The comic tale of The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare depicts a strange juxtaposition of love in the romantic sense with wealth in the monetary sense. The characters in the text recognize both senses as valuable virtues, but comparatively, said virtues are measured against each other to determine (or at least address the question of) which is more valuable. Perhaps the most important quagmire in comparing these virtues is the credibility of the text's depictions of love, and with specific regard to Antonio, a merchant from Venice, and Bassanio, his closest friend, nature of their parentage compared to that of Bassanio. interactions with the heiress, Portia, undermine the sustainability of what the characters claim to be love. The following ultimately argues that Shakespeare either deliberately or inadvertently depicted a common aspect of male characters which, in his time, was completely unaffected by contemporary ideas about sexual orientation, but which would currently be considered homosocial behavior ; therefore, relationships between a man and a woman in Shakespeare's time are portrayed as mere tradition and unrelated to homosocial intimacy. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get an original essay The element of Bassanio and Antonio's relationship that impinges on the credibility of Bassanio's alleged love for Portia is the level of the intimacy that Bassanio shares with Antonio. The text provides numerous examples of this intimacy, and it is often represented as a closeness that exceeds the intimacy of any other relationship in the play. These examples begin from the first scene of the first act in which Antonio, Solanio and Salerio converse with each other. Antonio admits to being sad without knowing the cause of his sadness, and his two friends assure him that his sadness comes from the great risk of his current investments and that it is a natural propensity for any trader to risk as much as Antonio; nevertheless, Antonio explains that their assumptions are inaccurate. In response, they assume that the only other logical conclusion is love. When Antonio says that his goods at sea are not the cause of his sadness, Solanio suggests: "Why then, you are in love"; to which Antonio responds vaguely: “Fie, fie,” which is too abstruse to be concretely interpreted for a single emotion (1.1.46-7). We can affirm, from the connotation of the archaic interjection, fi, that Antonio is completely disgusted by the idea, perhaps tasteless, that love is the cause of his sadness, but Shakespeare's punctuation does not does not necessarily support this interpretation. The comma after the first sentence and the period after the second almost suggest that Antonio's sentence could just as easily be interpreted as indifference to the idea. It is the first line that illustrates the ambiguity of the text's depiction of love, and the rest of the play informs this first conversation in a way that suggests that Antonio is protesting too much, so to speak, and that he is, in fact, in love. , Lorenzo and Graziano join the conversation, entering the scene, and Solanio says: “Here is Bassanio, your noblest kinsman, / Graziano and Lorenzo. Be well. / We now leave you in better company” (1.1.57-9). On the one hand, Solanio simply seems to be cordially apathetic about Antonio's sadness because, although they are friends, he is only willing to invest to a certain extent in Antonio's discomfort at the moment. On the other hand, Solanio's words should not be taken lightly because he singles out Bassanioand establishes early on that there must be an intimacy between Antonio and Bassanio that is lacking in the other relationships depicted in the scene. Later in the same scene, Antonio and Bassanio are left alone, and Antonio chooses this time to say: "Well, tell me now who is the same lady / To whom you have sworn a secret pilgrimage, / of which you have promised today hui to speak to me", indicating that Antonio knew since before this scene that Bassanio was pursuing a woman, which qualifies this (although it does not prove anything in itself) as a possible cause of the aforementioned phenomenon. sadness (1.1.119-21). Bassanio's response is fraught with suggestive implications for myriad reasons. First of all, it is important to note that Antonio only asked Bassanio to identify the woman he is courting, and the significance of this is that Bassanio begins his response by explaining why he is pursuing the woman in question rather than to answer the question. . This type of response suggests that Bassanio feels the need to justify his pursuit to Antonio, as if it is not simply enough that Bassanio is a man who has found a woman worth courting. Responding to the quoted question, Bassanio reminds Antonio that he has accumulated significant debts. by living beyond his means, and he even admits that his debt has not affected his propensity to live exuberantly. “But my chief concern,” he says, “is to fairly rid myself of the great debts / In which my time, something too lavish, / Has left me speechless” (1.1.127-30). Bassanio's main concern is to escape his debts. Then, curiously, Bassanio seems preoccupied with reassuring Antonio of their own love, again in his initial response to Antonio's question about the as-yet-unnamed lady Bassanio wishes to pursue. “It is to you, Antonio, that I owe the most in money and in love,” says Bassanio, maintaining the juxtaposition of money and love (1.1.130-1). In the context of the woman Bassanio intends to pursue, he finds it relevant to explain that his love for Antonio is greater than any other. Antonio responds that, if Bassanio's plan to alleviate his debt is viable, "be assured / My purse, my person, my most extreme means / Lie all unlocked for your occasions" (1.1.138-9). Antonio's denotations simply indicate that he will do whatever Bassanio needs him to do for Bassanio's sake, but formally the syntax creates an almost homoerotic connotation, particularly in the following word choice: person, extreme, lie and unlocked. The term person is most likely chosen for its meaning, body, particularly because it also foreshadows the reality that, later in the play, a pound of Antonio's flesh is owed to Shylock for a loan that Antonio acquired in the name of Bassanio. In other words, Antonio actually spends his money (purse), his body (person), and his life (most extreme means) on Bassanio. The idea that Antonio's body is open to Bassanio, however, is easily interpreted as a sexual double entender, especially given Shakespeare's affinity for puns. Much later in the same conversation, Bassanio finally answers Antonio's question until line 161. He begins: "In Belmont lies a lady richly left, / And she is fair, and fairer than this word, / Of wonderful virtues” (1.1.161-3). Bassanio justifies his discursive preamble about his financial situation and the need to live extravagantly by finally answering Antonio's question with the solution to his own problem. The first, and probably most important, characteristic of Portia, whose name eventually appears three lines later, is that she is a wealthy heiress, and Bassanio has maneuvered this conversationin such a way that it suggests that he thinks Antonio must and will see the pragmatism of his plan. In fact, his speech favors money over everything, and in terms of sequence, follows complexion, virtue and hair respectively. Bassanio and Antonio have a love so intimate that it appears to the modern reader to be romantic to the extent that Bassanio feels obligated to explain the reasons why he became romantically involved with someone else, and he is revealing that mere attraction to a woman is not enough. are enough to explain his actions. In the second scene of the third act, Portia prolixly expresses her hopes that, in substance, the love between her and Bassanio is real. When talking about allowing Bassanio to choose between the three chests, she says that she wishes he didn't choose yet because she is afraid that he might make a bad choice and end up without her forever, but then, she said, "There's something that tells me, but it's not love— / I wouldn't lose you; and you know yourself / Advice of hate is not of such quality » (3.2.4-6) She wants to give clues to Bassanio, favoring him unfairly, but she resists so as not to be less virtuous: “Tear out your eyes, / They ignored me and have me. divided / One half of me is yours, the other half yours…” (3.2.14-6) Here, Portia’s syntax is also full of meaning because it is arguably Shakespeare’s greatest proof. has, in writing this piece, harnessed incredible insight into a social constructivist perspective on gender as well as a comparison of homosocial interactions with heterosocial interactions. She uses the word neglected, which Stephen Greenblatt equates with the word bewitched, in this context, and in this sense Portia says that Bassanio's eyes enchanted or delighted her, perhaps even going so far as to say that they took a look. metaphorical spell on her. This introduces a concept that contemporary theory calls the male gaze and suggests that, if Shakespeare could have been insightful enough to describe the male gaze (albeit without contemporary terminology), his insight could just as easily have identified in the men of his reality this male gaze. then the unquantifiable aspect of the male personality that binds men so closely to each other that they prefer their heterosocial bonds to any relationship they might form with a woman; furthermore, without modern concepts of sexual orientation, Shakespeare would not have considered this to be deviant or unnatural behavior. Portia's words take on more meaning when the metaphorical plight is examined more closely for what it might be, in relation to contemporary literary theories which, of course, were not even discussed in the 16th century when Shakespeare was writing . It would seem unfounded to suggest that Shakespeare exploited this idea on his own well before the theories were officially published, if the consistencies throughout the play had not validated the idea that Shakespeare could, indeed , lacking only modern terminology to describe contemporary concepts that he contemplated alone. When Portia says that Bassanio's eyes cast this spell on her and, in turn, divided her, this strongly alludes to the theoretical concept in feminist experience studies (the Lacanian variant of feminist literary criticism) called the male gaze, which was first introduced in Laura Mulvey's essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", in 1975. Mulvey states: The pleasure of looking was shared between active/masculine and passive/feminine. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure which is stylized accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role, theWomen are simultaneously looked at and exposed, their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact, so that they can be said to evoke being looked at. (Mulvey 808-9). Mulvey's theory states that Bassanio's eyes not only see Portia, but also superimpose on her appearance a "looking character" in the sense that she is passive and devoid of desire as well as objectification in the sense that she is only a signifier of male desire. Portia is (the women are) divided into these two incredibly narrow patriarchal representations, and as Portia continues to say, both halves are for Bassanio (the men). Shakespeare even incorporates Mulvey's active/passive male/female binaries, using them to characterize Portia. to the extent that only men participate in the play. “An active/passive heterosexual division of labor has an equally controlled narrative structure. […] The man hesitates to look at her exhibitionist attitude. Thus, the divide between spectacle and story reinforces the role of man as the active one in transmitting history, in making things happen” (Mulvey 810). Portia stays at home for most of the play and her suitors come to see her; Additionally, everyone recognizes the rules her father established to win her hand, including Portia herself, despite the fact that he is dead and unable to enforce these rules, suggesting that even in the death, men are at the center of all action, and a paternal law is infallible. She demonstrates confidence in the heteronormative social codes her father taught her regarding how to shake hands, representing her adherence to Lacan's concept of the Law of the Father "because it is the father who enforces the cultural norms and laws” (Dobie 71). ). At this point, Shakespeare employs the multifaceted concept of the male gaze while remaining consistent with contemporary psychoanalytic literary criticism, and his embrace of these concepts both affirms the theories themselves and indicates a level of insight on the part of Shakespeare who simply carried an idea. a deep understanding of people, which is further enhanced by the popularity of his plays. It stands to reason that Shakespeare could only write so emotionally if he truly had an abnormal gift for understanding people. In an alternative articulation of this concept of the male perspective dividing women against their will and, thus, halving their perceived value in both sexuality and humanity, Mulvey draws conclusions from the previous sections of his article, explaining how women in cinema are subjected to this division of self. She characterizes it in terms of cinema and uses a Freudian approach (as opposed to the Lacanian approach of the previous quote), but most of the aspects of cinema she refers to also concern any artistic representation of man or woman in her relationship with him. his world: Sections II. A and B exposed two contradictory aspects of the pleasant structures of gaze in the conventional cinematic situation. The first, scopophilic, arises from the pleasure that comes from using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through sight. The second, developed through narcissism and the constitution of the ego, comes from identification with the image seen. Thus, in cinematic terms, one involves a separation of the erotic identity of the subject and the object on screen (active scopophilia), the other requires an identification of the self with the object on screen to through the spectator's fascination with sexual impulses, the second with the libido of the ego. This dichotomy was crucial for Freud. […] Both are formative structures,mechanisms that do not signify. In themselves, they have no meaning, they must be linked to an idealization [sic]. (Mulvey 808) The Freudian significance of this is that, on the one hand, the male perspective in general (not just Bassanio's) objectifies Portia as a mere object of aesthetic value to be viewed and stimulated by the libido, "the source of our psychic energy. and our psychosexual desires” (Dobie 58). On the other hand, both the male and female contingents of the audience watching Shakespeare's play identify with Bassanio, idealizing his interaction with Portia by critiquing how worthy he is to possess her (on the merits of his masculinity or, more appropriately, his adherence to Portia). the male lead) and how worthy she is to be possessed. This means that the character, Bassanio, takes on the role of the audience's ideal self (ego) while the female character, Portia, takes on the role of the ideal object of "displacement – ​​moving one's feelings for a particular person to an object that is linked to him. or she, just as metonymy uses the name of an object to replace another with which it is closely related or of which it is a part” (Dobie 60). In none of this is Portia representative of a “self.” It does not serve the audience's ego; the male gaze considers her rather as a sexual object and simultaneously as a part of Lacan's Other – "those remaining elements which exist outside of oneself" (Dobie71). Bassanio finally says: "Let me choose, / For such that I am, I live on the easel,” which refers to an instrument used to torture traitors; he compares the delay to such torture (3.2.24-5). Portia takes the metaphor further, asking Bassanio to “confess / what treachery is mingled with [his] love” (3.2.26-7). The conversation becomes increasingly ambiguous, as does the nature of Bassanio's love, as he responds: "Nothing but this ugly betrayal of distrust / Which makes me fear to enjoy my love" (3.2.28-9) . Greenblatt qualifies the word, distrust, comparing it to the word, uncertainty, so Bassanio's uncertainty could be about choosing the chest, fearing or doubting the truth of his love since Portia suggests that, if his love is true, he will choose. correctly; however, he could just as easily be referring to Antonio as his deepest love and, therefore, the betrayal of the love he professed to Portia. Shakespeare writes the role of Portia in the play in such a way that he seems to know the concept of the male gaze, making it all the more believable that he simply wrote with a unique understanding of the human psyche. None of this is to say that Shakespeare deliberately depicts homosexual lovers torn apart by circumstance; rather, he described an aspect of homosocial behavior and interactions that he recognized in his time – a time when people were not particularly aware of what modern socialites call homosexuality – as a level of intimacy between men which could not be compared to the relatively inferior one. the intimacy a man has with a woman; therefore, what homosexuality means in the 21st century was not in the 16th century and could long have been considered natural in the minds of men who viewed homosexuality as something so unnatural that they presumed that their intimate feelings for their male friends were little more than strong feelings. friendship. The nature of Antonio's inexplicable sadness juxtaposed with Bassanio's pursuit of a woman as well as the suggestive uncertainties of Bassanio's words to Portia even imply that there may have been, at one point, a closeness between Bassanio and Antonio who was so intimate that they saw no reason to have afemale company. They prioritize their own relationship over everything else, suggesting that the discourse of Shakespeare's time was almost devoid of the concept of homosexuality, including to some extent the idea that women were merely functional as a property, serving only sexual and aesthetic needs. After all, if a man does not perceive women as his intellectual equal, then someone else must satisfy his desire for a soul mate of equal value. With all these statements in mind, it is logical to consider that Shakespeare, having such an ingenious knowledge of human personalities in depth, was able to recognize, capture and perhaps exaggerate in The Merchant of Venice that aspect of the male perspective which privileged homosocial relationships of men compared to any other relationship. If only the second scene of Act III exhibited characteristics of the male gaze, then perhaps it could be said that it was an isolated event in the text, indicating no particular insight on the part of Shakespeare; however, Portia's character is fluidly portrayed under this lens throughout the play. After Bassanio chooses correctly and wins her hand, Portia says, in complete accordance with the conclusions drawn earlier from Mulvey's assessment of the male gaze: You see me, Lord Bassanio, where I am, as I am . Although for myself alone I would not be ambitious in my wish To wish myself much better, yet for you I myself would be tripled twenty times, A thousand times more beautiful, ten thousand times richer, So that only to be high in your count I could in virtues, beauties, lives, friends, exceed the count. (3.2.149-57) Portia's desires, whatever they may be, are not acknowledged in the text except for the one desire that concerns Bassanio, and this is precisely how the male gaze operates. All that matters about Portia in the minds of Shakespeare's audience are the attributes that concern Bassanio: her "looking" character, her stagnant (inanimate) quality as a possession, and furthermore, for the situation unique to Bassanio, his heritage. fortune. Proving Shakespeare's embrace of the concept of the male gaze is intended to demonstrate that such insight could also understand people to such depth that he was aware of this homosocial element of male relationships which some would say in the 2000s. first century to encroach on their perceived heterosexuality. Shakespeare highlights the extent of homosocial relationships that some men achieved, admirable for the depth of their love and intimacy and profoundly progressive in that they were not criticized for affecting public perception of gender. a man. The nature of Antonio and Bassanio's relationship was common knowledge, as Solanio and Salerio indicate, and neither Antonio nor Bassanio were seen as less masculine in the eyes of the characters in the text, including Portia, which is significant in the final acts of the play. . As such, for the same purpose of demonstrating Shakespeare's insight, it is pertinent to examine Portia's short speech at the end of Act III, scene four, explaining a plan to Nerissa. She explains that they are going to sneak up on their husbands, and Nerissa asks if they will allow themselves to be seen. In response, Portia: They will, Nerissa, but with such habit that they will think we have accomplished what we lack. I'll hold you to any bet, When we're both dressed like young men, I'll prove that I'm the prettier of the two, And I'll carry my dagger with bravest grace, And I'll speak between the change of man and.