Date written: October 29, 2001
Class: ENG 315 / Shakespeare's Principal Plays
University of Michigan-Flint
Professor: Dr. Mary Jo Kietzman

If you try to plagiarize this essay in any way, I shall slaughter. Plagiarism is bad.
 

 Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is perhaps the most realistic of his comedies. The roles of the women in the play, the characters’ manipulation of the way society views their own loves and marriages, and a lack of supernatural forces helps The Merchant of Venice provide a realistically attainable alternative to the oppressive society of Shakespeare’s time.
 
The roles that the women take on in the play provide an alternative view of women in Shakespeare’s society. Portia and Jessica took control of their own destinies, despite the restrictions that were placed upon them by men. Portia was restricted to marry the man that her father willed her to—which was the man that chose the correct casket in the game that her father ordered in his will. Instead of allowing herself to simply marry whoever chose the leaden casket, she deftly directed the man she loved to choose the casket that would allow her to marry him. She dropped at least one obvious hint at him in Scene 2 of Act 3 by saying “I pray you tarry, pause a day or two / Before you hazard, for in choosing wrong / I lose your company.” (3.2.1-3) The inscription on the leaden casket read “‘Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.’” (2.9.21) By carefully slipping the word “hazard” into her speech, Portia directed Bassanio to choose the leaden casket, thus defying her father’s will in an indirect way. Jessica also took command of her own destiny in a more outright rebellious way by stealing her father’s money and running away to marry a Christian, knowing that her father loved his money and did not want her to marry outside of their Jewish religion. When Portia and Nerissa took on the roles of lawyer and clerk, respectively, they showed Shakespeare’s society that they, as women, had just as much brain power as men, and could also easily fool them into doing what they wanted them to do. They showed that women could have command over men in a realistic way, even though society at that time had very strict rules for women.

 Love between the characters in any of the comedies is rebellious at first, but is always transformed into socially acceptable marriages at the end of the plays. Because the characters in The Merchant of Venice were, on average, older than the characters in any of the other comedies, there was not as much parental involvement in the marriages. However, the play still shows some defiance of parental control in the cases of Portia and Jessica, in choosing the men they wanted to marry instead of the men that their fathers told them they had to marry. Portia laments the lottery that her father has willed to be her marital fate—“so is the will of a living daughter curb’d by the will of a dead father.” (1.2.23-24) Jessica marries the Christian, Lorenzo, out of rebellion against her father, because she does not want to be restricted by her Jewish heritage. She is surrounded by Christians and wants to become one of them, and also wants to get away from her strict father. She is “a daughter to his blood,” but “not to his manners.” (2.3.18-19) This kind of rebellion goes against the social order of the time that parents—especially those of wealthy children or royalty—chose their childrens’ mates for them. Although the children enter into socially acceptable marriages at the end of the play, the undercurrent of rebellion is still there. These marriages are socially accepted, but the children made the marriages happen by their own choice.

 Without the use of supernatural forces in the play, Shakespeare made The Merchant of Venice more realistic. There were no fairies or magic spells (as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream), or random appearances of goddesses (as in As You Like It). The play takes place in a realistic world where the goals of the characters were realistically attainable, although the methods they used to attain those goals may not necessarily have been accepted in society at that time. Portia and Nerissa planned to fool their husbands into thinking that they were “accomplished / With that we lack” by dressing as a lawyer and a clerk—something that could be realistically done with the right garments and a certain amount of cleverness, and without the use of any magic. (3.4.61-62) Jessica’s running away with Lorenzo and stealing of her father’s money was something that could have been done by any ordinary, rebellious teenager, even in Shakespeare’s time, with the proper skills and determination. These actions present a realistically attainable alternative to the oppressive society of Shakespeare’s time because they could have been done by ordinary people.

 The realistic world of The Merchant of Venice provided Shakespeare’s audiences with a temporary escape from the realities of their own world—the strict rules for women, the oppression of love between young people, and the harsh rules that had to be followed regarding love and marriage. By leaving out supernatural forces in this play, Shakespeare showed that the barriers of the oppressive society of his day could be broken in a realistically attainable way. The play shows the most realistically attainable alternative to the oppressive society of Shakespeare’s time.