If someone were to have asked me yesterday who the main romantic hero of Sir Walter Scott's novel, Ivanhoe was, I would have guessed “Ivanhoe.” But I no longer think so. If you use Romantic criteria to determine who the hero is, I think it will obviously be the Jewess, Rebecca because no one in the novel remains true to themselves with as much tenacity and in the face of as many temptations not to as she does.
In his book, The Roots of Romanticism, Isaiah Berlin defines the Romantics as those who were above all else, dedicated to living authentically. I quote him at length below:
"Suppose you had spoken to these persons [The various Romantics]. You would have found that their ideal of life was approximately of the following kind. The values to which they attached the highest importance were such values as integrity, sincerity, readiness to sacrifice one's life to some inner light, dedication to some ideal for which it is worth sacrificing all that one is, for which it is worth both living and dying. You would have found that they were not primarily interested in knowledge, or in the advance of science, not interested in political power, not interested in happiness, not interested, above all, in adjustment to life, in finding your place in society, in living at peace with your government, even in loyalty to your king, or to your republic. You would have found that common sense, moderation, was very far from their thoughts. You would have found that they believed in the necessity of fighting for your beliefs to the last breath in your body, and you would have found that they believed in the value of martyrdom as such, no matter what the martyrdom was martyrdom for. You would have found that they believed that minorities were more holy than majorities, that failure was nobler than success, which had something shoddy and something vulgar about it. The very notion of idealism, not in its philosophical sense, but in the ordinary sense in which we use it, that is to say the state of mind of a man who is prepared to sacrifice a great deal for principles or for some conviction, who is not prepared to sell out, who is prepared to go to the stake for something which he believes, because he believes in it — this attitude was relatively new. What people admired was wholeheartedness, sincerity, purity of soul, the ability and readiness to dedicate yourself to your ideal, no matter what it was. No matter what it was: that is the important thing."
In all of romantic literature, no one captures the essence of this definition better than Rebecca, the daughter of Isaac of York; for though other main characters in the novel have their value systems and fight for them, it seems like they all compromise them in some way that Rebecca never does.
In some ways, we can plot the various characters along a spectrum of Romantic authenticity. Wilfred of Ivanhoe is noble and chivalrous but his tests are largely physical. Cedric the Saxon is devoted to the restoration of Saxon sovereignty of England again and works for it but he succumbs to the inevitable eventually and begins the process of assimilating. Richard the Lion-Hearted is portrayed as a great warrior but he does have a weakness for avoiding duty for adventure much to his people's suffering. Brian De Bois Guilbert is a Norman knight who is so infatuated with Rebecca that he cares not what her faith is (his is only a functional pragmatic thing), Prince John is a two faced double crosser. Robin of Locksley an outlaw, Maurice De Bracy has no scruples at all and cares not what scruples Rowena would have to violate to marry him. Reginald Front De Beuf is just a jerk with no principles above money whatsoever. Issac of York seems to have mastered the art of putting on a good face to make a good return. Althelstane in the end is not willing to fight for the Anglo-Saxon cause or even for Rowena. The Friar is a total opportunist. As is the court counselor, Waldemar Fitzuse. Lucas Beaumamoir, the head of the knights Templar seems riddled with self-righteous hypocrisies and packs up and leaves as soon as Richard threatens him. Despite is apparent incorruptability, he shows himself to be completely unwilling to make the sort of sacrifices that his victim, rebecca is willing to. Finally, is Ulrica who is accused of choosing life as a Norman concubine to death, something Rebecca would never do. When faced with a similar choice, she makes it clear that she would rather jump off the castle walls.
This consistency in Rebecca is what leads her to forgo marriage for a life of service when she determines that her love for Ivanhoe can never be reconciled with her sincere faith and her respect for Ivanhoe's relationship with Rowena.
What is clear is that though Rebecca holds her own authenticity as her highest value, she expects that others will do the same, even if it is different. She does not look down on other people for being committed to other religious views for example. Indeed, she exhibits a respect for others and a realistic appraisal of the impossibility of epistemological certainty even though she will not consider altering her own one iota. "I believe as my fathers taught," says Rebecca to the threats of De Bracy;
"and may God forgive my belief if erroneous! But you, Sir Knight, what is yours, when you appeal without scruple to that which you deem most holy, even while you are about to transgress the most solemn of your vows as a knight, and as a man of religion?"
It is this integrity that combines with her physical beauty to elevate her to the book's central character.
“While Rebecca spoke thus, her high and firm resolve, which corresponded so well with the expressive beauty of her countenance, gave to her looks, air, and manner, a dignity that seemed more than mortal. Her glance quailed not, her cheek blanched not, for the fear of a fate so instant and so horrible; on the contrary, the thought that she had her fate at her command, and could escape at will from infamy to death, gave a yet deeper colour of carnation to her complexion, and a yet more brilliant fire to her eye. Bois-Guilbert, proud himself and high-spirited, thought he had never beheld beauty so animated and so commanding.”
What emerges from the pages of Ivanhoe is a society deeply fractured with prejudice and bigotry. Its only salvation lies in a transformation of the way that value is attributed. Scott would have us judge people on the basis of a Romantic rubric and not along lines of ethnicity or religion or nationality. Note that the Saxon, Cedric resents the way that the Normans look down upon the Saxons and aims to put them in their place. But he himself treats Jews almost as badly as the Normans treat him.
“Peace, my worthy guests," said Cedric; "my hospitality must not be bounded by your dislikes. If Heaven bore with the whole nation of stiff-necked unbelievers for more years than a layman can number, we may endure the presence of one Jew for a few hours. But I constrain no man to converse or to feed with him. ---Let him have a board and a morsel apart,---unless," he said smiling, "these turban'd strangers will admit his society."
"Sir Franklin," answered the Templar, "my Saracen slaves are true Moslems, and scorn as much as any Christian to hold intercourse with a Jew."
The setting of Ivanhoe is an England of castes as well as castles, where Normans exploit Saxons, Saxon and Normans exploit Jews, Prince John exploits everybody, and men regard women as objects to be won, bought, sold, bought, and bartered. "By St Dunstan," answered Gurth, speaking of the pervasiveness of Norman oppression,
"thou speakest but sad truths; little is left to us but the air we breathe, and that appears to have been reserved with much hesitation, solely for the purpose of enabling us to endure the tasks they lay upon our shoulders. The finest and the fattest is for their board; the loveliest is for their couch; the best and bravest supply their foreign masters with soldiers, and whiten distant lands with their bones, leaving few here who have either will or the power to protect the unfortunate Saxon.”
By the same token, we see Scott's empathetic description of the plight of the Jews as being equally or less humane.
“His [Isaac of Yorl's] 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. 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. The little ready money which was in the country was chiefly in possession of this persecuted people, and the nobility hesitated not to follow the example of their sovereign, in wringing it from them by every species of oppression, and even personal torture.”
What Sir Walter Scott does in the course of Ivanhoe is to take one of these Jews, and a woman no less, and create from her a heroic character of great romantic power. Rebecca is a powerful force of spirit that begins to dissolve the fabric of prejudice in all she comes in contact with (with the exception of the unassailable bigotry of the grand master of the Templars who insists that these powers of influence can only be attributed to supernatural forces of witchcraft).
Rebecca's is contrasted to her father who has resigned himself to being a persecuted man from a persecuted race.
“Ay," answered Isaac, "but if the tyrant lays hold on them as he did to-day, and compels me to smile while he is robbing me?---O, daughter, disinherited and wandering as we are, the worst evil which befalls our race is, that when we are wronged and plundered, all the world laughs around, and we are compelled to suppress our sense of injury, and to smile tamely, when we would revenge bravely.”
Isaac cannot conceive of a world where people of different faiths and national origins see themselves as brothers and sisters. But this is the Romantic vision that Scott introduces us to through Isaac's daughter Rebecca. When Rebecca insists that they take the injured Ivanhoe to their own home where she can give him the benefit of her medical expertise, he reacts negatively. “"Holy Abraham!" he exclaimed,
"he is a good youth, and my heart bleeds to see the gore trickle down his rich embroidered hacqueton, and his corslet of goodly price---but to carry him to our house!---damsel, hast thou well considered?---he is a Christian, and by our law we may not deal with the stranger and Gentile, save for the advantage of our commerce."
"Speak not so, my dear father," replies Rebecca, insisting that our common humanity goes deeper than our faith systems.
"we may not indeed mix with them in banquet and in jollity; but in wounds and in misery, the Gentile becometh the Jew's brother."
By the end of the novel, we begin to see a world emerging where people of these differing groups come to share that common humanity – realizing that they share a common appreciation for character, integrity, and beauty that, in time, and with the help of the development of a common languages, diminishes the sense of superiority and inferiority based on class and custom.
In a sense, Ivanhoe is an extended retelling of the parable of the Good Samaritan, where enemies and antagonists come to appreciate the qualities of greatness that are regarded as heroic in any culture or setting. Norman, Saxon, Templar, Bandit, Aristocrat – all must acknowledge the great soul of the story's “Samaritan.”
Sir Walter Scott seems to suggest that the process of building a “romantic” society – one in which people are valued not for their conformity to a commonly held point of view but are rather valued for their integrity and courage howsoever they define themselves – must begin with someone . I refer the the following passage in which Rebecca applies her knowledge of medicine to Ivanhoe's wounds as a case in point.
“I know not whether the fair Rowena would have been altogether satisfied with the species of emotion with which her devoted knight had hitherto gazed on the beautiful features, and fair form, and lustrous eyes, of the lovely Rebecca; eyes whose brilliancy was shaded, and, as it were, mellowed, by the fringe of her long silken eyelashes, and which a minstrel would have compared to the evening star darting its rays through a bower of jessamine. But Ivanhoe was too good a Catholic to retain the same class of feelings towards a Jewess. This Rebecca had foreseen, and for this very purpose she had hastened to mention her father's name and lineage; yet---for the fair and wise daughter of Isaac was not without a touch of female weakness ---she could not but sigh internally when the glance of respectful admiration, not altogether unmixed with tenderness, with which Ivanhoe had hitherto regarded his unknown benefactress, was exchanged at once for a manner cold, composed, and collected, and fraught with no deeper feeling than that which expressed a grateful sense of courtesy received from an unexpected quarter, and from one of an inferior race. It was not that Ivanhoe's former carriage expressed more than that general devotional homage which youth always pays to beauty; yet it was mortifying that one word should operate as a spell to remove poor Rebecca, who could not be supposed altogether ignorant of her title to such homage, into a degraded class, to whom it could not be honourably rendered.
But the gentleness and candour of Rebecca's nature imputed no fault to Ivanhoe for sharing in the universal prejudices of his age and religion.”
Rebecca is an ambassador of a new paradigm and as such, she knows that her messahe, like that of Jesus, must simply be told many times before it will be believed by a few of those who hear it. When she promises to have Ivanhoe back in the saddle in a week, Ivanhoe promises to reward her with money. She declines with the following request:
"I will accomplish my promise," said Rebecca, "and thou shalt bear thine armour on the eighth day from hence, if thou will grant me but one boon in the stead of the silver thou dost promise me."
"If it be within my power, and such as a true Christian knight may yield to one of thy people," replied Ivanhoe, "I will grant thy boon blithely and thankfully."
"Nay," answered Rebecca, "I will but pray of thee to believe henceforward that a Jew may do good service to a Christian, without desiring other guerdon than the blessing of the Great Father who made both Jew and Gentile."
This conversation soon leads to a debate between Rebecca and Ivanhoe. She would replace his paradigm of chivalry with a paradigm of Romanticism and universal tollerance where people will be judged, as Martin Luther King put it, “by the content of their character.” In some ways, she recognizes a nobility in his beliefs even though she does not share it and we see her responding to it as he responds to hers. Clearly, both are Romantic heroes but she, a more refined one.
"Alas," said Rebecca, leaving her station at the window, and approaching the couch of the wounded knight, "this impatient yearning after action---this struggling with and repining at your present weakness, will not fail to injure your returning health ---How couldst thou hope to inflict wounds on others, ere that be healed which thou thyself hast received?"
"Rebecca," he replied, "thou knowest not how impossible it is for one trained to actions of chivalry to remain passive as a priest, or a woman, when they are acting deeds of honour around him. The love of battle is the food upon which we live---the dust of the 'melee' is the breath of our nostrils! We live not---we wish not to live---longer than while we are victorious and renowned ---Such, maiden, are the laws of chivalry to which we are sworn, and to which we offer all that we hold dear."
"Alas!" said the fair Jewess, "and what is it, valiant knight, save an offering of sacrifice to a demon of vain glory, and a passing through the fire to Moloch?---What remains to you as the prize of all the blood you have spilled---of all the travail and pain you have endured---of all the tears which your deeds have caused, when death hath broken the strong man's spear, and overtaken the speed of his war-horse?"
"What remains?" cried Ivanhoe; "Glory, maiden, glory! which gilds our sepulchre and embalms our name."
"Glory?" continued Rebecca; "alas, is the rusted mail which hangs as a hatchment over the champion's dim and mouldering tomb---is the defaced sculpture of the inscription which the ignorant monk can hardly read to the enquiring pilgrim---are these sufficient rewards for the sacrifice of every kindly affection, for a life spent miserably that ye may make others miserable? Or is there such virtue in the rude rhymes of a wandering bard, that domestic love, kindly affection, peace and happiness, are so wildly bartered, to become the hero of those ballads which vagabond minstrels sing to drunken churls over their evening ale?"
"By the soul of Hereward?" replied the knight impatiently, "thou speakest, maiden, of thou knowest not what. Thou wouldst quench the pure light of chivalry, which alone distinguishes the noble from the base, the gentle knight from the churl and the savage; which rates our life far, far beneath the pitch of our honour; raises us victorious over pain, toil, and suffering, and teaches us to fear no evil but disgrace. Thou art no Christian, Rebecca; and to thee are unknown those high feelings which swell the bosom of a noble maiden when her lover hath done some deed of emprize which sanctions his flame. Chivalry!---why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection---the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant ---Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword."
"I am, indeed," said Rebecca, "sprung from a race whose courage was distinguished in the defence of their own land, but who warred not, even while yet a nation, save at the command of the Deity, or in defending their country from oppression. The sound of the trumpet wakes Judah no longer, and her despised children are now but the unresisting victims of hostile and military oppression. Well hast thou spoken, Sir Knight,---until the God of Jacob shall raise up for his chosen people a second Gideon, or a new Maccabeus, it ill beseemeth the Jewish damsel to speak of battle or of war."
The high-minded maiden concluded the argument in a tone of sorrow, which deeply expressed her sense of the degradation of her people, embittered perhaps by the idea that Ivanhoe considered her as one not entitled to interfere in a case of honour, and incapable of entertaining or expressing sentiments of honour and generosity.
"How little he knows this bosom," she said, "to imagine that cowardice or meanness of soul must needs be its guests, because I have censured the fantastic chivalry of the Nazarenes! Would to heaven that the shedding of mine own blood, drop by drop, could redeem the captivity of Judah! Nay, would to God it could avail to set free my father, and this his benefactor, from the chains of the oppressor! The proud Christian should then see whether the daughter of God's chosen people dared not to die as bravely as the vainest Nazarene maiden, that boasts her descent from some petty chieftain of the rude and frozen north!"
She then looked towards the couch of the wounded knight.
"He sleeps," she said; "nature exhausted by sufferance and the waste of spirits, his wearied frame embraces the first moment of temporary relaxation to sink into slumber. Alas! is it a crime that I should look upon him, when it may be for the last time? ---When yet but a short space, and those fair features will be no longer animated by the bold and buoyant spirit which forsakes them not even in sleep!---When the nostril shall be distended, the mouth agape, the eyes fixed and bloodshot; and when the proud and noble knight may be trodden on by the lowest caitiff of this accursed castle, yet stir not when the heel is lifted up against him!---And my father!---oh, my father! evil is it with his daughter, when his grey hairs are not remembered because of the golden locks of youth!---What know I but that these evils are the messengers of Jehovah's wrath to the unnatural child, who thinks of a stranger's captivity before a parent's? who forgets the desolation of Judah, and looks upon the comeliness of a Gentile and a stranger?---But I will tear this folly from my heart, though every fibre bleed as I rend it away!"
She wrapped herself closely in her veil, and sat down at a distance from the couch of the wounded knight, with her back turned towards it, fortifying, or endeavouring to fortify her mind, not only against the impending evils from without, but also against those treacherous feelings which assailed her from within.”
Consistency. Authenticity. Sincerity. Integrity. These are the values of the Romantic movement. “Thy resolution may fluctuate on the wild and changeful billows of human opinion,” says Rebecca to the waffling Brian De Bois Guilbert, “but mine is anchored on the Rock of Ages."
In many ways, Sir walter Scott has made Rebecca his Christ figure. Three times she is tempted to abandon her virtue as Jesus in the wildreness or in the garden. One the walls of the castle – Before her trial as a witch – in the moments before Ivanhoe arrives to be her champion - she finds herself faced with execution at the stake. De Guilbert offers her escape once more and she declines.
"My mind and senses keep touch and time," answered Rebecca, "and tell me alike that these faggots are destined to consume my earthly body, and open a painful but a brief passage to a better world."
"Dreams, Rebecca,---dreams," answered the Templar; "idle visions, rejected by the wisdom of your own wiser Sadducees [a Jewish sect that denied the resurrection]. Hear me, Rebecca," he said, proceeding with animation; "a better chance hast thou for life and liberty than yonder knaves and dotard dream of. Mount thee behind me on my steed---on Zamor, the gallant horse that never failed his rider. I won him in single fight from the Soldan of Trebizond---mount, I say, behind me---in one short hour is pursuit and enquiry far behind---a new world of pleasure opens to thee---to me a new career of fame. Let them speak the doom which I despise, and erase the name of Bois-Guilbert from their list of monastic slaves! I will wash out with blood whatever blot they may dare to cast on my scutcheon."
"Tempter," said Rebecca, "begone!---Not in this last extremity canst thou move me one hair's-breadth from my resting place ---surrounded as I am by foes, I hold thee as my worst and most deadly enemy---avoid thee, in the name of God!"
Albert Malvoisin, alarmed and impatient at the duration of their conference, now advanced to interrupt it.
"Hath the maiden acknowledged her guilt?" he demanded of Bois-Guilbert; "or is she resolute in her denial?"
"She is indeed resolute," said Bois-Guilbert.
Resolute. That is the picture we get at the end of the novel as Rebecca bids fairwell to Rowena, the woman who has married her great love, Ivanhoe. Rowena suggests to Rebecca that her fortunes would vastly improve if she were to convert to Christianity and once again, Rebecca must assert herself.
"No, lady," answered Rebecca, the same calm melancholy reigning in her soft voice and beautiful features---"that---may not be. I may not change the faith of my fathers like a garment unsuited to the climate in which I seek to dwell, and unhappy, lady, I will not be. He, to whom I dedicate my future life, will be my comforter, if I do His will.”
“There was an involuntary tremour on Rebecca's voice, and a tenderness of accent, which perhaps betrayed more than she would willingly have expressed. She hastened to bid Rowena adieu.
"Farewell," she said. "May He, who made both Jew and Christian, shower down on you his choicest blessings! The bark that waits us hence will be under weigh ere we can reach the port. . . .
. . . . She glided from the apartment, leaving Rowena surprised as if a vision had passed before her. The fair Saxon related the singular conference to her husband, on whose mind it made a deep impression. He lived long and happily with Rowena, for they were attached to each other by the bonds of early affection, and they loved each other the more, from the recollection of the obstacles which had impeded their union. Yet it would be enquiring too curiously to ask, whether the recollection of Rebecca's beauty and magnanimity did not recur to his mind more frequently than the fair descendant of Alfred might altogether have approved.”
Rebecca has made her mark on Ivanhoe even if it was not sufficient to dispel his prejudices entirely. Alas, he gets Rowena and rowena hets him but rebecca gets – well, god. I'm reminded of a line by the great singer-songwriter Silvio Rodriguez, that "la angustia es el precio de ser uno mismo" ("anguish is the price of being oneself").
On that point, the Romantics were spot on.
Question for Comment: Can you think of moments in your life when you needed courage and fortitude and a willingness to live with pain in order to live authentically? Was it worth it?
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