A Feminist Perspective of Measure for Measure and The Merchant of Venic

A Feminist Perspective of Measure for Measure and The Merchant of Venice Isabellas and power could be in saying no, her no to Angelo that she would not leave the world despoiled and soulless, no to Claudio that she would sacrifice herself, no to the nunnery that she had wished to enter or no to the Dukes offer of marriage. Isabellas role ability to be self-determining was quite different from Portias advocacy in The Merchant of Venice, for Isabella was the tool of the Duke, fulfilling his scripting. Her nuns garb should have ensured a neuter role, and she intended her pity and love for her brother to involve her in this world only so far as to counsel him in honour. Despite her self concept, two men of the world with power over her saw her as a beautiful sexual object to be acquired. Against this, Isabellas strength was in theological purity, going straight to the sense of the Gospels. We cannot cast the first st sensation. We must have leniency for others, because he which is t he top of judgement had mercy on us. Because the censors usually eliminated the word God, references were oblique, but t present could be no real substitution of Jove or the gods here where the sense was so very New Testament. Isabella was preaching to a society which had gone far in condemnation and execution in the name of faith she was a beacon of clear light.Portia actively sought mercy as the greatest response and carefully gave Shylock every option to release the alliance which held him when she stage-managed the last-minute dramatic revelation, showing that he too could be forfeit. Significantly, the advocacy of both Portia and Isabella was the same mercy must be applied to the law. Could a Dukes one gateway denouement be... ...d expanded, and the whole prospered on the servitude and devotion of women. Petruchio did his bit, as did Isabellas Duke, so that protectionism was the right end and repository for womens identity and role. Yet in the next particle Benedick will me et his match, and that paragon, Portia, will tactfully remain within the rhetorical framework of male supremacy, costuming her more able endeavours....i Jill Bavin-Mizzi, Ravished (Sydney University of New south-central Wales Press, 1995).ii Margaret Thornton, Women as fringe dwellers of the jurisprudential community, in Sex, Power and Justice (Oxford Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 190.iii Charlotte Lennox (ne Ramsay), 1729 -1804, actress and poet,Women Reading Shakespeare 1660-1900, An anthology of criticism, ed. Ann Thompson and Sasha Roberts (Manchester Manchester University Press, 1997), pp. 17-18.