Jessica, in contrast, is the least loyal of the children in the play, meeting secretly with Lorenzo and allowing him to court her, lying to her father, abandoning him, and stealing from him; she’s hardly the docile, obedient daughter that Shylock takes her for. Although she feels some pangs of guilt (“Alack, what heinous sin is it in me / To be ashamed to be my father’s child! / But though I am a daughter to his blood, / I am not to his manners” [2.3.16–19]), Jessica rejects her father, his way of life, and his religion—though not, interestingly, his wealth, a great deal of which she takes along with her.
Jessica’s behavior is not altogether surprising when one considers Shylock’s treatment of her. Shylock shows his daughter little affection or kindness—she is his flesh and blood and therefore an extension of himself, not a person in her own right. Days after she has run away, he exclaims in disbelief, “My own flesh and blood to rebel!” (3.1.32). In her first scene, Jessica laments, “Our house is hell” (2.3.2), and Launcelot’s descriptions as well as Shylock’s actions seem to bear this out. Shylock, stingy and puritanical, keeps Jessica locked up and attempts to isolate her from the world, but he doesn’t think to distrust her any more than he would distrust his ducats: “Hear you me, Jessica: / Lock up my doors; and when you hear the drum / And the vile squealing of the wry-necked fife, / Clamber not you up to the casements then, / Nor thrust your head into the public street / To gaze upon Christian fools with varnished faces; / . . . Let not the sound of shallow fopp’ry enter / My sober house” (2.5. 28–36). He assumes he has her obedience and doesn’t give it a second thought, being much too busy contemplating his money (“I did dream of moneybags tonight” [2.5.18]) and his revenge (“I’ll go in hate, to feed upon / The prodigal Christian” [2.5.14–15]). “There are my keys,” he says to Jessica, “Look to my house” (2.5.12,...