Gender Divide
The gender divide is apparent in these lines where the roles of the father and the daughter and the responsibilities of a wife towards her husband are juxtaposed and arranged against each other. However, the duties of a wife are already pre-ordained. Jessica, the daughter of Shylock is ashamed of the deeds of her Father who is a stingy money lender bent upon extracting the maximum profit from all his victims. Thus, where the traits of a father may normally manifest themselves in the child, Jessica is happy and almost proud to say that despite being her father’s daughter she does not have any of his bad habits. In fact she is happy to declare that she is in no way comparable to him in behavior. She is happy in the fact that she is not at all like her father either in character or in actions. She is thoroughly disgrated by the bad reputation her father has heaped upon him in the market.
Role Reversal
Jessica tells her heart throb, Lancelot that she is willing to give up her duties to her father totally. However, she is willing to do this if Lancelot, in turn swears to keep his promise and takes her as his betrothed wife. She is willing to give up her Jewish origins and convert to Christianity so that she can prove to Lancelot the deepest sincerity of her feelings.
Thus, although Jessica is playing the modern, independent thinking women, she is doing so within the already prescribed roles of daughter and wife. She is willing to give up her role of a daughter to become an efficient wife.
Eternal Conflict
Therefore, when Jessica mentions that she will end the conflict what she means is the turmoil boiling between her heart and her head as both were favoring two entirely different people. She is split between her loyalties to her father who is her progenitor, her identity till her youth, her parent and the only one who fed, clothed and looked after her from infancy to youth. Yet on the other hand she is divided between her love for Launcelot, her lover whom she wants to marry. For her, he epitomizes all that is good in her life. He is a good, kind man, sensitive and very caring. He is tuned in to the feelings of others and attempts to ensure his services for the goodness and welfare of others. He poses a tremendous contrast to Jessica’s father, Shylock and this is what makes the contrast all the more glaring for Jessica. She is torn between her loyalty and her love and is almost stretched between her past and her future.
Conflict of Emotions
The Gender specific roles of father, daughter, wife, husband, loner and betrothed have been strongly laid down in Shakespeare’s wittings. This has been seen significantly in his writings. There have been very sharp areas where roles of obedience, adherence to orders and living in a subservient role have been specifically prescribed. The role of a father as a role model for his children has been given special importance similarly, diligent adherence to the principles and lifestyles of the father are to be given by the children.
This would mean that the negation of these roles could create great rifts in the male-female continuum.
References
- Bennett, Andrew, ed. 1995. Readers and Reading. London: Longman.
- Bennett, Andrew. 2005. The Author. London: Routledge.
- Xavier, Pinto (Ed). 2013. Shakespeare’s. The Merchant of Venice. Beeta Publications, New Delhi.
