Redemptive Qualities

        Trollope does offer a chance at redemption for the Jewish characters in the novel. Melmotte’s behavior might not deserve to be classified as superior to anyone else’s, but Trollope does also offer to the reader his redeeming qualities. Melmotte’s end comes after repeated embarrassment, but “even as Trollope details his ignominy, the swindler refuses to be ignominious. Staggering drunk, he doesn’t fall; Melmotte is still in control” (Park, 436). Even through his various embarrassments, Melmotte remains the ultimate authority over his life and refuses to relinquish authority over his decisions. After his many deceits and unscrupulous actions are revealed, instead of allowing himself to suffer the “indignities and penalties to which the law might have subjected him” he takes his life “by a dose of prussic acid” (Trollope 642). Melmotte refuses to let decisions be made for him; though he willing to bring indignity upon himself he would rather take his own life than have indignities forced upon him by others. Even though it cannot truthfully be said that Melmotte acts in a manner that correlates to conventional virtue, he is able to deliver himself from total disgrace through “classical courage and self-control” (Park, 436).

             Mr Melmotte’s Wife, Madame Melmotte also offers a sort of redemption for Jews in the novel. When Mr Longestaffe approaches Mr Melmotte for money to support his family Melmotte replies, “I think not, Mr Longestaffe. My wife would not like the uncertainty” (Trollope 99). This statement indicates that Madame Melmotte, a “Bohemian Jewess,” has enough background in finances to recognize good and bad investments. Though it could be a simple attempt to shift blame to his longsuffering wife, it nonetheless relies heavily  upon the stereotypical financial sensibilities of Jews and, presumably, “Jewesses” (Trollope 24). The novel itself “pits the Jewish man of commerce against the ethos of feudal England, but seeks to accommodate the Jewess within it,” out of a belief that the Jewish woman is more accepting of cultural change than the Jewish man (Valman 136). Madame Melmotte does not offer any unique perspective on social or moral behavior, rather she becomes the vessel through which Trollope articulates the need, if not the course, for a kind of redemptive form of financial discourse that would be more willing to adapt to modernity while still maintaining the modesty that and empathy that the male Jew, through Melmotte, is seen to lack.

             The final character that could be seen as offering redemption for the portrayal of Jews in the novel Mr Brehgert, who is “absolutely a Jew,” becomes the ethical center of the novel and the most upstanding character presented (Trollope 461). Trollope does not abandon any of the traditional stereotypes in his creation of Brehgert. Initially when he is introduced he is described as “a fat, greasy man, good-looking in a certain degree, about fifty, with hair dyed black, and a beard and moustache dyed a dark purple colour” (Trollope 460). In this description he appears as a grotesque caricature of a man. Trollope pairs this with his occupation as a banker, creating the foundation for the humorous/villainous Jew as a romantic interest for the callous Georgiana Longestaffe.  However, by the end of the novel the reader has forgotten about Brehgert’s purple beard in light of his almost flawless behavior. Even through Georgiana’s appalling treatment of him – telling her mother “the worst at once Mr Brehgert is a Jew” – Brehgert maintains his affection and promises to make her happiness the “study of [his] life” (Trollope 499, 605). The marriage is only broken off when Brehgert admits to Georgiana that due to his financial situation he will no longer be able to afford his house in town, solely for which Georgiana was planning to marry him. He reveals this in order to give her every chance to “recede from [her] engagement,” instead of holding her to the contract now that his financial circumstances have changed. Recognizing “her own value as a Christian lady of high birth and position giving herself to a commercial Jew,” Georgiana at no point considers that Brehgert may want to recede from his own engagement and pressures him to keep the house so that she could garner the benefits from their match (Trollope 608). Brehgert recognizes Georgiana’s sentiments and, in consideration of her feelings, calls off the engagement himself. Though Georgiana was “unwilling to reject the Jew, the Jew has rejected her. As we [the readers] applaud her comeuppance, we may reflect that in The Way We Live Now, a novel containing many Jews, not all of the admirable, the Christians show up very much worse” (Park, 438). With Georgiana and Brehgert as the prime example, it becomes clear that the Jews in the novel may be harshly stereotyped grotesqueries, but ethically they frequently behave better than their Christian counterparts.