Is the Social Order Restored?

          In Shakespearean plays, there is social order at the beginning and the end. The social order in the beginning of the Merchant of Venice, included things like Christians had more power than Jews, Women had no power, etc. But in the end of the play, I don't think the social order was fully resolved. Part of it, Christians having more power than Jews, was still true in the end, but another important part of the social order, men being in charge and women having little or no power, did not get resolved in the text. I think that at the end of the Merchant in Venice, Portia and Nerissa, the women, still had the upper hand. In the end of the text, they were threatening their husbands because they had lost the rings, and they were talking about things they would do when their husbands weren't home, showing that the men did not really have control over them. To the audiences back in the 1600s though, this would not make sense. I think that although this aspect of the social order does not get resolved during the text, the way it was performed in the 1600s would probably imply it gets resolved after the text.