Jessica
August 21, 2025
Note: This story follows what became of Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, in The Merchant of Venice, after the play closes. Here’s a short recap of the play:
Bassanio, a charming rake, needing money to court Portia, a rich and beautiful young heiress, petitions his wealthy friend, Antonio, for a loan. Antonio, readily agrees, but his money is tied up in various ventures, so he seeks a loan from Shylock, a Jewish moneylender. Shylock loathes Antonio, who has always treated him contemptuously, but lends the money anyhow, stipulating that if it isn’t repaid on time, he would take a pound of Antonio’s flesh. Bassanio sails off to court Portia and is successful. Meanwhile, Shylock’s daughter, Jessica elopes with Lorenzo, a friend of Antonio’s, stealing her father’s money and a precious ring. Antonio’s ships are lost at sea and he cannot repay the loan to Shylock, who demands his pound of flesh. The case goes to court and Portia, disguised as a young magistrate, arrives to try the case, leaving the newlyweds Jessica and Lorenzo in charge of her estate while she is gone. Portia, as judge, asks Shylock to show mercy, and when he refuses, she concedes his legal right to his pound of flesh, but not to shed any blood. Because of the legal loophole, the tables are turned and Shylock is ordered to pay a heavy financial penalty and convert to Christianity for plotting against a Venetian citizen. The play ends joyfully with the marriage of Bassanio and Portia.
Such a night! First, a clattering storm that shook the house to its foundations with booming peals of thunder, torrents of rain assaulting every pane of glass, blasts of wind threatening to carry off the roof, and bolts of lightning that tore open the sky. Then, just like that, it was over. But the eerie silence that’s taken its place is more unnerving than the tumult. It’s impossible to sleep, and I have no desire to stay awake, with my thoughts all a jumble and my mind restlessly jumping from one memory to another. Sometimes a volume of poems brings solace, and when I went to fetch one off the shelf, I came upon the empty notebook where I scribble these words. Maybe setting things down in writing will help me sort out the confusion in my head, and if nothing else, it will occupy me until I drop off to sleep. Beyond that, my writing has no purpose, no point. Well, does anything in life have a point?
My hope is that pouring words onto a page will drain them from my mind and give me some peace. The complaints, regrets and excuses that clutter my brain and poison my life have no escape hatch. If I had someone to talk to, they wouldn’t pile up and lay smoldering within me, but who can I talk to? These pages will be my confidant, and maybe through some magic, if I commit my thoughts to paper and afterwards set them alight, they will have been exorcised. If only such a thing were possible. It would be foolish to expect my writing to accomplish anything beyond distinguishing this particular meaningless night from earlier meaningless nights and those to follow.
Glancing back to the top of the page, I almost roar with laughter to see the words I wrote—such a night. It’s a year since I wed the lout, and the words we exchanged back then still echo in my memory. “In such a night . . . In such a night . . .” Looking at the moon, enfolded in each other’s arms, we blabbered about what was possible in such a night. “A night for lovers,” we prattled on. Troilus and Cressida, Pyramus and Thisbe, Dido and Aeneas, Medea and Jason. That’s who we compared ourselves to, stupidly, since every one of those liaisons ended in tragedy. Why didn’t we at least cite lovers who had happy endings? Are there any? No, our love didn’t end in tragedy. Nothing so grand and heroic for us. Just a deflation of overblown expectations. The excitement and hope of young love withered and turned to boredom, nothingness, a hole where something should be but isn’t. A year since those words were spoken and since then a steady diet of anguish, despair, and bitter disappointment. Shut in, shut off, with no freedom or agency over my life.
Not so different, really, from what my life was like before we wed. Isn’t that what I got married to escape from in the first place? Now I’m back in the same hole I crawled out of. Still, I don’t regret running off. It’s something I had to do, and would surely do again if my life were re-wound. I had to get out. It was intolerable. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stand it a minute longer. When the opportunity presented itself, I didn’t hesitate. Maybe it was the only chance I’d ever have. Did I even have a choice? If I stayed, I would have been married off anyhow, with no say in the matter. Maybe I would have ended up with Tubal’s idiot son. Would that have been any better? Not only would I be miserable, but I’d be blaming myself for allowing that to happen. I heard Papa talking, making plans for me. I had to escape. When Lorenzo first proposed the plan, I was ecstatic. The idea of of leaving my old life behind for a beautiful new one was irresistible.
What is there to feel sorry about? I got what I most desired, everything I dreamed of. And I got what I deserved, which was no better than what I traded it for. At least I know that now. If I hadn’t left, I would have cursed every day of my life, imagining what I was missing. Now I understand that I wasn’t missing anything. That’s the precious knowledge I gained, my compensation for taking a chance. To be honest, there was a short period of true bliss. Of course, it wasn’t true, but it felt as if it was, at the time. It didn’t last long, but before I realized it was all illusion, I was happy for the first time in my life. Now I lament my naiveté, shut up here in this tomb, but for a brief time I sang a different tune. I was embarking on a wonderful journey away from an existence I detested.
I didn’t always detest it. When I was too young to imagine anything better, my life was tolerable enough. Back when Mama was alive, before she became ill, things were better. There was some laughter and joy in our household in those days. Even Papa had a smile on his face back then, not the perpetual frown that’s become his only expression. Everything changed when she fell ill. It was the end of my childhood. Instead of being cared for, I became caregiver and housekeeper. Instead of the songs and laughter that once issued from Mama’s lips, there were only her complaints and her wishes that she were dead. There was no praise or encouragement from Papa, only scoldings, insults and demands that I do more. I was constantly carrying things here and there, washing clothing, tending the hearth, lighting the Sabbath candles, and laboriously feeding Mama soup, spoon by spoon. At the age of nine or ten my childhood was over and I was nothing but an unpaid housemaid.
The house reeked of foul medications, and the air was thick with incantations in an incomprehensible tongue mumbled by Papa and his visitors who came daily, draped in tasseled shawls and carrying little black books, tracking in dirt that I had to get down on my knees to clean. While the men prayed, swaying to and fro, sitting down, then standing up, sometimes taking a few steps forward and backward, sometimes smiting their chests, their droning recitations filled our little house with their stale, rank breath. I understood that the ceremony was meant to help heal Mama, but it filled me with dread. When her death proved it to be as futile as it was unpleasant, the whole religious charade became repugnant to me. The sight of the slovenly, unkempt men solemnly performing meaningless rituals filled me with scorn, and the harsh sounds of the queer language of their prayers were anathema to me. Mama’s illness lasted so long that it virtually erased from my memory any sweetness and love that had preceded it.
Maybe it was wicked of me to feel relief when Mama took her last breath. To tell you the truth, the wracked and withered remains of her body that I tended bore little relationship to the person that used to be Mama. I didn’t feel so much grief at her actual death because the person I had loved was already long since gone. I was weary of all the chores I had been saddled with, sick of the stench of illness and death that encompassed us. I was ready for a new life, a new beginning. But that was not to be. The mood of our household didn’t get lighter after death released Mama from her long and awful suffering. What came next was a different kind of misery. While Mama’s passing turned me against religion, it had the opposite effect on Papa. He became more devout than ever, if you can measure piety by humorlessness, dogmatism and rigid adherence to ancient lore. There was no normal conversation for him, only proverbs and passages from the Old Testament.
Something else was happening at that time, happening to me. I was entering adolescence. My body was changing and so were my feelings. As a child I was content to do what I was told. I didn’t question or disobey. But for reasons that I didn’t understand, I felt sensations and urges that disrupted my equilibrium. It didn’t happen all at once, but it began right around the time our household was reduced to Papa and me. My eyes were opening up to things I never saw before. I became aware of the people beyond our little enclave who lived a different kind of life. Of course, I was aware of those people before, and had almost daily contact with them. It was contact that I used to dread and tried to avoid because those other children always chided and bullied me. How many times did I hear the taunt “Dirty Jew” hurled at us? They pelted us with rotten fruit, called us horrible names, made fun of our clothing, and ridiculed us for being as backwards as the prayer books in our synagogue written from right to left.
When I was younger these encounters, unpleasant as they were, seemed normal and natural. It was just the way things were. But as I grew older I began to wonder why they mocked us, and became aware that our clothes were indeed rough and poorly made, and that our houses were squalid hovels in comparison to theirs. That awareness shamed me. There really was something shabby about the way we lived and how we conducted ourselves. The older I got, the more uncomfortable I felt with our constricted lives centered around duties and obligations and bound up with peculiar rituals. There were restrictions on what we ate, how we dressed, what we were able to do on the Sabbath, while the people on the other side seemed to have unlimited freedom to do as they wished. I wanted to be more like them. They were real people leading real lives. I heard them singing and laughing and longed to be a part of that world, but it was shut off from me. Forbidden. Taboo.
“For the Goyim,” Papa would say with a snarl. “Not for us.” But who was the us he spoke of? It didn’t feel like it included me. Before I knew better, I asked Papa what the word Goyim meant. “Them,” he said waving his arm toward the window. “Those other people. The Gentiles.” I thought he was calling them gentle people and didn’t understand why it was bad to be gentle. It seemed to me a good thing, even though the Gentile children didn’t treat me in a gentle way. Still the word Goyim took on a positive connotation for me despite the disparaging tone of Papa’s voice when he spoke the word. The notion sprang up in my mind that I belonged with the Goyim and not the Jews. It would be a better life. I even began to wonder if I was really one of the Goyim and ended up among the Jews by accident. That would explain the affinity I felt for them and the aversion I felt for those who were supposed to be my people. Maybe Mama and Papa were not my real parents. Maybe I was a changeling, one of those children exchanged at birth and placed with the wrong parents.
For his part, Papa became stricter and more cantankerous. As I started changing from a girl to a woman, he reacted with disgust. He called me an unclean thing when I had my monthly discharge, and locked me in my room. He watched over me not like my guardian but my jailer, allowing me only rare moments of freedom. My one goal and desire was to escape from him and that miserable place, and find where I really belonged. That was my secret dream and the only thing that made existence bearable. Some day I would leave that place, leave Papa and his mean ways, leave and never return. I would find the place where I was supposed to be, where I was meant to be.
To my great surprise, it worked. As I scribbled away last night, my eyelids grew heavy. Just remembering how I labored when mama got sick was enough to tire me out. After I dragged myself off to bed, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep the likes of which I haven’t known for some time. Having found so potent a remedy in writing, I am loath to give it up, and take up my pen again tonight to continue my story.
I didn’t exactly fall head over heels in love with Lorenzo, but I liked him well enough. He was a bit of a scamp, and I found that rather endearing. He wasn’t the kind of fellow you took seriously. I was surprised that he paid attention to me. The others shunned me or called me names. To them I was nothing but a Jewess, something alien and unclean. But Lorenzo took an interest in me. At first I thought he just wanted to mock me, and I avoided him. But he persisted. He followed me about and tried to engage me in conversation. Eventually I gave in. We flirted. He gave me little gifts, like morsels of food of the kind not allowed in my house. To me they were exotic and delicious. We talked, mainly about Papa. I complained to Lorenzo about how mean and stern he was. We made fun of him and laughed at him together. What a relief it was to have someone to confide in, to pour out the torrent of complaints that had no channel for release before. He was my first real friend that I could talk to about what was on my mind.
Was Lorenzo in love with me? I guess that depends on how you define love. He was attracted to me. Even though I lacked confidence and self-esteem, I knew I wasn’t ugly, that I was, in fact, rather pretty. But aside from my looks I think he was attracted to me because I was different. He liked my foreignness and strangeness. The very things that repelled others drew him to me. He loved to trace his finger along my bushy eyebrows and kiss my dark curly tresses. Love? I don’t know about that, but he was intrigued. And he wasn’t oblivious to the money Papa was reputed to have stashed away. He asked me about it enough for me to know he was interested in that. So, I had some things that he wanted, and he had something that I wanted. He was the key to freeing myself from Papa’s grasp and the misery of the ghetto, and to becoming a normal, regular person who could be accepted by others as the wife of Lorenzo instead of the daughter of Shylock the Jew. Maybe that isn’t love, but it’s as close to it as I was ever likely to get, and maybe as close as anyone gets. I snatched at the chance.
Stealing my father’s money was my idea, not Lorenzo’s, although he was happy enough to go along with it. I had very low regard for my own worth and wanted to increase my value. I thought of the money I took as my dowry. It wasn’t any more than Papa would have given Tubal for me to wed his idiot son. The ring, that ring that Mama gave to Papa, I took that for a different reason. To me it symbolized their union which produced me, and I wanted to sever that bond, to deny any connection between them and me. I planned to destroy the thing. I was going to throw it into the sea. But then we came across an old man with a monkey on a rope. Lorenzo spotted it first and squeezed my shoulder. “You know who that reminds me of?” he said. At first I didn’t understand him, and then I burst out laughing. “He does kind of look like my father, doesn’t he?” I said, and on an impulse I pulled the ring out of my pocket and traded it for the monkey. Why did I want that hideous creature that reminded me of Papa when I just fled from him? I really don’t know. I thought it was to show my contempt, but maybe even then, there was something in me that knew I could never completely separate myself from the father I tried to disown.
Fleeing from the house was the most audacious thing I had ever done. What would Papa have done if he caught us? The time was right, though, because he was preoccupied with some business he was conducting with Antonio. I didn’t know why Papa agreed to lend him money. He detested the man. I used to hear him rail against Antonio for insulting him and interfering with his business. Yet, there he was running about, trying to squeeze money out of Tubal to lend to Antonio. Such a complicated business it was. Lorenzo explained to me afterwards that Antonio didn’t want the money for himself, but to lend it to his friend, Bassanio, whom he was inordinately fond of. Papa didn’t even charge Antonio interest on the loan, but demanded a pound of his flesh if he failed to pay up on time.
That was a crazy thing for Papa to do—I suppose he wanted to humiliate his enemy—and it was a crazy condition for Antonio to accept, not that he had anything to worry about, since he had plenty of assets to cover the loan. When we arrived in Belmont, though, we heard some alarming news. All of Antonio’s ships were lost at sea, so he couldn’t pay his debt, and Papa had him detained and planned to exact a terrible vengeance on him. I wondered if my eloping with Lorenzo, who was Antonio’s friend, had added to his ire, but even earlier I’d heard him say he “would rather have Antonio’s flesh than twenty times the value” of the debt. Still, I didn’t think he would go through with it. He had Antonio under his thumb, and that would satisfy him. Besides, the court surely wouldn’t allow such an abomination to take place.
I should have been more worried than I was about what was taking place in Venice, but the truth is that the danger and intrigue of it all heightened the romance of our adventure. None of it felt real. When we arrived at Belmont, it was as if we had entered a fairy tale, and that feeling was intensified by the happenstance of having that wonderful estate of Portia’s all to ourselves while she and her maid went off on some secret mission, and Bassanio and his retinue returned to Venice to assist Antonio. What a contrast that grand manor was to the stifling ghetto hovel I was accustomed to. In the wonderful serenity of that place we teased each other with romantic images of lovers trysting in such a night, under such a moon, just as we were doing on that first magical night at Belmont. I don’t know how many days and nights we spent there, lost in love, but, at last, our rhapsodizing was cut short by the return of the mistress of the house and shortly after, the crowd from Venice.
It was a noisy and chaotic scene as each member of the party related different pieces of the story of the litigation between Papa and Antonio. The complicated twists in the tale involving fake magistrates and the gifting of rings made my head spin. The most astonishing part was that the plaintiff in the case ended up in jeopardy, while the defendant was rewarded damages. The long and short of it is that Papa was hoodwinked by Portia, who disguised herself as a magistrate and conducted the hearing.
The story filled me with conflicting emotions. Part of me was outraged by the miscarriage of justice that destroyed poor Papa, but I was equally relieved that Antonio didn’t suffer harm at his hand. Had such a calamity occurred, how would I, the wretch’s daughter, have fared? I was dazzled by Portia’s audacity and brilliance in carrying out such an escapade. What a woman! So deft was her impersonation that no one, including her betrothed, recognized her. Still, I felt awkward as they reveled in describing the details Papa’s undoing right in front of me, as if I bore no relation to him. Did they have no expectation of filial duty, or did they just think of me as one of them, no longer associated with the detested Jew? I should have celebrated my acceptance and successful assimilation, and I did, but not without some discomfort.
The season of our honeymoon was simply delightful, full of all the things I had longed for, but had been denied. I was living the life I’d always imagined that other people beyond the ghetto wall lived, that I had missed out on, a life replete with all the laughter and joy I could have wished for. One of the new experiences that filled my new life with excitement and pleasure was sex, but almost as wonderful were the parties, the exciting new people, the travel, and the food. Best of all, I think, was having a partner to share it all with. That heady and wonderful time didn’t come to an end all at once. It was a gradual decline, barely noticeable at first. Change can be both gradual and so momentous that it’s hard to understand how it came about. One moment it is daylight and the next it is pitch black, yet from second to second the change in the quality of light is imperceptible. Life turned from sweet to sour, from wonderful to intolerable, imperceptibly but also in the blink of an eye.
The unaccustomed life of luxury I had been thrust into was, in part, to blame. With the abundance of rich foods and delicacies on hand I started for the first time in my life to gain extra weight. My figure wasn’t as attractive as it had been, and I saw Lorenzo’s displeasure with my new appearance. I wasn’t happy about it either. My clothing didn’t fit well and I was reluctant to go out in public where I would be seen. We didn’t engage in sex as often as we had, and when we did, it wasn’t like before. Lorenzo seemed less interested in my pleasure than his own. He was miffed at my reluctance to attend parties and social gatherings, and began to go out on his own. That suited me because I was happier staying home by myself. But when he returned from his soirées, often inebriated, we got into little spats which later evolved into heated arguments. In a matter of months our conjugal bliss had dissolved into fractious discord and proceeded to deteriorate from there.
How addictive this practice of writing is! I had no idea that setting down some formless threads of thought on paper would give them such substance and weight. It’s clarifying and terrifying to read the account that’s emerged. I expected to be the heroine of my own story, but instead shudder at the self-portrait I’ve drawn. I barely recognize the woman I’ve described as myself. That’s not who I am or how I would behave, but I must accept the truth of the words I wrote. I’m as curious as I am apprehensive about what terrible new things I will learn about myself as I continue my tale.
Like a child discarding a toy that ceased to amuse him, Lorenzo cast me aside. Before long, his indifference turned to scorn and then to outright contempt. Things came to a head one evening when he had some friends over to play cards. He gave more attention to his games of noddy and maw than he did to me. My role was to serve refreshments, make sure there was plenty to drink on hand, and keep out of the way. As I retreated to my room after performing my duties, I heard the men titter and thought I heard someone utter the word Jewess. I tried to dismiss it from my mind. I renounced my Jewish faith, not that I had any, and became a Christian when we wed. Why would I be called a Jewess now? I resolved to ask Lorenzo about it the next day, when he was sober.
From the early days, Lorenzo called me Jess. I liked that. Jessica was my old name, belonging to someone who didn’t exist anymore. The name Jess confirmed my new identity. The next morning when he called me, I noticed that he spoke my name with a drawl, stretching it out to two syllables so that it sounded like Juh-ess. I wondered if he’d always pronounced it that way and if all I heard the previous night was my own name. Nothing insidious about that, so I didn’t bother saying anything. But as time passed, that protracted pronunciation of my name became more and more pronounced until I could no longer deny to myself that he wasn’t calling me by my pet name Jess, but was brazenly addressing me as Jewess. I challenged him about it and in response, he slapped me across the face.
That slap woke me up to a new reality. I had been willing to put up with insults, neglect, and verbal abuse, but with that slap, all illusion fell away as if a glamorous mask was removed revealing a hideous poxed countenance. I had never been struck before, and the violence of the act shocked me. Papa was violent and mean-spirited, but never raised a finger against me. Such a thing was inconceivable. How then could the man I wed do such a thing? The answer was obvious. My father loved me, and this man did not. Papa loved me. It was a revelation. I didn’t think he was capable of love—he was such a hard, rigid, cold person. He kept me away from everything I wanted and thwarted my every dream. Yet that man cared for me too much to do me physical harm. I escaped from him and fled to another man from whom I expected all the love I felt deprived of, and that man struck me. His love was a sham. Maybe he had some curiosity about me once, but that had been satisfied, and I was nothing to him.
So that was who and what I was—a despised Jewess. No matter that I had become a Christian. You can’t un-become a Jew. Once a Jew, always a Jew, whether you held fast to the Old Testament and the ways of the patriarchs or lived your life like a Gentile. Jewishness didn’t consist of how you acted or what you thought. It was part of your being, like your nose is part of your face. There is no way to un-Jew yourself. To others you remain a Jew. For the first time I felt a surge of sympathy for Papa. Nobody called him by his name. It was always “Jew, do this; Jew, do that.” From royalty to the dregs of society, he was called Jew behind his back and to his face. Maybe at one time in his life Papa just wanted to be like everyone else. But they never allowed it. He was a Jew and they would never let him be otherwise. What could he do but become the person they forced him to be. “If I have to be a Jew,” he might have thought, “I will be the most Jewish Jew they have ever seen.”
They made him inhuman, a monster, and in return he did the only thing a monster can do, scare the wits out of them. What a game they played with him at that false trial, demanding that he renounce his Jew-hood. Ha. Papa has the final laugh. Sure, they swindled him out of his money, not even requiring Antonio to repay the principal he borrowed, but when they inflicted on him the worst punishment they could think of, stripping him of his religion, his tribe, his identity, they freed him from the curse that hounded him his entire life. Now they will have to call him Shylock the Christian. But no, they will never do that. He will always remain Shylock the Jew, regardless of how devout a Christian he pretends to be. They could baptize him in an ocean of water, but should he set foot in a church, a chorus of whispers would erupt: “There is the Jew.”
How could I have ever thought I would be able to shed the label Jewess? As if converting to a different faith and wedding a Christian could change my identity, the core of who I am. But what is that core? What does it mean to be a Jew? I know what it means to the Christians. It means to be Other, to be outside the circle of true human beings. But what does it mean to me to be a Jew? It gives me nothing to believe in because, do what I may, I lack that fundamental faith in the kind of God I’m supposed to believe in, and it gives me nothing to be a part of because I have always felt apart from those who profess that faith.
So what does my Jewishness consist of? Is it something in my blood, in the matter that composes my body? I never felt like I was one of the Chosen, but I will always be treated as if I did. To be Jewish, for me, is to be the child of my mother and father. And how can I undo that? Only by ceasing to exist. My identity as a Jew is something that I will never be able to slough off. Papa dealt with his Jewish identity by embracing it fully and playing the role of Jew to the hilt. My path is a different one, pretending on the outside to be one person and knowing on the inside that I am not who I pretend to be. Accepting that reality is the very thing that makes me a Jew. It wasn’t Papa I was so desperate to escape from, but from being a Jew—but how can you escape from yourself?
How dazzled I was by Lorenzo and his crowd! They seemed larger than life, and such a contrast to the dull, insipid society of the ghetto. They were loud and boisterous, yet elegant and refined. They had class. What a change from the seedy, unseemly existence I was used to. But now I know there is little substance to their glamour. Take away the fine clothes, lavish lifestyle, educated speech, and privileged status, and they were no different from the people I’d been familiar with all my life.
Take Antonio, the high priest of the coterie. Oh, he impressed me at first. What elegance, poise and nobility! Everyone raved about him, called him generous, kind, brave, well-spoken, and loyal—and so he was, on the surface. Yet, despite all the nice things they said about him, I noticed that nobody cared to spend much time with him. They went to him when they needed something, and got away from the gloomy git as soon as they could. He seemed high-minded and unconcerned about such worldly things as money, but that’s just because he had plenty of it. His wealth bought the companionship that he couldn’t win with his personality. As far as his being kind and generous, that wasn’t much in evidence in the way he treated Papa. He spat on him, called him a dog, and interfered with his livelihood because he thought himself so superior to the lowly Jew.
His protégé Bassanio wasn’t any better—a gigolo plain and simple, who used his charm to inveigle money from Antonio, who was infatuated with him, in order to woo a wealthy lady, a feat he hypocritically managed by pretending not to care about gold and silver. That lady, too, was an interesting case. Portia, oh Portia, I can’t help admiring you even now, though I want to despise you. The most intelligent person I ever met, and the wiliest. Bold, inventive, and absolutely stunning. Not to mention wealthy and noble. Who could resist your charms? Bassanio couldn’t, and neither could I, even though your behavior to me was always condescending. For a long time you wouldn’t deign to speak to me directly, and you managed that so artfully that I was probably the only one to notice your slight. Like an irresistible fruit, beautiful in color and form, enticing in scent and flavor, but pure poison, beautiful on the outside, evil within.
How you befuddled and hoodwinked poor Papa, costumed as you were as a magistrate spouting fine words about mercy, only to show none yourself at the end of the ordeal. Lucky I am that you never treated me as an equal, or even as well as your maid, otherwise I would have fallen hopelessly in thrall to you. Try as I might, I cannot dislike you, despite the many reasons I should, for there is one great service you did for which I will always be grateful. You showed me what a woman can be, can do. You taught me that women are not a whit inferior to men, and indeed, in the most important ways, superior. Excepting your haughtiness, you would be a wonderful role model for girls. Alas, you use your gifts for own amusement.
As much as I condemn others, no one deserves greater censure than myself. I admit it freely. Papa was insufferable, Lorenzo and his friends were contemptible, but my own behavior was utterly reprehensible, inexcusable. I won’t try to justify myself, because there is no justification. Absconding as I did with Papa’s money, betraying his faith and heritage, and taking up with his enemies, was the worst way a daughter could treat her father, surpassing even Regan and Goneril in treachery. If Lorenzo’s abuse is my punishment, I am glad for what I have suffered, although no amount of suffering reduces the harm I did. I long to tell Papa how sorry I am for the hurt I caused him, and that whatever he may think of me, I remain his daughter and the memory of him is alive in my heart and mind. No resentment towards him remains, and every day I find new ways to understand him and the unbreakable connection between us. But I can’t bare to see him again, because of what I’ve done, and what I’m about to do.
Unbar the doors and where could I go? There is only one place for me. It was Lorenzo who unwittingly gave me the idea. Mimicking an actor he heard on stage, he shouted, “Get thee to a nunnery!” There, indeed, will I go. A joke on the parents who raised me, on Lorenzo and his caddish crew that see me as a Jew, and on those I will join as a cloistered nun. The biggest joke is on me, and it is one I can laugh at it. If the idea of an all-powerful God who is jealous, vengeful, arbitrary, and petty is repugnant to me, the idea of God as an immortal mortal born of a virgin mother is ludicrous. Neither is a god I can honestly devote my life to. The only god I can worship is the spirit within me, perhaps within every living thing, within every bit of matter in the cosmos—that voice within me that tells me what is true and what is false. What better guide could I have through this life of illusion, though illusion it, too, may be?