A villain is a character whose evil actions or motives are important to the plot of a play, novel or film. The obvious villains of Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’ and Marlowe’s ‘The Jew of Malta’ would be Shylock and Barabas respectively as these two characters are both depicted as evil and greedy Jews, perhaps due to the racial hatred of the Elizabethan era and the ongoing stigma of Judaism in English society. However, it could be argued that the women of the two plays, including the daughters of the two aforementioned antagonists, Jessica and Abigail, wealthy wife of Bassanio – Portia in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ and the cunning courtesan of ‘The Jew of Malta’, Bellamira, are more villainous than the traditional figure of vices of Shylock and Barabas due to the way that the female characters interact with and often disregard the norms of the Elizabethan era and the expected behaviours of women even in modern society.
Women in fiction, especially young women, very rarely tend to be portrayed as villainous due to the cultural expectations of femininity. Womanly and feminine traits are those of ones of love, care and innocence, thus women and girls will not be traditionally assumed to be deviant or cruel due to the preconceived idea and judgement that society has on women. In the 21st Century, there is still this assumption in place as women are often able to manipulate the patriarchy and criminal justice system to their own advantage by adopting the traditional female characteristic of weakness, innocence and maternal instincts by playing the victim by the chivalry thesis. Female villains are interesting characters because no one suspects her as our society traditionally believes women to be incapable of certain atrocities or because she uses her "feminine charm" to befuddle those around her. Notable female villains include women from Nurse Ratched from ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ to Miranda Priestley of the ‘Devil Wears Prada’, however in many cases, Miranda Priestley being one, these female villains are simply embodying masculine characteristics such as being authoritative and showing leadership qualities but due to the gender of the character, they are deemed villainous for stepping outside the constrictions of the gender role.
The villainous characteristics of Jessica and Abigail in the respective plays can be examined through their interactions with Shylock and Barabas. The plot of both Shakespeare’s and Marlowe’s father-daughter relationships is similar but the ‘daughters sway the audience’s sympathies toward or away from their fathers inversely’ (Beskin,) and vis-à-vis for the audience judgement on the daughters. The father-daughter relationship in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ is depicted as weak from its very introduction as Jessica exchanges only four lines with her father throughout the entire play and on her first line she announces that she is leaving her father as she is ‘ashamed to be [her] father’s child’ and by the end of Act 2, scene 6, states that Shylock has ‘a daughter, lost’ as she breaks off their relationship. Due to the lack of interaction between the two characters and the already formed sympathy that the audience feel for Shylock, Jessica’s actions seem completely unjustified, especially to a modern audience. As an Elizabethan woman, she would have been property of her father until she was married and is therefore seen as evil as she is disbanding Elizabethans unwritten rules about the objectification of women. In ‘The Jew of Malta’, Abigail is a villain as, alike to Jessica, she rejects her father for what her own benefit and gain after her father beings ‘murdering’ her ‘by Mathias’ means’ as her father, Barabas, was the ‘furtherer of [Mathias and Lodowick’s] deaths’ (Act III, scene iii). It is clear to the audience that Abigail has done this for her own gain as in Act III, scene vi, when she dies, she asks that Bernadine, the friar, witnesses ‘that I die a Christian’ while asking him to ‘reveal it not, for then my father dies’ implying that although she is telling others of her father’s plan, she is making sure that it is not prevented but manipulating the situation in order that she dies a good person in the hope that she will gain entry to heaven. The behaviour from both Abigail and Jessica is displayed as selfish as they act for their own personal benefit rather than others and protest against the societal norms of the Elizabethan era which contributes to why they could be considered the villains in their respective plays for both a contemporary and a modern audience.
Both Abigail and Jessica could be considered as feminist icons of literary heritage as both break the expectations of women of the Elizabethan era. Abigail rejects her father, and therefore the role of women at the time, by choosing her religion over her owner as such, whereas Jessica chooses love. Thus they are both considered villainous as feminism has a social stigma, even in the 21st Century, as feminism is still seen to be more akin to misandry than equality by a large majority of the patriarchy and by Abigail and Jessica disobeying their fathers and therefore also taking a protest against all-male authority which make them deviants.
Another female villain in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ could be Portia as she demonstrates extremely manipulative characteristics throughout the play. In particular, the ring plot that Portia and her lady-in-waiting, Nerissa, both spring upon their new husbands is devious. Shakespeare foreshadows the idea that Portia may be deceitful when she gives Bassanio the ring in Act III, scene ii, announcing that ‘when [Bassanio] part from’ it, he will have had warning of ‘the ruin of your love, / And be my vantage to exclaim on you’. The use of the definitive ‘when’ shows that although Portia may appear to trust and love Bassanio, Shakespeare shows an underlying motive and her possible doubts in the male population. This foreshadows the later events as ‘be my vantage to exclaim on you’ means she will have the opportunity to show him up, which she does as he is fooled by her as she dresses like a man. She later manipulates him in Act IV, scene i, when she demands that Bassanio ‘in love shall not deny me [the ring]’. She pushes her husband increasingly far by making him do something that he thought was just but in fact in her eyes in disloyal. This is extremely out of character behaviour for the context of the play and the status of Portia’s character. As a young noblewoman, she would be expected to conform exactly to Elizabethan ‘rules’ as such as her only duty would be to marry the correct husband and the rest of her time could be spent without a worry nor a care. And whilst Portia, may have traditionally been seen as the ‘saviour’ of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ due to rescuing Antonio from his death, the idea of manipulative characteristics is extremely Machiavellian and a contemporary audience would have been increasingly unsettled by the amount of power Portia demands from them by her attempting to control almost all the other men in the play. The idea of a headstrong woman whilst it was still deplorable to the Elizabethan audience had been tackled by many Elizabethan playwrights including Shakespeare, in particular. His 1589 play, ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, Shakespeare explores the idea of a woman perhaps manipulating male desires and the expectations of a woman in order to convince the males that she, Katherina, had been tamed in order to stop the abuse and oppression she was subjected to throughout her life and early marriage and come out on top. Portia later berates her husband, Bassanio, for giving up her ring even though she almost forced him to do as she exclaims how he ‘were to blame… to part so slightly with your wife’s first gift’ (Act V, scene i). This is manipulative as she is twisting the situation to make it so that she is the victim, something stereotypically seen in the criminal justice system when women want lighter sentences for their crimes (chivalry thesis), due to the emphasis Shakespeare evokes from the words ‘blame’ and ‘so slightly’ as it is clear to the audience that he is not to blame which emphasises the idea that Portia is a villain of the play. The controlling behaviour that Portia subjects her husband, Bassanio, to, is a role reversal to the marriage displaying in ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ but with the same underlying morals as Shakespeare keeps portraying woman as being successful with what they can achieve. However, controlling behaviour from women, even in the 21st Century is seen as almost villainous as men still believe that as the superior gender, they should have total control in not only their relationships but also society. The manipulative character in ‘The Jew of Malta’ would most likely be Bellamira, who as a courtesan, uses her sexuality, in order to manipulate Barabas’ young slave, Ithamore, into blackmailing Barabas into giving them money. Bellamira had found herself ‘chaste against my will’ but manipulates the naïve Ithamore into thinking that ‘’tis not thy money, but thy self I weigh’ meaning that she is tricking him into thinking that she values him for anything more than the part he plays in her plot. Whilst Ithamore has feelings for Bellamira as he wishes that they ‘might sleep seven years together’ and her eye ‘twinkles like a star’, these feelings are not mutual with Bellamira as she only pretends to like him when he can be useful and sees him objectively as she rewards him almost as she pushes to ‘let’s [go] in and sleep together. Women in the Elizabethan era and today’s society are often oppressed by the sexuality. It is deemed wrong for women to be openly sexual whilst still being sexualised by every male around them and women who use their gender and sexualisation to their own advantage, which Bellamira does, in anything from getting lenient sentences in the criminal justice system by chivalry thesis to prostitution, are degraded and seen as worthless. Bellamira uses her status in society as a prostitute and her sexual self in order to manipulate members of the patriarchy in order to benefit herself which shows that she has villainous ulterior motives. This can be compared to the biblical ‘Book of Judith’ and Artemisia Gentileschi’s art work from it – Judith slaying Holofermes. Essentially, the works depict Judith enticing Holofermes, who has captured her village, into getting intoxicated and then taking him to bed. When Holofermes falls asleep, Judith, with the help of a female friend, slits his throat and takes his head back to her village. Caravaggio also depicted the same story, but in comparison to Gentileschi, who was raped as a young woman and prosecuted her rapist, something that was almost unheard of during this time (find out what era)s the idea of a woman perhap sd by Shakespeare, in particular. nce audience would have been increasingly u, his work has Judith looking naïve and anxious while her friend is an elderly woman who seems bitter and evil. Gentileschi’s has two young but strong and well-endowed women powerfully attacking the patriarchal power with confidence. Bellamira can easily be compared to Judith as they use relatively similar tactics but whereas Judith uses it for the freedom of her village, Bellamira is doing it for her own gain in hard times. The lack of feeling portrayed by Bellamira and lack of consideration for how this may have affected Ithamore means that she is seen as villainous also because she sees sex objectively and only uses it to her advantage and in order to manipulate the men around her for her gain.

Bibliography:
Are female offenders treated differently from male offenders within the criminal justice system? Marcia Y. Lise
http://thescriptlab.com/features/the-lists/1317-top-10-best-female-villains#