In the play, she elopes with Lorenzo, a penniless Christian, and a chest of her father's money, eventually ending up in Portia and Bassanio's household.

Literary critics have historically viewed the character negatively, highlighting her theft of her father's gold, her betrayal of his trust, and apparently selfish motivations and aimless behaviour.

Since the end of the 20th century their views have been more moderate and nuanced, pointing to an alternative reading that allows her actions to be motivated by love and generosity, and being driven by Shylock's own tyrannical and immoral behaviour.

The central plot of The Merchant of Venice is relatively straightforward: Antonio borrows money from Shylock to help his friend, Bassanio, court Portia, but, through misfortune, is unable to repay and is subjected to an onerous default (a literal "pound of flesh" cut from his body).

Gobbo is leaving Shylock's service to give his allegiance to Bassanio, and Jessica bemoans the loss of his company in a household that is "hell".

After Gobbo leaves, she muses to herself on what flaws are in her character that makes her ashamed to be her father's daughter, and that although she is related to him by blood she is alienated by his behaviour.

Jessica next appears at Belmont in act 3, scene 2, accompanying Lorenzo and Salerio, a messenger delivering a letter to Bassanio from Antonio.

Jessica informs them that she has heard her father speaking with his fellows, saying he "would rather have Antonio's flesh / Than twenty times the value of the sum / That he did owe him.

They exchange romantic metaphors, invoking in turn characters from classical literature: Troilus and Criseyde, Pyramus and Thisbe, Aeneas and Dido, Jason and Medea, and finally themselves in the same mode, until they are interrupted by Stephano, a messenger.

The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; Portia and Nerissa enter, followed shortly by Bassanio, Antonio, and Gratiano.

After they are all reunited, Nerissa hands Lorenzo a deed of gift from Shylock, won in the trial, giving Jessica all of his wealth upon his death.

The generally accepted sources for The Merchant of Venice are Giovanni Fiorentino's Il Pecorone (c. 1380s) and Richard Robinson's English translation of the Gesta Romanorum (1577), but neither of these contain the Jessica–Lorenzo plot, nor give their Shylock-analogues a daughter.

[20] For the Jessica–Shylock relationship, John Drakakis, the editor of the Arden Shakespeare's third series edition, highlights the verbal connection between The Merchant of Venice and The Jew of Malta with Barabas's words when Abigail rescues his gold and Shylock's at Jessica's theft of his Ducats.

Justice, the law, my ducats, and my daughter, Another version of the play's plot can be found in Anthony Munday's Zelauto: The Fountain of Fame Erected in an Orchard of Amorous Adventures (1580).

Beatrice D. Brown, in her 1929 article, "Mediaeval Prototypes of Lorenzo and Jessica", finds the most direct match in "… MS. Royal 7 D. 1, a collection of theological pieces probably compiled by a Dominican friar at or near Cambridge in the thirteenth century.

[25] Writing two decades later, James L. Wilson finds a better parallel in The Sultan of Babylon, an English story rooted in The Matter of France and the chanson de geste The Song of Roland.

His daughter, Floripas, proceeds to murder her governess for refusing to help feed the prisoners; bashes the jailer's head in with his keychain when he refuses to let her see the prisoners; manipulates her father into giving her responsibility for them; brings them to her tower, and treats them as royalty; does the same for the remaining ten of the Twelve Peers when they are captured too; helps the Peers murder Sir Lucafere, King of Baldas when he surprises them; urges the Peers to attack her father and his knights at supper to cover up the murder; when her father escapes and attacks the Peers in her tower, she assists in the defence; then she converts to Christianity and is betrothed to Guy of Burgundy; and finally, she and her brother, Fierabras decide that there is no point trying to convert their father to Christianity so he should be executed instead.

[26] All this is justified to the audience simply because Floripas converts to Christianity and Laban is a Saracene: The reason for the cruelty of the Sultan's two children is quite obvious.

"[28] Literary critics have historically viewed the character negatively, highlighting her theft of her father's gold, her betrayal of his trust, and her apparently selfish motivations and aimless behaviour.

In her 1980 survey, "In Defense of Jessica: The Runaway Daughter in The Merchant of Venice", Camille Slights calls out Arthur Quiller-Couch's opinion in the 1926 The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare as an extreme but representative example:

[29]Slights sees this as a consequence of sympathetic readings of Shylock, where the play is seen primarily as exposing Christian hypocrisy, and his actions merely natural responses to ostracism and prejudice.

The relationship of Jessica and Lorenzo to the primary lovers, Portia and Bassanio, consistently is contrastive and negative: they undergo no tests of character or faith; they are obedient to no bonds; they take all, rather than giving all; they hazard nothing.

[31]Slights contradicts this view, pointing out that it conflicts with "a natural audience response"[30] and argues that "we must question judgments that deny the most obvious emotional force of Shakespearean plots and characters.

[32] This view is supported by John Russell-Brown, the editor of the 1955 Arden Shakespeare second series edition of the play: "... nowhere in the play does Shylock show any tenderness towards his daughter ... as a Jewess, loved by a Christian, Jessica stood in a fair way for the audience's sympathy ..."[33] In Munday's Zelauto, Brisana (Jessica) opposes her father, Trinculo (Shylock), and eventually elopes with Rodolpho (Lorenzo); all presented sympathetically for the audience.

It ranks him with the miserly fathers in Elizabethan and classical comedies, who are only fit to be dupes of their children ..."[33][34] The first critical notice of Jessica in the 18th century was made by William Warburton, who commented on the line in act 5, scene 1: "Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way / Of starvèd people.

"[35] Warburton's comment was that "Shakespear is not more exact in any thing, than in adapting his images with propriety to his speakers; of which he has here given an instance in making the young Jewess call good fortune, Manna.

The first, by George Steevens, offers an alternate reading of the passage: "I suspect that the waggish Launcelot designed this for a broken sentence—'and get thee'—implying, get thee with child.

"[42] In John Greer St. Ervine's 1924 sequel to the Merchant of Venice, The Lady of Belmont, Jessica is portrayed as a lascivious woman of weak character.