not have met Juliet. And finally, there is the question of love itself that comes from Romeo s feelings for Rosaline, for how would we be able to wonder about the truth of his love for Juliet if we weren t able to see Romeo s behavior over Rosaline. His over-the-top oxymorons about Rosaline suggest that he is not thinking straight: Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O anything of nothing first create! O heavy lightness! Serious vanity! Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health! (1.1.171-175) While he professes his love to Juliet later in the play, there is nothing like this kind of language. He even says to Benvolio that he is not himself: I am not here. / This is not Romeo; he s some otherwhere (1.1.195-196). But maybe the only difference between his love for Rosaline and for Juliet is that Juliet loves him back ( That fair for which love groan d for and would die, / With tender Juliet match d is now not fair (2 Prologue 3-4)), and the love that Romeo feels for Rosaline is just as authentic as that which he feels for Juliet. Or maybe it s the other way around: the love Romeo feels for Juliet is immature in the same way it is for Rosaline. There may be evidence in the text to point us in one direction or the other, but perhaps Shakespeare is pointing to something more interesting about the nature of love, that it is not something definable or detectable, as Romeo tells Friar Lawrence later in the play, Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel (3.3.65). Perhaps this is Shakespeare s message to us, and he expresses it with the help of Romeo s initial crush on Rosaline. Like Romeo, I had been transformed by unrequited love into something other than myself, and I know now that this is what such an experience can do to you. The word crush is really a perfect word for the experience: I was crushed there s no better way to say it. I had been working on a kibbutz in Israel called Bet Keshet for about three months when Malin came with a group of other volunteers from Sweden to work. Most volunteers came with a friend or in groups. Some, like me, were by themselves. My crush began slowly, but hit full throttle on a bus ride down to Eilat with the other girls from the Swedish group. I was sitting next to Malin
for a while on the bus, and we talked about her university experience and literature and swimming. Realizing what an interesting and serious and joyful person she was, I couldn t stop thinking about her not so much in a romantic way, but merely in the way of simply wanting to be near her. I stayed in Eilat for a few more days while the girls went back to the kibbutz, and I resolved there that when I returned to the kibbutz, I would say something to Malin. I believed that she also had feelings for me, but even more than that, I just knew that I had to say something to her. Not long after the return, I waited for a time alone with her so I could say something. Finally, we took a walk around the kibbutz while I told her that without declaring my love or anything so dramatic if she saw me looking at her in a certain way, that she shouldn t feel uncomfortable, but that she had merely charmed me. I was trying to open the door for her to say that she shared these strange feelings I had, but she clearly didn t. This, in fact closed the door completely to whatever friendship had developed between us. After that, I was so uncomfortable around her and she around me, I m sure that I could not be myself at all. I moped around half the time, like Romeo, and the other half, I faked being happy in a way that I m sure was so obviously fake that I cringe right now to even think about it. The night before the girls left the kibbutz, they stayed out all night having a party with some boys on the kibbutz, preventing me from even saying good-bye. I wrote a song about it later, but it s too painful for me even to sing it now. Like Romeo, I had been transformed by unrequited love into something other than myself, and I know now that this is what such an experience can do to you. The word crush is really a perfect word for the experience: I was crushed there s no better way to say it. Not long after Malin left, I took some time away from the kibbutz and went to Tel Aviv to work and play music and to try to get myself back on track, since I didn t know what I wanted to do with my life. After some time in Tel Aviv, I decided to return to the kibbutz to work, and then not
long after that, Viviane came by herself and our friendship developed into a marriage. This time, oddly, it was she who had the crush, but unlike the way it was with Rosaline and Romeo, this time it was more like Juliet and Romeo. Although the negative feelings from being crushed by Malin s rejection did not last forever, they did last for a while. And because I still feel at times disappointment and hurt, I know that the value of this experience is that it brings me closer to those people who have had similar setbacks. Having romantic feelings for a person that are not returned is both terribly painful and also importantly natural. Critics sometimes say that Romeo s moody love for Rosaline shows that his love is not authentic, that it must be a kind of false love. I disagree. Love that is not returned merely makes you stupid (as love that is returned can make you stupid, too): uncomfortable with yourself, second-guessing yourself. It makes you not yourself, which is what happens to Romeo in being rejected by Rosaline. Malin Wiren did this to me. Looking back, I m glad to have had this experience, since it has connected me to so many other people good people who have been likewise rejected. Some, I m sure, have never recovered. Thankfully, just as Romeo was recovered by Juliet, I have been similarly saved. My life today is full of returned love many times deeper than the heart-pounding and short-lived feelings I had for that funny and serious volunteer from Sweden, who today, may have also found her true love, or may still be breaking hearts the way she once did mine.