Jews in \"Ivanhoe\" Sir Walter Scott\'s Novel

¶ … Jews in "Ivanhoe"

Sir Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe makes Jews central to the plot, but it is not an anti-Semitic book. Despite the inclusion of some traditional stereotypes which -- given the largely "antiquarian" nature of Scott's interests (to recall the word he uses) in telling this tale -- are aimed above all else at historical accuracy for the time period of the book and are not intended to be offensive, Scott writes as though some tenet of Christian chivalry entails tolerance and open-mindedness towards the Jewish population in England in the Middle Ages. In this paper I will suggest that a thorough examination of the novel's portrayal of twelfth-century Judaism reveals that Scott is really writing from a deep understanding of what life is like at the margins -- perhaps because he is writing as a Scotsman and as a physically disabled person (Scott famously had a club-foot) -- and therefore is more sensitive towards the subject of Jews than we might otherwise expect for a man of his place and time.

Scott's narrator in Ivanhoe is a good indication of the overall tone of the book: obviously the narrator's voice in a work of fiction goes a long way towards telling us how to judge the fiction, and in Scott's case the narrator often goes a long way toward reassuring the reader of the historical validity of Scott's own fictional tale of chivalry. The remarkable thing is that Scott's own ideal of chivalry is held to include a protective attitude toward Jews. Yet Scott does not whitewash the existence of real anti-Semitism. Here is how the narrator introduces a discussion of anti-Semitism in Chapter Six:

His doubts might have been indeed pardoned; for, except perhaps the flying fish, there was no race existing on the earth, in the air, or the waters, who were the object of such an unintermitting, general, and relentless persecution as the Jews of this period. Upon the slightest and most unreasonable pretences, as well as upon accusations the most absurd and groundless, their persons and property were exposed to every turn of popular fury; for Norman, Saxon, Dane, and Briton, however adverse these races were to each other, contended which should look with greatest detestation upon a people, whom it was accounted a point of religion to hate, to revile, to despise, to plunder, and to persecute.

This quote shows us the awareness of Scott's narrator -- and presumably Scott himself -- of not only the "unintermitting, general, and relentless persecution" to which the Jews were subjected, but also the fact that many "accusations" against them were in fact "most absurd and groundless." The narratorial voice establishes a level of common sense in which we realize that what Scott depicts -- different races of Gentiles conspiring against the Jews in a historical period when the Jews had no legal protections was always likely to result in trumped-up charges made in the economically-motivated attempt to gain some social or material advantage on the part of the accuser. Since Ivanhoe is, among other things, a "Robin Hood" novel, we can note how the narrator goes on to ascribe a rather disgusting anti-Semitism to the British King John, the customary villain of "Robin Hood" stories:

The kings of the Norman race, and the independent nobles, who followed their example in all acts of tyranny, maintained against this devoted people a persecution of a more regular, calculated, and self-interested kind. It is a well-known story of King John, that he confined a wealthy Jew in one of the royal castles, and daily caused one of his teeth to be torn out, until, when the jaw of the unhappy Israelite was half disfurnished, he consented to pay a large sum, which it was the tyrant's object to extort from him.

We are not meant to find John's example admirable: this is one way that he lives up to his customary role as the villain of the Robin Hood myth. Here we can see that Scott is using anti-Semitism not only to bring out actual period detail -- he refers to it as a "well-known" story so we can assume it is not an outrageous libel perpetrated against King John, but one of the historically-documented horror stories of "pogroms" or short bursts of anti-Semitic violence during the Middle Ages which Scott invokes only to convince the reader that he is accurately representing the historical period in which the book is set. I think this shows Sir Walter Scott can write about an anti-Semite without being an anti-Semite himself.

From the standpoint of the Jews themselves depicted in the book, we can see them as real characters. This means we see them responding to actual societal pressures of the historical time period they lived in. When I mentioned earlier that Scott does include some disquieting details in his presentation of Jews, which sound like anti-Semitism (especially in talking about their historical role as money-lenders) he is nonetheless careful to make the reader aware that he is doing so purely for reasons of historical accuracy. Most specifically I think Scott is slightly timid about his depiction of Jews and money in the novel, and the aspect is treated fairly frankly by the narrator. I take the liberty of quoting at some length to establish Scott's handling of the issues of the "Jews' Exchequer," a royally-inspired legal facility designed to extort money from the Jews -- who were, the narrator admits, more or less the only people in England who had any money in this time period: