Jewish Presences in English Literature

Esther Fisher is a professor of English at the University of Toronto and
a former food critic for The Globe & Mail.

A significant contribution to understanding the image of the Jew in
English literature, this collection provides close study of particular
works by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Trollope, George Eliot, and
Joyce, and an analysis of selected texts from the years 900 to 1600. The
five contributors approach their subject from various angles, all with a
strong emphasis on historical perspective. This and the chronological
arrangement (which is nicely rounded off with a concluding essay that
looks back to Chaucer’s time and earlier, then forward to the
nineteenth century) provide a framework and unifying link for the
diverse approaches.

The editors’ stated aims are to interpret literary representations,
not to convey the sociological effect of the characterization of the
Jew; nevertheless, it seems that one is almost inseparable from the
other. Thus, Korestsky’s apologia for Chaucer’s “The Prioress’s
Tale,” based on the premise that Chaucer uses the unsophisticated
narrator to ironically point out the dangers of innocence, is questioned
by the final essay. There, Ross Arthur asks whether Chaucer’s audience
would be able to recognize that he was not inciting hatred toward Jews.
Furthermore, might the tale not reinforce the negative stereotype to
later audiences?

The other contributors are the two editors and Harry Girling, whose
essay on Ulysses considers the Jewishness of Bloom, the twentieth
century “Everyman.” Placing his observations firmly within the
historical context between two world wars, Girling draws parallels
between Ireland’s struggle for independence and the Zionist ideal, and
between the contemporary “troubles” in Ireland and in Israel.

In her essays, Heller looks at Dickens’s characterization of the Jew
as evil (embodied in Fagin in Oliver Twist), and at the
“corrective,” almost 30 years later, in Mr. Riah in Our Mutual
Friend, which she finds oversimplified. Her other contribution, treating
Daniel Deronda, offers few new insights on Deronda as idealized Jew;
more trenchantly, she observes Eliot’s depiction of Deronda’s mother
as a portrait of an independent woman, in revolt against the subordinate
position of women in traditional Judaism. Such inequalities between men
and women are treated in the English section of the novel as
well—where, Heller implies, the tone is one of “subdued irony,”
whereas in the Jewish part it is “impassioned rage.” Her conclusion
that Daniel Deronda is “less idealizing of Jewish life than . . . [it]
was consciously intended . . . to be” is thought-provoking.

Of all the essays, Cohen’s are the weakest. His view of Shylock in
The Merchant of Venice as a “cruel stereotype” created for
“mercenary and artistic reasons” is hardly enlightening. Many
nonbelievers use biblical and Christian imagery for esthetic purposes.
For Shakespeare’s original audience, whether they were familiar with
unflattering stereotypes of the Jew or not, Shylock’s foreignness,
like Othello’s blackness, would connote difference and possibly be
seen as a threat to the homogeneiety and established order of society.
And in Shakespeare’s plays, disorder—and frequently chaos—result
when the status quo is upset. Cohen’s essay on The Way We Live Now
suffers from a similarly facile approach. He sees a contradiction in
Trollope’s portrayal of Melmotte as greedy and unscrupulous, repulsive
to men, while at the same time sexually attractive to women, and
dignified in his act of suicide. While crediting Trollope with creating
a three-dimensional Jew rather than a cardboard figure of vice, Cohen
has difficulty reconciling the contradictions that make for complexity
and coherence in character, whether in literature or in life. Aren’t
Milton’s Satan and Emily Brontл’s Heathcliff (to name but two) far
more compelling than the “good” characters in those authors’
respective works? Part of their fascination is their diabolical
cleverness and their sexuality. Nevertheless, Cohen’s essays do raise
many interesting issues and questions.

All the contributions are well documented and lively; all would appeal
to both lay readers and academics.