On the Character of Portia in The Merchant of Venice 论《威尼斯商人》中的人物鲍西娅.docx

论威尼斯商人中的人物鲍西娅on the character of portia in the merchant of veniceabstractthis thesis gives an analysis of the characteristics of portia in the merchant of venice .through a comparative study of portia and shylock, this article attempts to show the symbol of humanismportia, who is a new woman of the renaissance, active, vivacious, capable, clever and seriousminded. some authors both at home and abroad have some study and comment on the merchant of venice, especially on the characteristics of portia, most of them think that portia help antonio just because of her love to bassanio. this paper mainly analyzes portias intelligence, mercy and love, and castigates shylocks meanness, cunning and cruelty, reflecting the womans independent consciousness of the renaissance period. as a symbol of that periods women, portia not only frees herself from the usual feudal fetters for women but even outshines many man in many ways.key words: portia, characteristics, intelligence, shylock i摘 要本论文主要对威尼斯商人中鲍西娅这一具有鲜明特征的人物形象进行描写与分析，并将其与夏洛克进行对比，最终体现了鲍西娅这一人文主义妇女的典型形象。国内外有不少知名作家对威尼斯商人有过不少的创作研究和评论，对鲍西娅这一人物也做过不少的评价，他们大多数从人文主义角度分析鲍西娅，认为鲍西娅是出于对巴萨尼奥的爱而帮助安东尼奥的。本论文重点从鲍西娅的聪慧，善良，淳朴，正直和仁慈来表现鲍西娅这一鲜活的人物形象，尤其对其勇敢自信的个性特征给予了高度赞扬，并分析其个性特征形成的社会背景与政治背景，从另一方面反映了文艺复兴时期女性自主意识的不断增长。关键词：鲍西娅，性格特征，聪明，夏洛克 iicontentsabstracticontentsiiiintroduction11. the characteristics of portia in the play1 1.1 portias main status in the play2 1.2 something about portia32. comparison between portia and shylock5 2.1 the characteristics of shylock in this play5 2.2 different characteristics portia shows in the play8 3.changes of womens status in different time11 3.1 womens status in portias time12 3.2 womens status at present14conclusion17bibliography18acknowledgements19 iiiintroductionthe merchant of venice is one of shakespeares early comedies and one of his prominent plays. in this play, antonio, a merchant borrows money from shylock to help his friend bassanio who wants to marry the rich and beautiful portia. shylock hates antonio and only agrees to lend the money on the condition that, if it is not repaid at the right time, antonio should pay a pound of his flesh. when antonios ships were wrecked, and to everyones surprise he cannot pay the money, shylock demands his pound of flesh. the case is taken to court, and antonio has no hope. then suddenly portia disguises herself as a doctor of law and turns up in the court. portia uses her cunning wit and successful protects antonio and averts the tragedy.by making a comparative study of the characteristics of portia and shylock, this paper attempts to sing highly of portias mercy, wit, and intelligence, and castigates the greedy and cruel man, shylock.besides, this paper talks about the changes of womens status: theyre aspiring to freedom and theyre expecting to self-emancipate and praises the wit of our great women.1. the characteristics of portia in the play“portia is idealized womens image created by shakespeare. she is honest, self-confident, sympathy, intelligent, reflecting the new women of capitalistic class in shakespeares ideal 1”. she is a new type of people in the renaissance period. she is beautiful, noble, rich, but the most important thing is that she has strong independent consciousness of women. in the men- centered society at that time, portia knows very well what she wants and spares no effort to achieve her goal. meanwhile, she selects a husband and rescues her husbands friend, antonio.1.1 portias main status in the playwhen william shakespeare wrote the merchant of venice, he made a female character with a huge influence on this play. portia seems to be one of shakespeares greatest characters, because of her intelligence, her high moral seriousness. portia is known throughout the world because of her amazing qualities. she seems to be able to handle any situations with her wit. in the fourth act after portia has saved the life of antonio, she uses her wit just as beatrice would. she says: “i see sir, you are liberal in offers, you taught me first to beg. and now, methinks. you teach me how a beggar should be answerd 2”. portia is regarded as an angel having no flows, which you can tell when bassanio describes her to antonio and says: “in belmont is a lady richly left. and she is fair and, fairer than that word, of wondrous virtues. sometimes from her eyes i did receive fair speechless messages. her name is portia; nothing undervalud to catos daughter, brutus portia. nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth; for the four winds blow in from every coast renowned suitors, and her sunny locks hang on her temples like a golden fleece, which makes her seat of belmont colchos strond, and many jasons come in quest of her 3”. portia is basically a perfect renaissance lady, she is restrictive, modest, rather than ambitious, she does not hold herself above others. her generosity makes her more wealth, so that she can help out more people she cares about.1.2 something about portiaportia is in some ways a heroine, she lives in belmont, a land of music, luxury and perpetual happiness. her father is dead and we never hear about or meet any members of her own family, under the terms of her fathers will, the right suitor will be selected without any effort on her part. everyone admires portia. portia is not only beautiful and fabulously rich, but also wise and witty, loyal and good.at times in the play portia shows herself to be a very independent even liberal young woman. she complains about the terms of her fathers will and comments on her various suitors, which leave no doubt that she is perfectly capable of choosing a husband for herself. when antonio is in trouble, portia conceives and carries out a rescue play without even bothering to let her husband in on it, she passes herself off as a wise and learned lawyer with no trouble at all. we never doubt that portia will save antonio. the suspense lies in seeing just how cleverly she will manage it.it is easy to reconcile these two sides of portias character if you remember the elizabethan view that true fulfillment and happiness can come only from accepting ones proper place in society. nowadays people tend to admire individuals. shakespeare was more likely to regard them as troublemakers. portia is independent, but she is not a rebel. she uses her talent in the service of her husband and friends.even so, you may feel as some readers do, that portia is more intelligent even more powerful-than the male heroes of the play. her situation in the play is whimsical and unique and brings out her most profound characteristics. in this unusual situation, by mandate of her fathers will, she has to marry the suitor who chooses correctly of three caskets. of course, this draws every sort of man including some she finds extremely unsavory. overall, portia is a clever and wealthy woman who endures much strife provided by man who do foolish things such as her father, her unbearable suitors, and shylock, the cruel jewish moneylender. however, the men around her challenge portias ideals and give her causes to demonstrate her vast mental resources.in all shakespeares drama, portia maybe stands for a perfect female character. she is a symbol of beauty, unselfishness, wisdom, love, happiness, vigor and justice. with her appearance in the courtroom, venice begins to twinkle the light of hope. all the three conflicts are solved, shylock failed. 2. comparison between portia and shylockin the merchant of venice, shylock is a tragic personage, he is considered to be a symbol of cruel and greedy. he is not a tragic hero, but a victim of the national and religion. compared with shylock, portia lives in the real world. she is intelligent, self-confident, courageous and resolute. she has shakespeares splendor with ideal humanism and strong hope of surmounting the real world. but unavoidably, she also has weakness of human nature and limitation of era: accepting the repugnant world consciously or unconsciously, cant surmounting the old and decayed ethics and religion view. this strong contrast of new and old, ideal and realistic make the artistic image of portia lifelike, become one of the most successful woman protagonist whom shakespeare molded.2.1 the characteristics of shylock in the playwhen we talk about the merchant of venice, we have to discuss the jew shylock .we know jew lived obscurely in shakespeares time. from european history, we get to know that only jew has ever caused so many nations hatred, only judaism was directly and strikingly opposite to christianity. through careful study of the merchant of venice, we find out that the drama is more than shylock.on the surface, shylock is an enemy to love, wealthy, merriment, and friendship. but undoubtedly this figure is our sympathies and makes us think something more. in fact, shylock is a symbol, which combines national hatred, religious contradiction and conflicts between individual persons altogether. this struggle between shylock and antonio cannot be analyzed as the concrete struggle between individual persons. it is not the concrete struggle between different persons and religions either. it symbolizes the three obstacles on the way to return to an idealistic world. if we pay attention to shylock from this aspect, the jew as a symbol is certainly more important than any other symbolic tools such as the caskets, bond, ring, etc.we dont know for sure how shylock was portrayed in the earliest production of the merchant of venice, but we have evidence that from the beginning he captured the imaginations of audiences. although the play is named after antonio, not shylock, the merchant of venice soon came to be known by an alternate title “the jew of venice.”during the first half of the eighteenth century, shylock was played as a straight comic villain whining fool. in 1741 a popular actor named charles mcclain introduced a new way of playing the role. he made shylock the epitome of evil, a malevolent old man consumed with hatred plotting the downfall of his enemies. in 1841 the famous actor edmund keen presented an even more startling version of the character. his shylock was dignified and austere, almost a tragic hero.in some recent versions of the play, including a movie adoption, shylock becomes so dominant that we begin to see other characters through his eyes. a 1971 production of the merchant of venice created by the avant-garde director peter brook, ended with the sounds of caddish the jewish prayer for the dead, being played as the “good” christian gather in the final act.most scholars today agree that shakespeare never intended to make shylock a hero. in all probability, the playwright was not even introduced in shylocks jewess. he used the prevailing anti-semitic stereotypes, as a hardy way to characterize his plays villain, what mattered to shakespeare was that shylock was an outsider-set apart from society because of his religion, his profession of lending money for interest, and his hatred for antonio and the other christian characters of the play.shylocks behavior during the trial scene (act iv, scene i) shows us another reason why shakespeare cannot intend him to be a true tragic hero. a tragic hero would peruse his drive for revenge at all costs to himself. but shylock, when he learns that he might lose his own life if he sheds a drop of antonios blood, immediately backs down, suddenly, he would be quite happy to have the loan repaid in money and forget all about his call for “justice”. many readers interpret that as the behavior of a weak and unprincipled man, not a hero.still, most readers agree that shakespeare has granted shylock a dignity and depth of character beyond what we expect of a comic villain. shylocks motives may not be admirable, yet his character is realistic in a way that the character of the ever cheerful, untroubled bassanio and portia are not. it is impossible to listen to shylock speak the lines which begin “hath not a jew eyes?” . without recognizing something of ourselves in him, we feel the sting of shylocks passion for revenge, and the sourness of his contempt for the christians who have tormented him. shylock even speaks differently from the other characters in the play, he seldom resorts to poetic imagery. his sentences are short and choppy, emphasizing that he is different from the others, so he almost spits out his words.the majority view of shylock is that the contradictory side of his nature written into the part by the dramatist, surely，in a play about the virtue of mercy. it is essential that the audience should be able to see the villains point of view and accept him as a fellow human being, however wrong or evil his actions might be.in fact, the debate about shylock is not so much a debate about the character himself as about the way the others in the play treat him, whether shylock reserves mercy or is the victim of a group of selfish, narrow-minded opponents is a question you will ultimately have to answer for yourself.2.2 different characteristics portia shows in the playhowever, portia is a woman of wisdom, great intelligence. she lives under the open skies of belmont and has wealth as the first scene tells us of different kinds. she is a heroine of romance open to classical and legendary comparison giving amorous, promise, living with colorful space and money. the second scene shows that she is a faithful daughter with sophistication and wit she contrasts with the enclosed busy male world of venice and its projects, though only after she has been released from a fixed restriction even more together than those in venice, and the wooing are all successful by act3 scene as the play goes on. she carries symbolic medieval values of the four “daughters” of god: mercy, justice, peace and truth, which shows in act4 at the play. but they are soon forgotten. portia shows little mercy to shylock and forgets him wholly after she left. the final act is taken up with quite new material what now occupies. portia is the scale of the clash between the demand of male friendship and married love.also portia plays a victim of circumstance at first lamenting of her confinement and portraying herself as a pawn to her dead fathers wishes. during this time, she often complains of restrictions placed upon her but curiously enough sticks to the rules. one of the most obvious examples of her contradictory nature occurs in the courtroom when she scrupulously tots the law and skillfully manipulates it to convince shylock to recant his wager. all the time she dresses as a man (an incident act for that time), it is a great irony that as a woman, portia is not allowed to participate in decision of law but dressed as a man. despite her escapades in the courtroom, she demonstrates far more cunning in the social situations not limited by rules. for example, she finds loopholes in the qualifications of her fathers will to persuade bassanio to stay and keep company with her. in comparison with bassanio, portia is a lustrous diamond to muddied quartz. the contrast between the two lovers is painfully obviously as the contrast of wit of portia to any other man in the play.portia is not very great favorite with us. she has a certain degree of affection and pedantry about her, which is very unusual in shakespeares women. but she is perhaps a proper qualification for the office of a “civil doctor” which she undertakes and executes so successfully. the speech about mercy is very well. we do not admire the scene of the caskets and objects entirely to the black prince moochings, we should like jessica better if she had not married a jew, though she thinks she has a right to wrong a jew. the dialogue between this newly married couple by moonlight beginning “on such a night” etc, is a collection of classical elegancies launce lot, the jews man is an honest fellow. the dilemma in which he describes himself placed between his “conscience and the friend”, the one of which advices him to run away from his service or to stay in it is exquisitely “hath not a jew hands, organs, dimensions, affections, passions”. shylocks impassionate plea in the middle of the merchant of venice is one of its worst dramatic moments. after the holocaust, the play has become a battleground for those who argue that the play represents shakespeares ultimate statement against ignorance and anti-semitism, in favor of a liberal vision of tolerance and multiculturalism. other critics have pointed out that the play is after all a comedy that ultimately pokes fun at a 16th century jew. in fact, the bare outline of the plot suggests that the play is far more complex than either of these characterizations.it is wrong to discriminate against the jews, especially this has been going on for thousands of years. shakespeares play is age old and has something to do with this topic. this book is very good but hard to understand the topic as the help of the words are very useful. i would like to recommend this book to people about the discrimination against shylock, the jew in the play. in the merchant of venice, “the villain” is strangely isolated, he is looked as a leader of mercy on interest rather than a receiver of stolen goods. even in shakespeares time, stereotyping was an aspect of their lives, shakespeares anti-semitism seems harsh, but it also shows that not all jews are “vile”, just like some people today believes that shylock can be looked to be hard working.3. changes of womens status in different time“literary works is the most effective tool that display society and propa