Jews and Gender in British Literature 18 15-1865
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JEWS AND GENDER IN BRITISH LITERATURE 18 15-1865 NADIA DEBORAH VALMAN PhD Queen Mary and Westfield College University of London 2 ABSTRACT This thesis examines the variety of relationships between Jews and gender in early to mid-nineteenth century British literature, focussing particularly on representations of and by Jewish women. It reconstructs the social, political and literary context in which writers produced images and narratives about Jews, and considers to what extent stereotypes were reproduced, appropriated, or challenged. In particular it examines the ways in which questions of gender were linked to ideas about religious or racial difference in the Victorian period. The study situates literary representations of Jews within the context of contemporary debates about the participation of the Jews in the life of the modern state. It also investigates the ways in which these political debates were gendered, looking in particular at the relationship between the cultural construction of femininity and English national identity. It first considers Victorian culture's obsession with Rebecca, the Jewess created in Walter Scott's influential novel Ivanhoe (1819). It examines Rebecca's refusal to convert to Christianity in the context of Scott's discussion of racial separatism and modern national unity. Evangelical writers like Annie Webb, Amelia Bristow and Mrs Brendlah were prolific literary producers, and preoccupied with converting Jewish women. Particularly during the 18'40s and 1850s, evangelical writing provided an important forum for the construction and consolidation of women's national identity. Grace Aguilar's writing was an attempt to understand Jewish identity within the terms of Victorian domestic ideology. In contrast, Celia and Marion Moss, in their historical romances, offered narratives of female heroism and national liberation, drawing on the contemporary debate about slavery. Benjamin Disraeli's construction of a "tough version of Jewish identity was a response both to the contemporary stereotype of the feminised Jew and to the debate about Jewish emancipation. It also drew on the virile ideology of the Young England movement of the 1840s. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many thanks for inspiration and support to: Bryan Cheyette, David Armitage, Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, Julian Blake, Richard Bourke, Alun David, Markman Ellis, Todd Endelman, David Feldman, Anthony Felsenstein, lona Italia, Meg Jensen, Tony Kushner, Beck Laxton, Ian McCormick, Sarah Meer, Julia Moszcowicz, Brian Ridgers, Astrid Schmetterling, Evlynn Sharp. 3 CONTENTS Abstract 2 Acknowledgments 2 1 Introduction 4 2 Gendering the Jew: Scott's Ivanhoe 19 3 Conversion Stories 51 4 Home Influence: Grace Aguilar and Domestic Writing 93 5 Judea Capta: Celia and Marion Moss, Slavery and Liberty 138 6 Muscular Jews: Disraeli, Jewishness and Gender 166 7 Conclusion 203 Bibliography 211 4 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION From the first years of the campaign to establish political equality for British Jews in the 1830s, gender formed part of the debate. 1 While the rights of Jewish men were being discussed in the male parliament and literary reviews, women writers were disseminating and extending the debate in novels, romances, periodicals and the theatre. Moreover, in the proliferation of literary texts that appeared in the decades following Sir Walter Scott's bestselling Ivanhoe (1819), representations of Jews were increasingly gendered. A brief reading of three plays which appeared during the first few years of the Emancipation campaign will indicate some uses of this strategy. In Thomas Wade's play The Jew of Arragon; or, The Hebrew Queen, performed six months after the launch of the emancipation campaign in 1830, an ambivalent response to the Jews' demands is expressed through the figure of Rachel, a beautiful but ambitious Jewess. Wade's dedication "to the Jews of England" employs Enlightenment language in looking forward to the "great progress of reason, and, therefore, of justice and liberality" continuing in the release of "those unworthy bonds with which you still remain encumbered".2 But his play, which depicts the plot by a Jew and his daughter against the King of Arragon in revenge for his attempt to tax them, suggests a fear of Jewish political power. The Jew, Xavier, sees in his daughter's beauty "inborn royalty of soul I And outward-worn nobility" which will bring "glory and power to Spanish Israel".3 Indeed, the king cannot resist Rachel's beauty, and discards his betrothed bride despite the protests of his nobles and subjects. Increasingly aware of his political vulnerability, and that Rachel is "a honey that is poison", the king is nevertheless persuaded to make her queen.4 The retribution of the nobles is simultaneously patriotic and vicious; they declare that Arragon will "from Jewish graves / Start up again in Christian liberty". 5 Rachel and her father kill themselves to avoid capture;while she reiterates her genuine love for I In 1830, Jewish men were obliged to renounce their religion in order to own land, to vote, to hold certain municipal offices, to be an MP, to take a degree at the universities of Oxford or Cambridge, or to operate a retail business in the City of London. The campaign for Jewish "Emancipation" aimed to remove these political disabilities. 2 Wade, The Jew of Arragon; or. The Hebrew Queen. A Tragedy, in five acts. Performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden on Wednesday, October 20th, 1830 (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1830), x. Rachel and Xavier were played by Charles and Fanny Kemble. lbid,21. 4lbid,57. 5lbid,77. 5 the king, Xavier promises ominously that although he "once did dream I Of building up a new Jerusalem I Here in this Saragossa ... Yet will her full hour come - hear it! 'twill come".6 In Wade's play, the desire of the beautiful Jewess for recognition in the Gentile world is elided with her father's more sinister political ambition. Wade's representation of a scheming Jewish woman is challenged in Ebzabeth Polack's play Esther, the Royal Jewess! which followed a few years later in 1835. Polack recasts the biblical story of Esther as an anti-Jacobin drama in whidh the Jews, and in particular the brave heroine, are shown as the bulwark of the monarchy. Esther, a beautiful and virtuous Jewess, is chosen by the king of Persia as his new wife. Meanwhile, insurrection is being planned by a flattering courtier, Haman, who despises the clergy and plots against the king, using popular resentment against "these vultures - who have so long been feasting on the substances of our people's labour, and revelling in wealth robbed from the needy" as a means to his own advancement to power.7 Esther's uncle Mordecai discovers the plot by Haman, whose plans to destroy the Jews are linked with his revolutionary aspirations: "I marvel not that he who could insult a fallen people, should prove a traitor to his sovereign". 8 When Esther finally risks revealing her Jewish identity to the king in order to expose Haman's double treachery, the king responds with tolerance: "Never should the feelings of the heart be perverted by religious opinion. That power omnipotent, be it what it may, never intended its laws for cruelty and oppression".9 Esther ends the play with a speech of patriotism in which her loyalty to the monarch and to the Jews are perfectly compatible: "Blessed be this hour! happy be my king! and prosperous be the Jews of every land and clime! May the sacred tree of liberty never lose a branch in contending for religious superiority; but all be free to worship as he pleases. Let that man be for ever despised who dares intefere between his fellow man and his creed".' 0 In Polack's play, granting "liberty" to the Jews enhances their loyalty to the monarch. Three years later, Charles Zachary Barnett's melodrama, The Dream of Fate, or Sarah the Jewess, also published as a prose tale, portrayed the Jewess as a victim of a scheming Englishman. The play is set in seventeenth-century Frankfurt, where Jews "were treated more like feudal slaves than honest citizens", making them vulnerable to exploitation." Stephen Cardinham, attracted by the wealth and beauty of the 6 Ibid. 81. 7 Elizabeth Polack, Esther. the Royaifewess! An historical drama, in three acts (London: J Duncombe & Co, 1835), 9, 10, 18. 8lbjd,21. 9Ibid,28. t0Ibid,30. Charles Zachary Barnett, The Dream of Fate, or Sarah the Jewess. A melodrama, in three acts (London: J Duncombe and Co 1838). I have used Charles Zachary Bamett, The Dream of Fate, or Sarah the Jewess. A tale founded on the drama by C Z Bamett. Dramatic tales no.1 (London, J Duncombe and Co, n.d. [18401), 7. 6 Jewess Sarah Stolberg, "poured the insidious poison of a wily, but ingenious flatterer's tongue, into an unsuspecting artless maiden's ear - that he persuaded her to forget her lover - father - all, and to think of him, and him only".' 2 He also blackmails her, telling her his brother was murdered by Zodiah Cahn, "a bloodthirsty Jew" who has been protected by her father. 13 Sarah agrees to elope with him, and is cast out by her father, whom Stephen kills, leaving Sarah accused of the murder. As Sarah approaches execution at the scaffold, she wakes and realises that most of the preceding action has been a dream. She determines to profit by its warning, and decides to marry the Jewish man her father had chosen as her husband. Thus, while the drama plays on the image of the victimised Jewess familiar from Ivanhoe and the recently successful English version of the French opera La Juive, it suggests that such tragic scenarios could be prevented by filial obedience and the avoidance of Jewish- Gentile marriage.' 4 The Jewess's sexuality, as in all the other plays, is the dangerous point of contact between Jewish and non-Jewish worlds.