Jews In the Victorian Novel

            Novels of the Victorian period, and the social structures surrounding it, are well known for their less than sympathetic treatment of Jews. These “novelistic traditions” create the “paradigms that nurture racial hatred” and perpetuate these stereotypes. This literary anti-Semitism finds its roots well before the Victorian era and leaves a legacy that lasts long into the future. In this way “anti-Semitism is seen as a disease passed down from generation to generation through the medium of the printed word” (Ragussis, 115). These novels are typically narrated by a “reasonably reliable nineteenth-century man of letters” who is able to convince his audience that “Jews really do deserve their fate” as villains and the repercussions their actions bring (Berman, 60). Jews become comedic or villainous depending upon the author’s prerogative and are rarely afforded the depth that would allow them to be appear as fully developed human beings. Despite the ejection of the Jews from England in 1290 and the miniscule subsequent population, Shakespeare’s Shylock from The Merchant of Venice becomes the “paradigm by which we [readers] understand and measure all other Jews” (Ragussis, 117). Until fairly recently Shylock has typically been played “by a comedian as a repulsive clown or, alternatively, as a monster of unrelieved evil” (Adler, 341). This dichotomy allows for two characterizations of Jews; this, when paired with the stereotype of the “greedy Jew,” forces a situation where the character is in “conflict between love and money” making a truly romantic storyline farcical or devious (Ragussis, 118).