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Grace Aguilar and the Jews

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Grace Aguilar and the Jews WRITING" HOME: GRACE AGUILAR AND THE JEWS By TRACI MICHELE KLASS A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2005 Copyright 2005 by Traci Michele KJass ACKNOWLEDGMENTS When I was eight years old I threw a temper tantrum in the B. Dalton bookstore in Town Center Mall in Boca Raton, Florida. Standing at the register, I stomped my feet wildly and demanded my parents buy a blue, leather-bound copy of Johanna Spyri's Heidi. Even though I no doubt embarrassed my mom and dad as I shrieked, they nevertheless bought the book (I still have it) and have fostered my love of reading and learning ever since. Words cannot express the degree to which my family's love and support have seen me through many harrowing years of graduate school, shrieking, and foot-stomping. None of my success would have been possible without continued encouragement from my parents, Denise and Steve Klass, my sister Niki, and my grandparents, Jackie and Irv Greenspan. My ability to complete this dissertation and the Ph.D program with a degree of sanity is also the result of my committee chair and mentor, Judith W. Page. I could not have survived these last four years without her guidance and support. Her commitment to this project and to nurturing my academic and scholarly development has been immeasurable. "Thank you" simply does not seem like enough. I am also fortunate to have worked with a stellar committee—Pamela Gilbert, Richard Brantley, and Leah Hochman—whose expertise and constructive criticism challenged me at times and ultimately made me a better critic. in I have also had the privilege of working with Michael Galchinsky. His willingness to "talk Aguilar" with me and his generosity in sharing his own private transcriptions of Grace Aguilar's unpublished letters and journals—a literary treasure trove—has been a priceless resource. Much of my additional research would not have been possible without the financial and academic support of the Center for Jewish Studies and the Judaica Library at the University of Florida. The library's willingness to purchase rare and out-of-print texts that I would not have had access to otherwise and the Center's commitment to my research and generous conference funding have been instrumental to my success. Finally, I thank the English Department at the University of Florida for awarding me an Alumni Fellowship, without which my doctoral studies would not have been possible. IV TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii ABSTRACT vii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 TOLERATION OR REPRESSION? : JEWS, JUDAISM AND THE SEARCH FOR HOME 4 What's A Home Got To Do With It? 6 "Writing" Home 21 Notes 41 2 THE POWER OF THE NOVEL: RE-FORMING PUBLIC OPINION AND COUNTERING CONVERSIONIST CARICATURES 47 The Safest and Wisest Path for Female Writers 67 Influencing But Not Interfering: Sympathy Through Subversion In The Novel 78 Notes 100 3 LIFTING THE VEIL: RECLAIMING AND RE-PRESENTING JEWISH HISTORY 109 "Now History unfolds her ample page" 113 "In His hand is my heart, and my hope" 135 The Bad Converted 159 Notes 171 4 CRIPPLING PAST, LIBERATING FUTURE: ANGLO-JUDAISM AT HOME 177 A "Jewish Protestant" in Their Midst? 180 v "Being Home" 203 Notes 225 CONCLUSION: ISRAEL DEFENDED 230 Notes 232 WORKS CITED 233 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 244 VI Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy "WRITING" HOME: GRACE AGUILAR AND THE JEWS By Traci Michele Klass August 2005 Chair: Judith W. Page Major Department: English Nineteenth century England developed the philo-Semitic commitment to convert Jews that had begun centuries before with the Whitehall Conference and Oliver Cromwell's readmission of the Jews to England in 1655. This commitment included the zealous evangelical and missionary effort to write and distribute novels, sermons, stories for the young, memoirs, and histories devoted to narrating and further promoting the successful conversion of Jews. Grace Aguilar, however, was one of the first Anglo-Jewish women writers who educated readers in Jewish history, attempting to counteract philo-Semitic persuasions and foster sympathy for Jews in Christian society. Even though she was lauded as a good will ambassador for Jews in the Victorian age and rose to great popularity, Aguilar has nevertheless fallen into relative obscurity in the last 150 years. Yet her fiction and the history it conveys play a significant role in the foundation of Victorian literature and culture. Her literary vii repertoire marries the world of the novel to the world of moral and religious education. I explore how this union produces a kind of fiction that works toward solving the problem of Anglo-Jewish "homelessness"—physical, emotional, and spiritual—in both the private and public spheres where the English had made it difficult for Jews to settle a home for themselves in the face of conversion. The novel, I argue, becomes a powerful and subversive tool in Aguilar's attempt to reconcile the disparate worlds of philo-Semites working toward converting Jews and Jews working toward integration; the novel provides the basis from which a religious space, or home, begins to take shape for Jews in Victorian England. How could Jews maintain their identity as Jews and yet thrive as contributing members of society without the lingering threat of philo-Semitic persuasions? Aguilar, I contend, uses fiction both to penetrate and to meld the private world of Judaism and the public world of Victorian society in hopes of establishing an answer and thus a viable Jewish home. Vlll — I stood ALONE 'mid thronging crowds who filled that stranger shrine, For there were none who kept that faith I hold so dearly mine: And exile felt I, in that house, from Israel's native sod, And exile yearning for my home,—yet loved still by my God. And like an oak thou standest, of leaves and branches shorn; And we are the withered leaves by autumn tempests torn From parent stems, and scattered wide o'er hill, and vale, and sea, And known as Judah's ingrate race wherever we may be. Oh! blessed was that visioned light that flashed before mine eye; But, oh, the quick awakening check'd my soul's ecstatic sigh! Yet still, still wilt thou rise again, my beautiful, my home, Our God will bring thy children back, ne'er, ne'er again to roam! —Grace Aguilar, "A Vision of Jerusalem" (1844) Oh England! thou hast call'd us to thy breast, And done to orphans all a mother's part, And given them peace, and liberty, and rest, And healing pour'd into the homeless heart; Then, oh once more, let Israel mercy claim, And suffring thousands bless our England's honour'd name. —Grace Aguilar, "The Hebrew's Appeal" (1844) ix INTRODUCTION We should not be content with mere amalgamation with the Gentiles in society; but, without relinquishing the social position which an age of superior civilisation and refinement has assigned us, we should still retain our nationality—still, before man and before God, remain Israelites indeed; and thus compel respect towards our faith, and remove not only prejudices excited by ignorance, but check the zealous efforts of conversionists by convincing them, that our constancy, as our religion, must be indeed of God, and therefore no effort of man can turn us from it. —Grace Aguilar, The Women ofIsrael (1845) On February 25, 1837, Anglo-Jewish author Grace Aguilar wrote her evening's prayer in her journal, what would later become her posthumously published Sacred Communings. As she often did, Aguilar prayed for guidance and strength against conversionist efforts, as well as for the ability to employ her "talents" as a writer to help others do the same: "Oh, Almighty, Thou hast given me one talent, not bestowed on all Thy creatures. Blessed Lord, permit me, in Thy mercy, by that talent to do some little good to my fellow creatures" (209). In her 1851 Pilgrimages to English Shrines , "The Grave of Grace Aguilar," Anna Maria Hall observed that "Aguilar prayed fervently to God that she might be enabled to do something to elevate the character of her people in the eyes of the Christian world and—what was, and is, even more important—in their own esteem" as Jews; for "[tjhey had, she thought, been too long satisfied to go on as they had gone during the days of their tribulation and persecution" (455). 1 2 In the following chapters I define how nineteenth century conversionists used the novel to mis-educate a nation about Jews; and, how the Jewish author Grace Aguilar used fiction to counter those representations to realize her vision for an Anglo-Jewish home in England. In Chapter 1 1 establish the historical and contemporary religious environment from which Aguilar emerged and would eventually try to change. I conceptualize Aguilar's vision for a Jewish home within the context of feminist perspectives of home in relationship to identity and otherness. In Chapter 2 I argue that Aguilar appropriates the subversive literary tactics of Enlightenment Feminist and late Romantic writers to outline this vision of home and to effect individual and as well as national change for Jews and Judaism. Fiction was the essential tool in Aguilar's project and aided her determination to reshape Christian ideological misconceptions, past and present, of "the Jew." For it was through the black and white words printed on the pages of her stories that Aguilar attempted not only to re-write the stereotyped Jew of the past, but it was the means by which she could reach readers, specifically Christians, as a Jewish woman writer trying to evoke sympathy for and acceptance of Jews as Jews in England.
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