Write an essay on the role of Jessica in The Merchant of Venice.

Ans.

The play, “The Merchant of Venice’ has four stories: The Bond Story. The Caskets Story, The Lorenzo-Jessica Story and The Story of Rings. Jessica is the heroine of Lorenzo-Story. Lorenzo and Jessica are like Romeo and Juliet. Their story, in a nutshell, is a romantic comedy of love and adventure.

Jessica is the daughter of the MCH, cruel and wicked Jew, Shylock, who is a money lender of Venice. Jessica is a motherless child who has not got her father’s love. She is young and exquisitely beautiful. She is wise and intelligent. Her special domestic circumstances have made her self-reliant. stubborn and unscrupulous. She makes an absolute break from her father whose ways she does not approve of. But she is like her father in the caliber of her mind. She plans and executes her elopement with Lorenzo without giving and inkling of thoughts and feelings. We wish she had not taken the money and jewels of her father. She is reckless also as we learn from Tubal report about her indiscreet spending in Genoa.

But she is an ardent lover and is, like her lover and husband Lorenzo, romantic and poetical by nature. She is not worldly wise but very faithful to Lorenzo.

She is an ideal companion of Lorenzo. She plays a very significant role in the paly. Together with Lorenzo she helps to relieve some of the tension created by her father. Shylock. She helps to make the atmosphere of the play romantic by her poetical outburst when Lorenzo and Jessica indulge in a poetical match, as it were, in describing romantic beauty of the night especially suited to lovers. There is so much poetry and romance that it is difficult to forget those passages on night and music.

She is an admirable foil to Lorenzo the presents, in some ways, a contrast to Portia. She flouts, disregards and brings dishonour, material loss and grief to a living father whereas Portia upholds the honour of her dead father by accepting his provision of selecting her husband through the lottery of caskets.

She is the driving force behind Lorenzo. Without her drive and self reliance the Lorenzo-Jessica story would have been impossible.

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