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Symbolic Meanings in the Wedding Ring in the Merchant of Venice: Religious Conflicts and Matriarchal Challenge

The Merchant of Venice is well-known primarily for its story about the rancor between Antonio and Shylock and the clash between Christianity and Judaism. If we consider the structure of the play, however, it would be more correct to say that the overarching focus of the play is not Shylock’s trial but Portia’s marriage, from the first scene that introduces Bassanio’s courtship plans as the reason for Antonio’s financial trouble with the Jewish usurer, to the last scene that leaves the couple on the verge of consummating their marriage. Though marriage may be considered a construct of patriarchal society – especially among the nobility – Portia, in her courtship and marriage, often resists the patriarchal dominance expected in early modern society. For example, she cleverly exerts her will in choosing her husband against her dead father’s will, she is officious about her husband’s concerns and business, she makes fun of male society with her direct verbal derision and physical disguise, and she even goes so far as to ridicule her husband by threatening him with her possible extramarital affairs. Most importantly, through the wedding ring Portia gives Bassanio as a token of love, and which he then wilfully loses, she tames her husband and wields her power, putting Bassanio in the position of an obedient, woman-like husband, and thus offering a matriarchal challenge to Bassanio’s patriarchal authority and, by extension, a challenge to Puritan beliefs. Much of the scholarship about the ring episode has either downplayed the meaning of the wedding ring as merely “a comic sexual symbol,” as suggested by; Keith Geary (67), or has read it for its significance in the relationship between Bassanio and Antonio. For example, Ronald Sharp mainly reads the ring as a means for Portia to “establish the priority of marriage over friendship” between Bassanio and Antonio (256), while Karen Newman places Portia at “a pseudo-center” as a competitor for the partner, Bassanio, who is involved in two kinds of bonds at the same time, friendship with Antonio and marriage with Portia (22). However, if we consider the significance of the ring in terms of both the religious and patriarchal contexts, the ring takes on a much greater significance than a mere token of love but becomes the means by which Portia both conflates and undermines the religious and patriarchal expectations of the early modern period. Therefore, an exploration of the meanings of a wedding ring in early modern England may help account for the challenge to patriarchal authority in The Merchant of Venice. A wedding ring, which is now considered a very common and indispensable part of a wedding ceremony, was an important point of contention for reformers within the early Anglican Church for it was considered one of many vestiges of Roman Catholic ritual practices that more ardent reformers, such as the Puritans, wanted to expunge from the Book of Common Prayer. In the medieval Catholic Church of the twelfth century, the giving of a wedding ring was not considered a required part of a wedding ceremony but was optional for the marrying couple. While the “giving of a ring could include an exchange of parts of a ring or gifts of other jewelry or even silver coins,” the valid consent of marriage in the wedding ceremony could also be indicated simply by “handfasting” (Sokol 17). By the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, however, when marriage in England began to be regulated by the bans decreed by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1200, “a marriage was to be a public ceremony conducted by a priest before witnesses,” and in this public ceremony, “an