Sophie Masson reviews Shylock's Daughter

SOPHIE MASSON's review:

The Merchant of Venice was the first Shakespeare play I, as a schoolchild of non-English-speaking background in Australia, studied. It was to have a permanent effect on me, for it was thus that I became aware of Shakespeare's extraordinary abilities to evoke character and past histories in a few words, to portray life and human nature in all its strange complexities and ambiguities. And it was Shylock who I found most interesting, most troubled, most pitiful, yet grand and repellent too, in his thirst for revenge on the representatives of the religion which had persecuted his people.

Shakespeare's alternative title for his play, let us not forget, was The Jew of Venice; Shylock was always every bit as important as Antonio, and in fact even more so. Antonio, Bassanio, Lorenzo and even Portia did not emerge too well out of this complex play. Shallow, sneering, preaching about mercy but showing precious little, they are hardly great advertisements for Christianity. Yet Shylock himself is certainly not seen only as the righteous avenger of insult and persecution--his terrible bargain with Antonio is witness to that. Hatred has, perhaps understandably but hardly admirably, consumed him so that he can see nothing else. We do not know all the things that have led up to it--but his impassioned, famous speech, 'I am a Jew..', delivered ironically enough to Bassanio's uncomprehending friend Salarino, explains it all clearly enough. His tragedy, compounded by his daughter Jessica's betrayal, is the tragedy of a man at the end of his tether--a righteous but unbending man, passionate but obliged to be chillingly cold, desperately driven by revenge and hatred.

But what of his daughter Jessica? We scarcely see her, though we see that her love for Lorenzo has caused her to betray her father in the most shameful way. What led her to do it? Why does she do it? These are some of the questions Mirjam Pressler seeks to answer in this new novel, these and the necessity to sketch in the background of Jessica and her family. She does this not only through Shakespeare's characters, but also some of her own, the most important being Shylock's other daughter, the orphan Dalilah, who tries hard to be a bridge between estranged father and daughter.

The other characters, such as Lorenzo, Bassanio, Antonio and Portia, are seen through the Jewish characters' eyes, showing clearly what shallow and unpleasant people they are, and what a mistake Jessica is making in turning her back on her culture and her family. In any case, Pressler suggests that Jesica will never be allowed to forget who she is--that even though she seeks to be assimilated, to reject the stifling, puritanical laws of the Ghetto for the seemingly freeer world of Italian nobility, she will always be 'that Jewish girl.' And the betrayal of her father will not be forgotten either--she has lost out all round.

For the first time, Jessica emerges as a rounded character, desperately riven by an understandable teenage need for glamour and love and flattery, seeking to escape her father's authority, and making a terrible mistake in the process. Though Dalilah says hers is a very Jewish story, and indeed it is, it is also very much the story of any minority-culture adolescent, trapped between her parents' culture and the dominant culture of the place where she was raised.

As the child of proud, religious, authoritarian and passionate parents living in a culture not their own and deserately trying to maintain us within their own traditions, I identified closely with Jessica. How many of us migrant children have not betrayed our parents in thought and deed, wanting to blend in with the domnant culture and with our peers within it? How many of us have not, later, bitterly regrettted the suffering we inflicted on them in the process--and the damage we did to our own cultural identity? And yet, how many of us could argue that we should therefore have stayed obedient and never moved out of the culture? It is a timeless and placeless tragedy, indeed.

Mirjam Pressler's great achievement is that she has managed to convey Jessica's cruel dilemma in a most moving and human way, both through the girl herself and through the love and clarity of her foster-sister. She makes the Venetian Ghetto live and breathe, and manages to make Lorenzo into quite a reasonable, though weak, character. However, the Venetians are more or less ciphers, which I suppose is fair enough but at times irritating. More importantly, her portrayal of Shylock did not satisfy me: in seeking to explain him, to make him less terrifying in his driven need for revenge, she sometimes dilutes the force of his actions and personality.

She changes certain things about Shakespeare's portrayal, no doubt in order to make him less contradictory, but I think that in most cases it simply glosses over his human faults. For instance, in the novel he says he asked for a pound of flesh not because he wants revenge, but because this is a customary --Christian--way of making an extreme promise; he makes his famous speech to his friend Tubal Benevisti and not to the contemptuous Salarino, both of which things tend, in my opinion, to take away from the power of what he has done. Shylock, in Shakespeare's play, is a man who has taken an extreme risk; he has a great courage, for he sees himself totally as the moral equal and indeed the superior of the people with whom he is dealing: despite the insults and persecution, he has not allowed himself to be beaten. Yet all circumstances, including his own temperament, conspire against him. In Shylock's Daughter, Shylock is just a wronged man, whose revenge seems strangely hazy, who escapes forced baptism, and whose tragedy is less affecting than it is in The Merchant of Venice.

Perhaps too that is the problem with adding the character of Dalilah; it is as if Pressler cannot bear to let her characters suffer as much as they did in the play, which is surely understandable but which also is the flaw in what is otherwise a most interesting, well-written and thoughtful novel. However, she has honoured many of Shakespeare's insights and perceptions whilst exploring her own knowledge and understanding of Jewish culture, and in this, Shylock's Daughter would be an invaluable addition to discussion of The Merchant of Venice.

Sophie Masson is the author of many novels,
and ACHUKA's Australian correspondent.
Author site:
http://members.xoom.com/sophiecastel/default.htm

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Laraine Barker Pauline Chandler Posey Furnish Mai Lin Li Sophie Masson Beverley Naidoo Rachel Newcombe Glynis Nickerson Liz Rose Ann Sharman Michael Thorn	SOPHIE MASSON's review: The Merchant of Venice was the first Shakespeare play I, as a schoolchild of non-English-speaking background in Australia, studied. It was to have a permanent effect on me, for it was thus that I became aware of Shakespeare's extraordinary abilities to evoke character and past histories in a few words, to portray life and human nature in all its strange complexities and ambiguities. And it was Shylock who I found most interesting, most troubled, most pitiful, yet grand and repellent too, in his thirst for revenge on the representatives of the religion which had persecuted his people. Shakespeare's alternative title for his play, let us not forget, was The Jew of Venice; Shylock was always every bit as important as Antonio, and in fact even more so. Antonio, Bassanio, Lorenzo and even Portia did not emerge too well out of this complex play. Shallow, sneering, preaching about mercy but showing precious little, they are hardly great advertisements for Christianity. Yet Shylock himself is certainly not seen only as the righteous avenger of insult and persecution--his terrible bargain with Antonio is witness to that. Hatred has, perhaps understandably but hardly admirably, consumed him so that he can see nothing else. We do not know all the things that have led up to it--but his impassioned, famous speech, 'I am a Jew..', delivered ironically enough to Bassanio's uncomprehending friend Salarino, explains it all clearly enough. His tragedy, compounded by his daughter Jessica's betrayal, is the tragedy of a man at the end of his tether--a righteous but unbending man, passionate but obliged to be chillingly cold, desperately driven by revenge and hatred. But what of his daughter Jessica? We scarcely see her, though we see that her love for Lorenzo has caused her to betray her father in the most shameful way. What led her to do it? Why does she do it? These are some of the questions Mirjam Pressler seeks to answer in this new novel, these and the necessity to sketch in the background of Jessica and her family. She does this not only through Shakespeare's characters, but also some of her own, the most important being Shylock's other daughter, the orphan Dalilah, who tries hard to be a bridge between estranged father and daughter. The other characters, such as Lorenzo, Bassanio, Antonio and Portia, are seen through the Jewish characters' eyes, showing clearly what shallow and unpleasant people they are, and what a mistake Jessica is making in turning her back on her culture and her family. In any case, Pressler suggests that Jesica will never be allowed to forget who she is--that even though she seeks to be assimilated, to reject the stifling, puritanical laws of the Ghetto for the seemingly freeer world of Italian nobility, she will always be 'that Jewish girl.' And the betrayal of her father will not be forgotten either--she has lost out all round. For the first time, Jessica emerges as a rounded character, desperately riven by an understandable teenage need for glamour and love and flattery, seeking to escape her father's authority, and making a terrible mistake in the process. Though Dalilah says hers is a very Jewish story, and indeed it is, it is also very much the story of any minority-culture adolescent, trapped between her parents' culture and the dominant culture of the place where she was raised. As the child of proud, religious, authoritarian and passionate parents living in a culture not their own and deserately trying to maintain us within their own traditions, I identified closely with Jessica. How many of us migrant children have not betrayed our parents in thought and deed, wanting to blend in with the domnant culture and with our peers within it? How many of us have not, later, bitterly regrettted the suffering we inflicted on them in the process--and the damage we did to our own cultural identity? And yet, how many of us could argue that we should therefore have stayed obedient and never moved out of the culture? It is a timeless and placeless tragedy, indeed. Mirjam Pressler's great achievement is that she has managed to convey Jessica's cruel dilemma in a most moving and human way, both through the girl herself and through the love and clarity of her foster-sister. She makes the Venetian Ghetto live and breathe, and manages to make Lorenzo into quite a reasonable, though weak, character. However, the Venetians are more or less ciphers, which I suppose is fair enough but at times irritating. More importantly, her portrayal of Shylock did not satisfy me: in seeking to explain him, to make him less terrifying in his driven need for revenge, she sometimes dilutes the force of his actions and personality. She changes certain things about Shakespeare's portrayal, no doubt in order to make him less contradictory, but I think that in most cases it simply glosses over his human faults. For instance, in the novel he says he asked for a pound of flesh not because he wants revenge, but because this is a customary --Christian--way of making an extreme promise; he makes his famous speech to his friend Tubal Benevisti and not to the contemptuous Salarino, both of which things tend, in my opinion, to take away from the power of what he has done. Shylock, in Shakespeare's play, is a man who has taken an extreme risk; he has a great courage, for he sees himself totally as the moral equal and indeed the superior of the people with whom he is dealing: despite the insults and persecution, he has not allowed himself to be beaten. Yet all circumstances, including his own temperament, conspire against him. In Shylock's Daughter, Shylock is just a wronged man, whose revenge seems strangely hazy, who escapes forced baptism, and whose tragedy is less affecting than it is in The Merchant of Venice. Perhaps too that is the problem with adding the character of Dalilah; it is as if Pressler cannot bear to let her characters suffer as much as they did in the play, which is surely understandable but which also is the flaw in what is otherwise a most interesting, well-written and thoughtful novel. However, she has honoured many of Shakespeare's insights and perceptions whilst exploring her own knowledge and understanding of Jewish culture, and in this, Shylock's Daughter would be an invaluable addition to discussion of The Merchant of Venice. Sophie Masson is the author of many novels, and ACHUKA's Australian correspondent. Author site: http://members.xoom.com/sophiecastel/default.htm