Shylock's Daughter [Hardcover]

_Shylock's Daughter_ provides a fascinating response to Shakespeare's _The Merchant of Venice_, as author Pressler strived to humanize the play's more one-dimensional characters. Providing a rich and complex view of Jewish life in sixteenth-century Venice, Pressler does her best to provide a variety of different viewpoints as she tells her story. Unfortunately, Pressler's array of narrators are as defensively pro-Jewish as Shylock's character was virulently anti-Jewish.

The title leads us to expect Shylock's daughter Jessica to be the martyred heroine of Pressler's book, but the plot systematically paints her as the most unlikeable character in it. Contrasted with her ugly but righteous foster sister Dalilah, who does most of the early narration, "free-thinking" Jessica is depicted as spoiled, selfish, and capricious. Jessica's desire for "freedom," which might be understandable to a modern teenager if it were coached in more meaningful terms, seems shallow and sinful when contrasted with Dalilah's pious obedience. "Freedom," as far as the early narrators are concerned, is nothing more than a catch-word for "extravagance," and is respected (or not) as such.

"Love" also takes a back seat. Jessica's seduction by Lorenzo is complete by the time the story begins, and we never see what caused her to fall in love with him in the first place. (We do of course hear the theory that he is only interested in her for her money.) When Jessica does assert herself as a narrator, it is after their elopement, when Lorenzo's love has failed to meet her expectations, when she finds the Christian feasts filled with sin and mockery, when every thought of her robbed and broken-hearted father fills her with shame. The contrast between Jessica's quick treatment of her love and her elaborate telling and re-telling of her everlasting regret is so stark that it diminishes Jessica from a character to a moral vehicle.

Jessica's unhappiness after giving up her faith for her freedom is so enormous, so complete, that one cannot help but wonder (as sweet Dalilah does) what on earth she was thinking at the time. Pressler leaves no room for doubt that Shylock's daughter was woefully duped, that Shakespeare's Christian characters are all vicious villains, and that only a quiet life as a pious Jewish daughter is worthwhile in such time of trouble. And in such terms, this story is not likely to be very interesting to anyone who wonders *how* Jessica came to discard her faith and *why* she did what she did.

Though the antithesis of the Shakespearian "happily-ever-after" is quite refreshing, Pressler's exclusive focus of the consequences of Jessica's action makes her story read like an Aesop fable. "And the moral of the story is..."

Jessica is the daughter of a traditional jew and they live in a Jewish ghetto. There are many historical facts in this book such as: the gates of the ghetto are locked so she and many other Jews are imprisoned in this part of the city. She longs to be free of the rules of the Jewish tradition.

When she falls in love with a young christian she leaves and robs her father and runs away to marry Lorenzo. But this new world is not so welcoming to this Jewish girl.

We are left wondering if Jessica is ever truly happy. Did she really know Lorenzo when she married him or was she just as much in love with all the riches of a Christian life that her religion forbids?

This is a great read and I reccomend that you read it.