The Predicaments Faced by Women in Love Tragedies: Taking Peacock's Flying Southeast and Romeo and Juliet as Examples

Peacock's Flying Southeast and Romeo and Juliet are the representative works of Chinese and Western love tragedy. Although they are works of different genres, periods, and regions, they both end with the tragedy of love between the male and female main characters. Based on a feminist perspective, this paper compares and analyses the social constraints and predicaments faced by women in love tragedies in Peacock's Flying Southeast, and Romeo and Juliet. We found that the predicaments of the heroines in these two works mainly lie between two aspects: love and responsibility, and society and family.