In my first blog post titled “What I Hope to Learn About Victorian Literature”, I discussed how I was interested in learning about how Victorian writers connected their lives and world around them to their writing.
After reading the wide range of works that Dr. Schacht had presented us with in the course, I feel as though that goal was fulfilled and I learned a lot of interesting things about the people and world of Victorian England through the literature.
Continue readingUpon its publication in the late 19th century, Reuben Sachs was denounced by the Jewish community and the mainstream press for its seemingly anti-Semitic themes. This is a criticism that Richa Dwor contends with in her essay “The Racial Romance of Amy Levy’s Reuben Sachs.” Dwor acknowledges the rather harsh way in which Levy frames her own community, which for many, paints her as a “self-hating Jew.” However, Dwor rejects the idea that Reuben Sachs is a self-loathing or even malicious story. Rather, it is a critique of the culture and religion; a call for change that Levy deems necessary in order to preserve the future of Judaism. In this, Levy does not reject the religion, she embraces it with an optimism and desire for “the continuity of Jewish life.” Dwor points to Levy’s heavy criticism of the repression that the Jewish community imposes on its own people. Levy illustrates this critique largely through the image she presents of marriage and opinions of women. Dwor claims that it is through this, particularly the depiction of marriage, that Levy makes the argument that the Jewish community will destroy itself if it continues in its competitive and controlling path.
Reuben Sachs is Levy’s attempt to encourage self-awareness in her community in order to correct its self-destructive behavior. Dwor believes that Reuben Sachs makes the argument that allowing greater agency within the religion and community will, in turn, secure its longevity. This is where the articles ultimate idea of “racial romance” comes in. Levy’s criticism of traditional Jewish marriage exemplifies the way in which greater independence, individualism, and open-mindedness can help a group on the brink of collapse. Dwor states that Levy, throughout Reuben Sachs, expresses an anger in Judith’s marriage that Judith herself cannot express because of the strictness of the culture’s inflexibility. It is in this that Levy makes that call for change; greater agency would allow for the reemergence of the racial romance Dwor focuses on. As a result, it will help to strengthen the community and protect its future.
The class status of Reuben and his family is quite similar to that of Catherine Earnshaw in “Wuthering Heights”. Both families come from upper classes, the females especially in both families are obsessed with presenting the image of being wealthy to others. For example, Adelaide Sachs and her mother. I think this novel is a good representation of class in the Victorian Era in general and how class really meant everything. Females, in order to be taken seriously, had to use their appearance to present themselves, and men had to use education and their job to define their class. The difference in this story is that the family is Jewish, which is not like any other Victorian novel we have read so far. There are differences between this family and that of the Catholic families we’ve read about, most notably that they are a minority.
While reading Reuben Sachs, I was impressed by the way that the text was easy to read yet said a lot. This simple, straight-forward way of writing can also be seen in Dickens’ text. Although Dickens’ texts often implemented anti-semitic language and concepts, and Amy Levy’s text is a progressive and representative text that portrays Jews as everyday people and not the cartoonish stereotypes commonly seen in Victorian literature, I did notice that there was a general similarity between the diction of both of their works. For example, when describing Reuben’s arrival, Levy writes, “”Lionel! Sydney!” protested their mother faintly after the boys seemed to take all sorts of liberties with the new arrivals.” By being straightforward and direct with what is going on in the text, Levy is able to make it more dramatic because her implications are not ambiguous. It is obvious that Mrs. Leuineger is angry from her descriptions. In a similar way, Great Expectations benefited from Dickens’ directness, specifically in chapter 6, when Pip thinks, “In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.” Dickens does not implement any fancy words when describing Pip’s fear of losing Joe’s confidence. He writes the emotions that Pip is feeling confidently and precisely.
In Reuban Sachs, one of the elements of the plot I immediately noticed was the prevalence of romance and courtship. Much of the plot surrounds Reuben and Judith, and their relationship within both the conservative and insular Jewish community, and the wider London Victorian society. The use of courtship is something reoccurring in Victorian texts. In Wuthering Heights with Heathcliff and Catherine, and Great Expectations with Pip and Estella. Romance and love seem to be natural tools used to explore the limits of Victorian society, both in a general sense and more specifically within the texts (the Jewish community in Reuban Sachs, or class/money in Great Expectations).
What is specifically included in each of these texts is the concept of true love against societal expectations. When Reuban and Judith see each other again in Chapter 3, they immediately feel drawn to each other, “he heard and saw nothing but the sound of Leo’s violin, and the face of Judith Quixano” (pg 31). This is immediately followed in Chapter 4 by descriptions of societal expectations, how insular and difficult marriage was within the Jewish community and the talk of the pragmatic and financial portion of marriage and courtship.
Pip’s desire to improve his social standing to court Estella, and Heathcliff’s status at Wuthering Heights all force Victorian societal boundaries in relationships. Why use romantic relationships specifically to tackle these themes? Maybe they are areas specifically targeted towards younger members of Victorian society, and romance is one of the few driving things that could be influential enough to shake up these social rules for characters. I am curious to see how the rest of Reuban Sachs plays out and to see if the relationships within this novel play out the same way as Wuthering Heights and Great Expectations.
The discrimination and marginalization of Jews in Victorian London described in this section is not surprising being that this was a time in which society worked to actively suppress groups based on criteria like social class and religion. As argued by Reuben, the Jewish people’s ability to prevail/succeed in English society despite discrimination and stereotypes shows the industry, power of endurance, self respect, etc. of the Jewish people. Leo disagrees with Reuben and insults the Jewish community calling them greedy, vain and power-hungry and points out the likelihood that the Jews will get absorbed by the English people. He doesn’t feel the same deeper connection that Reuben feels towards Judaism, instead he criticizes their materialism and vanity. I think that this discrepancy in opinion was interesting considering the Jew’s history of discrimination. I would assume that it would be rare to find a Jew in this society who would so outwardly speak against his own community. I think that Leo’s argument is reflective of the influence of Victorian Era society because of the secular nature of his argument and the concern with Western materialism. I feel that Leo’s view of Jews can be compared to Heathcliff’s character in Wuthering Heights because while he was oppressed because of his humble beginnings, he ended up becoming a vain, power hungry man. Wuthering Heights seems to criticize this type of materialistic behavior, given Heathcliff’s abusive and destructive nature. Throughout this section of Reuben Sachs, the Jewish community is often talked about as a tribe. It seems like many of these Jews in London, like Reuben, find meaning through their connection with their community. Reuben talks about their journey to freedom in society and the novel explains that this community almost exclusively spent time together. This reminds me of Pip’s relationship with Magwitch in Great Expectations because when they were both oppressed, they had each other to rely on and work together to get out of their situation. In this way, both texts shine a light on the importance of connections with other people when moving through an oppressive society.
When I was reading Reuben Sachs, I noticed that when Amy Levy described the characters, she focused a lot on their physical appearances. She wrote about what they wore and gave descriptions of their faces with a certain emphasis on their eyes. The first description I noticed this in was that of Mrs. Sachs, Reuben’s mother. She is described as having “a wide, sallow, impassive face, lighted up by the occasional gleams of shrewdness from a pair of half-shut eyes” (4). One of the more jarring descriptions comes when Levy is describing Reuben’s aunt Ada. She says of her face, “and from its haggard gloom looked out two dark, restless, miserable eyes; the eyes of a creature in pain” (15). To me, these descriptions really give a deep sense of the character by revealing parts of them that may not be revealed through dialogue. Finally, Levy describes Judith by saying she possessed, “wonderful, lustrous, mournful eyes, entirely out of keeping with the accepted characteristics of their owner” (21). Eyes have the ability to show emotions and feelings, revealing parts of a character that are unknown to the reader.
All of this interesting descriptive language reminded me of the group who wrote about hands in Great Expectations. The article they chose stated that there were over 450 references to hands in the novel which served to create distinctions between the characters. The group talked about the difference between Pip’s course hands and Miss Havisham’s bejeweled hands. This apparently showcased the class difference between these two characters. I’m not really sure how much these connect with one another, other than a descriptive technique used by the authors, but I just found it interesting that in both works, the human anatomy reveals more about characters than first meets the eye.
There is a character in Reuben Sachs who I believe deserves more attention. From her introduction and unfavorable description, I became interested in Aunt Ada. At this point however, I really only know that she resembles a “creature in pain” and that she does not seem to care for herself very well. Though her personality appears to be very different, I was reminded of Miss Havisham in her perpetual wedding dress relative instability. Both women come from a life of wealth, and yet they are equally miserable. What’s more, they both are depicted as perhaps supernatural. Aunt Ada resembles a corse while Miss Havisham is ghostlike. This can thus further be connected to Catherine, who, after her mental breakdown, also turns into a phantom-type character. Then this seems to be something not uncommon of Victorian literature; a female character who’s mental state is weak or questionable taking on a more spectral role. Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre is a wonderful example of this. Now, the cause Miss Havisham’s, Catherine’s, and Bertha’s mental states are all attributed to the actions of the men in their lives. That makes me curious to see, if we learn more about Aunt Ada, if her story will follow a similar path.
Anti-Semitism had been seen as a disease passed down from generation to generation through the medium of printed word. Some common misconceptions of Jews over the years are that they’re greedy, communists, dirty and poor, and unable to be trusted. The English imagination seemed unable to free itself of Shakespeare’s text ridiculing Jews. In fact, Charles Dickens portrayed his character Fagin in Oliver Twist as “devilish” and referred to him as “the Jew” 257 times, while other character’s ethnicity was rarely mentioned. It was hard to find a piece of literature that positively represented the Jewish population. Luckily, Dickens was criticized for this portrayal of Jews and halted the printing of Oliver Twist to make more edits. He changed a part of the book and after chapter 38, there were no longer references to “the Jew”. Dickens later published the novel Our Mutual Friend in 1864 that appeared as he was trying to repair his past mistake by portraying the Jewish character Riah as the pinnacle of virtue, despite him still being a stereotypical Jewish moneylender. According to Linda Hunt in “Amy Levy and the “Jewish Novel”: Representing Jewish Life in the Victorian Period”, in her 1886 article “The Jew in Fiction”, Amy Levy was critical of the novelists portrayal of Jewish characters such as Dickens’ Fagin or LL. Clifford’s Mrs. Keith’s Crime where they are “offensive” and “condescending” depicting them as minor characters only used for comic relief. Levy also criticizes George Eliot’s “Jewish novel”, Daniel Deonda. Eliot’s book was at the time viewed as a model of how to treat Jewish people in fiction. Reuben Sachs then satirizes the idealized depiction of Jews in Eliot’s book. Indeed, the Victorian Era didn’t make Jews the protagonists in literature, but it did help advance their status and representation in literature.
Although prejudice still ran rampant, the Victorian Era saw a lot of legal strides made for Jewish people, specifically men. In fact, the Jewish population grew by 165,000 people over the course of the 19th century which shows how the Victorian Era aided in changing the environment. Right at the beginning of the Victorian Era in 1935, Jews received the right to vote. Moses Haim Montefiore was a British banker, philanthropist, and activist. He became the second Jewish Sheriff of London and was then knighted by Queen Victoria herself in 1837. He was born to an Itlaian-Jewish family and promoted the advancement of Jews in England through charity work. In addition, Sir David Salomons and Lionel Nathan de Rothschild represented the Jewish population in England during the Victorian Era. Sir David Salomons was the first Jewish Mayor of London, elected in 1855. He supported the cause of Jewish emancipation in England and was the first Jewish Sheriff of London. On the other hand, Lionel Nathan de Rothschild was the first practicing Jewish member to sit in Parliament, which is a big deal. Although this was such a be progression, Prime Minister Gladstone requested from Queen Victoria that he be made a peer and she refused saying that giving a title to a Jew would raise antagonism. The Victorian Era certainly did not solve antisemitism, but it increased the amount of representation, both in literature and in government, for the Jewish population and made England a slightly better place for them to live.
While reading Reuben Sachs I came across one quote in particular that stuck out to me, “This woman, with her beauty, her intelligence, her power of feeling, saw herself merely as one of a vast crowd of girls awaiting their promotion by marriage.” This quote is talking about Judith and though she has much to offer she, like most Victorian women, are simply waiting around to get married and fulfill their duties of becoming a housewife. This quote reminded me of Catherine in Wuthering Heights. In chapter 11 of Wuthering Heights, Catherine tells Nelly that Edgar has asked her to marry him and she has accepted. She goes on to explain that she cannot marry Heathcliff because in her eyes he is beneath her in some way. She goes so far as to say, “It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff.” She knows that Edgar Linton is a proper gentleman and can offer her a life of a typical Victorian woman. Judith and Catherine are very similar in that they feel as though they don’t have complete control over their lives. During the Victorian Era, women were expected to be good wives and mothers so this is what was done. Even though these women might have had ideas of their own about how they might want their lives to end up, the traditions of domestic life were so engrained in the society already.