Feminine agency and feminine values. in Venice Preserved: a response to Elizabeth Gruber

Confident that her feminine values of love, tenderness, attachment to family, and abhorrence of bloodshed are superior to the masculine political goals of the conspirators, she actively advances her values by pressuring Jaffeir into revealing the rebels' conspiracy to the Senate. There is a tragic resolution in the death of the two men, as Pierre dies with his values intact and Jaffeir redeems himself as a man by saving his friend from being debased by torture and then killing himself. Belvidera, the only character untainted by selfishness and cruelty, cannot have an uplifting death, because the values which give meaning to Jaffeir's and Pierre's deaths have none for her, and the values she advocates cannot survive in a patriarchal society.