WritingtheOtherFail circa 1860

[naomikritzer]

My sister gave Kiera a DVD of the movie Oliver! as a gift in December, and last month, we sat down and watched it. Kiera loves musicals, and she very much enjoyed the movie. Afterward, I spent some time wandering around Wikipedia -- I think I started out wondering about some of the children in the movie, and then started reading some bits and pieces about the book vs. the movie. I read the unabridged Oliver Twist years ago, but it's been a long time.

Anyway, Wikipedia's entry on Fagin told a story I was not familiar with. Fagin is Jewish; this is unstated but obvious in the movie, and stated outright in the book, which calls him "the Jew" far more often than it calls him by name. According to the Wikipedia entry:

Dickens claimed that he had made Fagin Jewish because "that class of criminal almost invariably was a Jew. He also claimed that by calling Fagin a Jew he had meant no imputation against the Jewish faith, saying in a letter, "I have no feeling towards the Jews but a friendly one. I always speak well of them, whether in public or private, and bear my testimony (as I ought to do) to their perfect good faith in such transactions as I have ever had with them..."

Fagin is a fence, and part of the criminal underworld of Victorian London. It may in fact be true that fences were generally Jewish. However, Fagin was the only Jewish character who had appeared in Dickens's work up till that point. In fact, he's one of the only Jewish characters in the English literature of the period. And while he is portrayed somewhat sympathetically in the movie (he's a criminal, and occasionally violent, but he's also much kinder than the law-abiding Mr. Bumble), in the book he is an evil man who embodies every single nasty anti-Semitic stereotype that existed at the time, from hunched shoulders to a nasal voice.

In other words, Dickens may have said that he was not anti-Semitic, but any modern person who reads the character, and Dickens's defense, is going to roll their eyes. If Dickens were on LJ and making this case for himself, people would mock him and his pantsless self all over the Internet. Even if we go all alt-universe and try to imagine an LJ with Victorian sensibility (where some degree of anti-Semitism is socially acceptable)...no one would buy his claim that he harbors no prejudice and it's just a coincidence that the only Jewish character he's ever written is a viciously stereotyped villain.

Here is where the story gets interesting. In 1860, Dickens sold his London home to a Jewish banker, James Davis, and became acquainted with him and friendly with his wife Eliza. In 1863, Eliza wrote to Dickens to call him out for the portrayal of Fagin, saying that Jews considered the character "a great wrong" to them.

Dickens responded (eventually -- I would be interested to know if he attempted first to justify his portrayal of Fagin to his Jewish friend) by trying to repair what he'd done. He started revising Oliver Twist, working backwards, and removed all mention of Fagin's Jewishness from the last 15 chapters. In one of his final public readings, he had removed all the aspects of Fagin's description that were anti-Semitic stereotypes. And, in 1865, in the book Our Mutual Friend, he apparently put in a number of Jewish characters, all sympathetic.

So, to recap: Dickens was, at times, defensive. (It's not anti-Semitism! My fence character is Jewish because all fences are Jewish! It's pure coincidence that there has never been another Jewish character in any of my books!) But when taken to task by someone who said, in so many words, that this character had wronged her and her people, he took the criticism to heart and took steps to try to do better.

I stumbled across this story a few weeks after RaceFail started and was frankly kind of boggled to find a discussion of controversy surrounding cultural appropriation and Writing The Other from well over a hundred years ago. Damn, these discussions have been going on for a long time. But -- I think it's worth noting that

(a) You can be a really good writer, good enough that people are still reading you a hundred years later, and you can be generally a decent human being with progressive political views, and you can still fail at this stuff.

(b) Being a good (or even a great) writer and a good person and all the rest doesn't excuse you from trying to do better.

And also

(c) This conversation has happened before. This conversation will happen again. The bad news is that the supply of clueless people seems to be endless, and this conversation is exhausting and disruptive and draining for the people who repeatedly find themselves drafted as educators. The good news is that these conversations do accomplish stuff. With each iteration, there are people who learn, do better, and speak out. And while the supply of clueless people seems to be endless, some of them will Get It, and be there to speak out the next time around.

Anyway. I am sharing this mostly because I found the historical perspective fascinating.

ETA: It is clear even from the Wikipedia entry that Our Mutual Friend fails in its own set of ways. Writing overly romanticized, saintly, sentimental depictions of The Other is its own variety of Fail. But I will cut Dickens some slack for being a Victorian, and credit for making a sincere effort, as I imagine his friend Eliza did.

Comments

[sarah-prineas.livejournal.com]

It is fascinating. Thanks!

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

I'd forgotten that story, which I first heard a gazillion years ago when my Genre Survey course at uni read Our Mutual Friend. It certainly sheds interesting light here.

I actually found the Jewish characters in OMF kind of annoying in their saintliness -- like the Jewish characters in Daniel Deronda on steroids -- but then, I've never found Dickens very good at subtle. And I have to give him credit for, as you note, putting his pants on and trying to do better.

[naomikritzer]

Oh yeah, even just the description in Wikipedia made it clear that he had compensated by Writing the Other in an overly romanticized way. I will cut him a certain amount of slack for being a Victorian, however, and for the fact that he was sincerely trying to do better.

[joxn.livejournal.com]

He probably wrote Our Mutual Friend in 1865, not 1965.

[naomikritzer]

Ya think?

GAH.

Fixed.

[joxn.livejournal.com]

Annoying nerdly typo-correction aside, this is a fascinating story. Thanks for posting it.

(This is the kind of things blogs were invented for, I think.)

[imponderabilias.livejournal.com]

Wow, I knew nothing about any of that. It is fascinating.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Not that he did all that well in Our Mutual Friend either. But he gets points for trying.

George Eliot has such positive portrayals of Jewish characters that I was absolutely astonished. I've read a lot of Victorian fiction and really the best you can hope for is the kind of fail in OMF, but here was Eliot in Daniel Deronda with a hero who turns out to be Jewish and other positive Jewish characters. I was amazed. There's a street named after her in Tel Aviv, and well there should be.

[idlerat.livejournal.com]

Eliot's attitude is clearly the result of lifelong commitments and research. She was a leading member of the movement toward historicist, critical approaches to Biblical text, and I believe knew Hebrew and must have known Jews. She was a radical and moved in radical circles. Not that Dickens didn't expose himself to progressive ideas, but he was much more mainstream and popular.

I don't have a point, except I guess - research does pay, but it really helps if it's lifelong and from a deeply felt motivation.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

To be fair, overly romanticized, saintly, and sentimental describes some of his non-Jewish characters too.

Interesting story, though.

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

Some??

This is the guy who wrote A Christmas Carol, right? :)

[athousandwinds.livejournal.com]

Here via metafandom.

From what I've read of Dickens (which isn't all that much, so I'm way open to correction here), aren't many of those characters also possible to characterise as Other? Like Agnes Wickfield and Esther Summerson are saintly types (women) as are Oliver Twist and Tiny Tim (lower-class and poor). With the latter, it's Dickens trying to make the point of "working class =/= evil criminal" because they could secretly be middle-class just like you! and I'm just trying to think now if any of Dickens's white well-off males are characterised as such. Maybe Jarndyce? But even he has the Growlery and the Esther thing and handles Richard badly.

To naomikritzer, thank you for this post! It's fascinating to have the historical perspective on RaceFail - I knew before that this sort of thing goes round on a semi-regular basis, but it's eye-opening to realise exactly how far back some of the particular arguments stretch.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

This is really interesting - thanks for posting it!

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Wow! That's so interesting. I only knew about Fagin the evil Jew, not the backstory or the later story (and never read Our Mutual Friend.)

[naomikritzer]

Hi! Apropos of nothing other than seeing you comment, I loved your series on PTSD last year. Awesome and fascinating, and I have recommended it to lots of people, both people who are writing about PTSD and people I think might be dealing with it (in themselves or a loved one). Plus I immediately went and read "All the Fishes Come Home to Roost." It was also awesome and fascinating, and I recommended that to bunches of people, too. Most recently at a con panel on non-fiction for SF/F readers last week.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Oh, that makes me so happy! I've been having an incredibly crummy week, and that really cheers me up. Thank you.

here via rydra_wong's links

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

A very timely and interesting post... I'd been meaning to post about Oliver! and antisemitism myself, because the revival of the musical on the West End has revived questions of whether or not the musical itself (or its staging) is antisemitic.

The musical was written by Lionel Bart (born Lionel Begleiter), who was Jewish, the son of immigrants from Galicia, and grew up very poor in the East End. He was a Communist in his youth and seems to have been drawn to Oliver Twist because of the themes of poverty and social justice. Several commentators have argued that Lionel Bart reclaimed Fagin more than Dickens was able to, turning him from villain into lovable rogue. As you've pointed out, the musical and the movie never explicitly label him as Jewish. However songs like "You've Got to Pick a Pocket Or Two" definitely have a Jewish sound to them.

It's a fascinating question of exactly how much reclaiming you can do, or whether the negative stereotypes will inevitably linger. And I really should finish that post of mine...

[shayheyred.livejournal.com]

This is the most interesting story, and wow, how amazingly pertinent in the present circumstances. As the tag line on Battlestar Galactica puts it, "This has all happened before. It will happen again."

But how wonderful that Dickens did in fact try to fix things, at least in part~

[chopchica.livejournal.com]

Wow, that was such a fascinating story! Thank you so much for making this post!

[msilverstar]

Fascinating, thanks for posting, and for making me feel like I can show Oliver the movie to my kidlet. She fell in love with Fiddler on the Roof for several months, so I have to anticipate hearing it over and over and over and...

[tavella.livejournal.com]

That's downright fascinating. Particularly how he failed in such a familiar way in Our Mutual Friend. Still far better than his Fagin fail, though.

[folklorefanatic.livejournal.com]

I didn't know any of this; I never read Oliver Twist or anything else of his except for excerpts from A Tale of Two Cities.

As someone above said, I now have one more reason to love George Eliot. :D

A good lesson and a fascinating post.

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

Even if we go all alt-universe and try to imagine an LJ with Victorian sensibility (where some degree of anti-Semitism is socially acceptable)...

*waves* just a friendly reminder from a passing internet Yid that implying that issues of racism or anti-Semitism are 'solved' and that you'd have to be in a Victorian alt-universe for some degree of anti-Semitism to be socially acceptable is a little problematic. Socially acceptable anti-Semitism is certainly alive and kicking in some parts of 21st century London, and many parts of the world wide web too.

Thanks for a timely and interesting post. :)

[kethlenda.livejournal.com]

Interesting find! Thanks for posting it.