The Role of Jessica in the Merchant of Venice The character of Jessica, in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, plays an important role in relation to her father, Shylock. By abandoning him for a Christian husband, Shylock loses the last person with whom he has any kind of connection. Shylock's isolation becomes a vital part of his character and drives his ruthless actions against Antonio. Over the course of the show, everyone who could claim any kind of social or familial connection to Shylock leaves him. Lancelot the Clown, turns to a Christian master, who has the "grace of God..." (II,ii L.139) His daughter Jessica abandons him, and all her Jewish culture, to marry Lorenzo, and become a Christian. So Shylock has no one he can take comfort from. Shylock, therefore, becomes a character motivated by isolation and a feeling of abandonment. His emphasis on the binding values ​​of money and law are the only thing he can claim as his own. When Shylock discovers his daughter's deception, he begins to abandon family ties in the name of the temporal laws that define right ...