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 4 Amy Levy and the Literary Representation of the Jewess O NadiaValman T he most blasphemous words in Amy Levy’s avowedly irreverent Reuben Sachs (1888) are put into the mouth of Esther Kohnthal, the bitter spinster: “Cursed artThou, O Lord my God,Who has had the cruelty to make me a woman.”1 Esther’s curse boldly reverses the words of the blessing recited daily by the Jewish male, thanking God for not making him female. For Levy, this Oriental “pride of sex” lies at the root of the wretched position of Jewish women that is indicted in the novel.2 But her citation of Jewish liturgy indicates a religious critique too. Indeed, the thanksgiving for masculinity in Jewish daily worship had attracted attention throughout the nineteenth century, from MariaEdgeworth’sphilosemiticHarrington(1817),whereitispointedlyleftwithout comment, to the numerous Evangelical tract writers for whom it became You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher.  levy and the literary representation of the jewess a cornerstone of the Protestant polemic against Judaism.3 By the end of the century, when Levy quoted and rewrote the blessing, Christian critique and feminist protest had become Wrmly yoked together and ubiquitous in discussions of contemporary Jewish life. Levy’s achievement in Reuben Sachs has been recognized in recent years for the audacious challenge she posed to an Anglo-Jewish literary tradition of representing Jews as contented, pious, and obedient citizens.4 While many critics have rightly pointed to the analysis of gender and power that underpins her denunciation of Victorian Anglo-Jewry, few have noticed the long provenance of such a critique in nineteenth-century Christian culture.This chapter aims to locate Amy Levy’s image of the Jewish woman within this literary context—a representational tradition that both preceded and followed her. My discussion explores the relationship between Reuben Sachs and a range of popular novels, from the conversion Wction of the early nineteenth century to Levy’s late-Victorian contemporaries—all focused on the Wgure of the Jewess.Tracing the development of this remarkably Xexible trope across the century, I consider the opportunities and limitations it presented for Levy’s feminist vision. Reuben Sachs, Feminism, and Judaism Reuben Sachs has Wnally come into full prominence as one of the Wrst feminist novels by an Anglo-Jewish writer. The novel’s central concern with the social, intellectual, and emotional repression of the middle-class Jewish woman has been brought into focus for many critics by the argument Levy articulated earlier for a more limited readership, in her unsigned article “Middle-Class JewishWomen of To-Day,”published in the Jewish Chronicle in 1886.5 Here, Levy charges contemporary Jews with a conservative disregard for the capacities of women. “What, in fact,”she asks, “is the ordinary life of a Jewish middle-class woman? Carefully excluded, with an almost Eastern jealousy, from every-day intercourse with men and youths of her own age, she is plunged all at once—a half-Xedged, often half-chaperoned creature—into the ‘vortex’ of a middleclass ball-room, and is there expected to Wnd her own level.” Protected from any pursuits that might divert their attention from the objective of a lucrative marriage, Jewish daughters are brought up to be ignorant, unthinking, and mercenary. And “in a society constructed on such a primitive basis, the position of single women, so rapidly improving in the general world, is a particularly unfortunate one.”6 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher.  Nadia Valman This argument is given narrative form in Reuben Sachs in the divergent destinies of the ambitious barrister Reuben and the beautiful, ardent, but dowryless Judith Quixano. Judith is unable to grasp hold of her life’s potential partly because she comes from a poor family and partly because, as a Jewish woman, she has been brought up not to think. “[F]or Judith Quixano,” explains the narrator, “and for many women placed as she, it is diYcult to conceive a training , an existence, more curiously limited, more completely provincial than hers. Her outlook on life was of the narrowest; of the world, of London, of society beyond her own set, it may be...

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