Father-Daughter Relationships in Sidney’s The Countess of Pembroke’s Ar

Father-Daughter Relationships in Sidney’s The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice Justification for the subjugation of females to males during the sixteenth century came from a variety of sources. Ranging from the view that God gave Adam authority over Eve as penalty for the fall, to a belief in the superiority of a husbands’ physical strength over that of his wife, attempts at rationalization of the restricted freedom of women came from every direction.1 Puritan reformers also believed that Eve was God’s gift, given to Adam ‘to consummate and make up his happinesse.’[1] From this perspective, we can easily make the mental adjustment necessary to embrace the view of women as property that could be ‘given in marriage, taken in battle, exchanged for favours, set as tribute, traded, bought, and sold.’[2] With this viewpoint in mind, it is interesting to move into a consideration of the father-daughter relationships presented in Sidney’s The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia, Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice to analyse how this viewpoint limited the freedoms of daughters. To begin our exploration of father-daughter relationships in the context of patriarchal control, we must first examine how males viewed and represented daughters within the texts. In The Old Arcadia, Pyrocles as Cleophila not only ‘praises’ Philoclea in fragmented body parts (as opposed to a whole person), but also compares these parts to military instruments of war. ‘Her loose hair be the shot, the breasts the pikes be / Scouts each motion is, the hands the horsemen’ and ‘her cannons be her eyes.’[3] Although this comparison situates Philoclea in the degra... ...53-7. [10] Oxford English Dictionary Online [11] Singh, 153. [12] The Merchant of Venice, III.ii.83-96. [13] D. Lucking, ‘Standing for Sacrifice: The Casket and Trial Scenes in ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ University of Toronto Quarterly (Spring 1989):355-75, quoted by J.G. Singh, in A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare, ed. Dympna Callaghan (Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2000), 150. [14] The Jew of Malta, II.iii.52-3. [15] II.iii.289. [16] The Old Arcadia, 101. [17] The Old Arcadia, 102. [18] The Old Arcadia, 5. [19] The Jew of Malta, II.iii.228-232. [20] The Jew of Malta, II.iii.304-6. [21] The Merchant of Venice, I.ii.22-5. [22] II.v.56-7. [23] The Jew of Malta, III.iii.39-42. [24] The Jew of Malta, II.iv.1-4. [25] The Merchant of Venice, III.i.31-33. [26] The Old Arcadia, 360. [27] Dusinberre, 124.