ABSTRACT
The nurse and Juliet have a love for each other that is as strong as the love of a mother for her daughter, and yet neither was able to draw on that love to further the natural growth towards Juliet’s maturing sexuality. The role of the nurse, in the unfolding tragedy in the lives of both Romeo and Juliet, hinges upon the ambiguity that is inherent in her position. We see that the nurse and Juliet are caught up in an unfolding social tragedy that is exacerbated by the inequality created by the child-rearing practices of the day, in which babies were reared by wet nurses. Thomas Coram, when he set up his orphanage for abandoned children in London in the eighteenth century, would farm out middle classes unwanted children to wet nurses in the country, sometimes for up to five years.
