MOV-Prejudice

Today I’ll be talking about Prejudice, one of the themes in the book. There are many different kinds of prejudice in the text of MOV, but the most prominent and dominant form that we can see Is religious prejudice. Other kinds of prejudice would be gender prejudice and racial prejudice, which I will touch on later.

So the most dominant religion in England in those times was Protestantism. Why was this so? Basically, it was because Queen Elizabeth I, who was ruling the country at that time, was a Protestant. Since the ruling class was second only to God, thus many people then were also Protestants.

Jews of this Elizabethan era were also associated with the devil as they were believed to worship the devil. A stereotype of them would be swarthy people with hooked noses. They were usually moneylenders or pedlars as their jobs were restricted by law. They even had to outwardly conform to Christians and their religious practices could only be conducted in utmost secrecy. Lastly, they were also depicted as egotistic, evil, cruel and greedy people.

Since the play is set in Venice, I’ll talk more about the Venetians’ attitudes towards Jews. They had to wear red hats for identification purposes when they stepped out of home. This can be seen as a form of segregation. If the Jews did not follow this rule, they would suffer capital punishment.

However, we can also view the Christians from Shylock’s point of view. Seeing that Shylock is the only Jew in the story who takes a major role, we can assume that he represents the Jewish community in this era in England. Shylock discriminates Christians also for their religion, but in the text, Shakespeare portrays him as a devil who wants revenge against Christians. However, there is an explanation for this. Seeing as Jews are the minority in this era, they are most naturally(as people then thought) on the receiving end of the Christians’ prejudice. Thus, we can see that Shylock is on the receiving end of all of this prejudice and therefore he resents the Christians. Also, he hates anyone that prevents him from making money, thus we can see that he is very materialistic. A few examples of how people prevent him from making money is when Antonio brings down the interest rate by lending money at no interest. This is also one of his reasons for revenge, as we can see later. At the end of the book, however, we can see a change in his priorities when he forgoes great monetary gain for Antonio’s pound of flesh, thus we can see that his need for revenge outweighs his greed.

Antonio, on the other hand, a devout and self-respecting Christian, looks down on Jews. He also readily flames Shylock for his practice of usury, which is to lend money at very high interest rates, not unlike loan sharks of today. He is also very arrogant as can be seen from his attitude towards Jews and is noble and proud when it came to accepting the punishment when he broke the bond between him and Shylock.

So, for this theme, the class also discussed whether Shylock’s revenge was justified(even though it never came to pass). From the text, we can see that Shylock hates Antonio because of Antonio’s religion, which we discussed just now and for threatening his livelihood when he brings down the interest rate. So, is his revenge justified? Well, let’s list out the points and see where we get to.

Antonio hates Jews and therefore Shylock, and since we can see the mutual hate here, we can say that Shylock’s revenge is then justified. Also, Antonio is a Christian and Christians discriminated against Jews, thus Shylock also had a justified reason for revenge against Antonio for the Christians’ treatment. Antonio himself even publicly humiliated Shylock before, spitting on his garments and calling him a “dog”, so Shylock also has a reason for revenge in this case. Another point to note is that Antonio lent money without interest and brought down the interest rate in Venice, thus hindering Shylock from earning money and threatening his livelihood. On these grounds, Shylock has justified reasons for wanting revenge on Antonio. However, Shylock himself is also guilty of discrimination against Christians and Antonio, hence this reason that he gives for his revenge when he plans for vengeance is not justified.

Okay, so here we take a break from religious prejudice and turn our attention to gender and racial prejudice. Gender prejudice was very rampant in the Elizabethan era, where men were much greater than women and women were limited on what they could achieve. So we’ll look at a great example of challenging gender prejudice in the play. She is….Portia, Bassanio’s beloved. Although she follows her father’s last wishes like a good daughter and promises to marry the suitor who chooses the right casket containing her portrait, she disguises herself as a man to enter the courthouse to fight the case for Antonio. Here, an analysis on the surface would tell us that she accepts male dominance, but to a deeper level, we can see that she challenges male dominance within the norms as she does not openly enter the court as a woman, but mocks the men for entering the courthouse as a disguised woman, and winning the case!

Racial prejudice is only seen subtly in the text as the only indication of it is that Portia shows her distaste for Moors, who are black-skinned when she hopes that everyone of the same skin as the Prince of Morocco fails to choose the right casket and get to marry her.

After gathering all the evidence, we can actually see that the play is set in such a situation where the majority discriminates against the minority. We can also see the timeless nature of Shakespeare’s play, which makes him such a good playwright, because this discrimination is astoundingly still present in today’s society.