Defrauding Daughters Turning Deviant Wives? Reading Female Agency in The Merchant of Venice

Brabantio’s words “Look to her, Moor, if thou hast
eyes to see:|
She has deceived her father, and may thee” (
Othello
, 1.3.292–293)
warn Othello about the changing nature of female lo
yalty and
women’s potential for deviancy. Closely examining d
aughters
caught in the conflict between anxious fathers and
husbands-to-
be, this article departs from such paranoid male fa
ntasy and
instead sets out to explore female deviancy in its
legal and
dramatic implications with reference to Shakespeare
’s
The
Merchant of Venice
. I will argue that Portia’s and Jessica’s struggle
to evade male subsidiarity results in their conscio
us positioning
themselves on the verge of illegality. Besides occa
sioning
productive exploration of marriage, law and justice
within what
Morss (2007:183) terms “the dynamics of human desir
e and of
social institutions,” I argue that female agency, s
een as temporary
deviancy and/or self-exclusion, reconfigures the ma
le domain by
affording the inclusion of previous outsiders (Anto
nio, Bassanio
and Lorenzo)
.