Jessica (The Merchant of Venice) 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: 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. In such a reading Jessica's
Lyman S. Ayres II (1913) Lyman II grew up in Indianapolis. At the age of twenty-one he replaced his middle name with the initial S. Lyman II graduated "cum laude" from Yale University. He served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy in the South Pacific during World War II. Lyman's grandfather, Lyman S. Ayres, a dry goods merchant from Oswego, New York, founded the L. S. Ayres retail department store in Indianapolis in 1872. Lyman II's father, Fred, was president of the family's department store business from 1896 until 1940. On September 22, 1934, Ayres married Isabel Ferguson, the daughter of Eliza and