Rumor of Judaism Continued

            Rumor plays a substantial role in building Melmotte’s character. On page thirty-one he is said to be “regarded in Paris as the most gigantic swindler that had ever lived,” but thirty pages later on sixty-one it is stated that “people said that Mr Melmotte had the reputation throughout Europe as a gigantic swindler.” These two passages concisely indicate how quickly rumors grow and become exaggerated. The importance of what “people say” is explicitly clear. These claims are not substantiated by any basis in fact or evidence, yet they carry great influence over those who are receptive to them. Throughout the course of the novel these exaggerated claims become corroborated by his actions with the railroad board. Trollope uses stereotypes to instigate these rumors and to create his characters, but he never allows for these rumors to be fictitious. Instead of relieving these character from the slander of these rumors they are all eventually shown to be true through the course of the narrative, in turn justifying these stereotypes as legitimate understandings of these Jewish characters.

            Hebrew lineage is traditionally passed maternally to the children; because of this Marie Melmotte should, for all intents and purposes, be a “Jewess.” However, rumors abound and “there was considerable doubt whether Marie was the daughter of that Jewish-looking woman” (Trollope, 33). Because she is passably pretty and does not contain any of the markers indicative of a Jew and “having no trace of the Jewess in her countenance,” again the nose and contraction of eyes, people are unable to believe that she should be a member of that “othered” race and allowed for the rumor that she was not in order to avoid the sequestration of the inheritance that makes her so desirable (Trollope, 32). Like all other rumors in the novel this too is eventually substantiated: “Marie had in truth been born before her father had been a married man” (Trollope, 91). Relieved of the burden of Judaism, Marie is able to remain a prize on the marriage market. Because Trollope had her rumored to not be Jewish, as opposed to her father, she does not have to conform to any of the stereotypes that Trollope places on other characters, instead she is free to be a naïve woman average in almost every other way.