"Sensibility to Resemblance": Sameness, Difference, and Nationality in Eliot

Our last blog post! Please respond in the comments.

Having read Deronda, this section from Eliot's last published work, Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879) should have a lot of resonance for our previous conversations about race, nationality, and the body. While it's tempting to read this text as 'what Eliot really thought about Jewishness' it's important to remember that it is written in the often cranky and satirical voice of a persona or character. So, think of it alongside Deronda, not as the explanation for it.

Here are some issues and questions I want to discuss on Monday:

1) Nationality: How does the speaker define nationality? What is the function of nationality?

2) Race and Bodily Difference: The speaker uses "race" a number of times. What does the speaker mean by this? How is it related to nationality? When we talk about 'race' here are we talking about visible difference?

3) Sameness and Difference: There is a lot of discussion of assimilation, separateness, cosmopolitanism, and nationality. Certainly, the speaker often treats separateness positively and assimilation negatively (though it gets complicated).
--What I'm interested in here is the relationhship between what the speaker calls Jewish "peculiarity" and the kind of "resemblance" the speaker wants us to see between "us" and "them."

Consider the following quote in perparation for this discussion: “the necessary ground of such distinction is a deeper likeness. The superlative peculiarity in the Jews admitted, our affinity with them is only the more apparent when the elements of their peculiarity are discerned” (174).

4) The Jews and other Others: How do the Jews fit in with other racial groups in this essay? The speaker brings up the Irish a number of times, as well as a panoply of nationalities and races. Are the Jews "exceptional" for the speaker as well as the people he critiques? Remember that the tone can often be ironic and slippery, even and especially when the speaker is discussing or ventriloquising reprehensible views.

There's a lot to talk about. So let's get ready for our last class session

"Glad to Find Myself a Jew"--Race, Identity, and Inheritance in Deronda

Throughout this course, we've looked at moments in texts where either characters or readers are informed that they are not who they thought they were. Think of Fedalma in The Spanish Gypsy, Manrico in Trovatore, or Arline in The Bohemian Girl.

Deronda, however, seems different, partly because Deronda's identity (his sympathy, his ethics etc...) are tied to the uncertainty of his origins. I'm wondering how you read the effect of this revelation on how the reader understands Deronda's character, on how Deronda understands himself, and how others see him. In the quote I've used for the title of this post, "glad to find myself a Jew" (783), Deronda associates a kind of self discovery ("find myself") with a discovery of racial difference. There are a number of issues involved here that I'd like to discuss. A couple questions:
1) Pay attention to Deronda's understanding of his inheritance. How does he characterize it? I'm thinking of his meeting with Kalonymos on pages 724-725, as well as the discussion with Mordecai on pages 750-751. What exactly is inherited? How does inheritance impact identity?

2) How do characters respond to Deronda's Jewishness? How does it affect familial and affective (romantic) ties? Think of Gwendolen's reaction (801-802). Does Deronda ascribe to the same ideas about the relationship between identity and Jewishness that we've seen in this book so far?

We'll also talk about the effect of all of this on Gwendolen (803-804).
--Enjoy finishing Deronda!

"Her words had called out a latent obstnacy of race in him"--Race, Biology, and Gender in Deronda

As I mentioned in class, for our next session, I'd like to discuss Deronda's meeting(s) with his mother, both in terms of how they represent Jewishness and race, but also how gender politics affects racial politics (i.e. her ambition and talent, evading the limitations put on women etc...)

A couple moments to think about:
a) Her "mobile" face that is always changing. How does this relate to the issues of race and legibility that we've been discussing (624). Deronda on the other hand is a "young copy" of his grandfather (630).

b) What do you make of the comparison between her and a Melusina (or fairy that is serpent from the waist down)?

c) What do you make of the scene in which his mother explains that despite shedding her outer Jewishness, people looked at them as if "tattoed under our clothes" (635). Deronda's response is driven by the "obstinacy of race in him" (635).

d) In their 'second interview' they discuss the relationship between individual desires and history ("the effects prepared by generations are likely to triumph over a contrivance which would bend them all to the satisfaction of self" (663). How does Inheritance (biological/cultural) work here?

Obviously, we have much to talk about with regard to Gwendolen and what happens with her, but let's start with Deronday (again):)

"Israel is the Heart of Mankind"--Nationalism, Race, and the Universal in Deronda

Building on what we have been talking about in class about how Jewishness is embodied (seen, read, physicalized), I want you to discuss the relationship between race and nationality in today's section of Deronda---in particular, the conversation that goes on at the "Hand and Banner."

Related to this, I'd like to consider the racial character of nationality---specifically the interplay between particularity (separateness, a Jewish State) and the Universal: hence the quote in my title "Israel is the heart of mankind" (530). This is echoed in Mordecai's discussion of a Jewish state as "a halting place of enmities, a neutral ground for the East as Belgium is for the West" (535). To put it another way, if Mordecai represents a Jewish Nation as a body that must be "revived" what kind of body is the Jewish nation?

Also related to this is the notion that Deronda is literally a re-embodiment of Mordecai's worn out body--see the reference to this on p.472 and 540. There are a number of issues at stake here.
a) If Deronda is to carry on Mordecai's ideas of statehood, how is Deronda's body related to the National body?

b) What do you make of the relationship between them and Mordecai's yearning for Deronda?
the eroticized union of souls (540). How is this related to race and Jewishness? (see p.572--"our souls know each other...the life of Israel is in your veins").

There's a lot to talk about...

"I could not make myself not a Jewess"--Race, Religion, and the Body in Daniel Deronda

The title for today's post is taken from p.375 when Deronda is trying to argue for the lack of difference between Jews and other people---a kind of universality of ideas etc... Mirah however points out that even with Conversion, one is still racially a Jew.

I want to use this to talk about the conflicted response Deronda has to individual Jews. So, for tomorrow, I'd like you to look at Deronda's trip to Frankfurt through this conversation with Mirah (362-380), and of course Deronda's search for Ezra Cohen and encounters with "unpoetic Jews," with recognizable Jews and remarkable Jews (or rather Jew---Mordecai). Recall that Eliot is not expressing what 'she thinks' about Jews but rather dramatizing the conflicted logic of Deronda's attitudes about the relationship between the body and race/religion---that is, toward the question of legibility. Of course related to this is the important scene where Deronda is approached in the synagogue by a man asking about his mother's heritage (368). Please comment on Deronda's response--" I am an Englishman"--which doesn't of course answer the question. But pay attention to the slippage of nationality and race.

I also would like for you to focus on the interactions between Mordecai and Deronda--for example the "exchange of fascinated, half furtive glances" (397). Where does desire fit in here? By desire I don't necessarily even mean sexual desire, but rather that each embodies something the other is yearning for. This is especially important for Mordecai, but I want you to comment on both.

"Like Vision in the Abstract"--Identity, Sympathy, and Desire in Deronda

We have LOTS to talk about for this section of the book. Feel free to respond to any of the following:

1) Following up on our conversation about Gwendolen's relationship to desire, what do you make of a figure like Grandcourt? My title for this post is taken from a description of his look which was like "vision in the abstract." What do you make off his boredom, calm, and power?

2) Following up on our brief discussion of Eliot's invocation of the Civil War to contextualize domestic relations like marriage, what do you make of her statement at the end of Chapter 11: "What in ht emidst of that mighty drama are girls and their blind visions? They are the Yea or Nay of that good for which men are enduring and fighting. In these delicate vessels is borne onward through the ages the treasure of human affections" (124). What is the narrator's take on the relationship between the domestic and the geopolitical? How is it gendered?

3) What do you make of Eliot's description of Deronda---both in terms of his body and his character? You can comment on his sensitivity toward questions of his birth and how this is figured as a wound or deformity (170) and you can comment on his general sensitivity and sympathy (175, 176, 178).

3a) Related to this, think about the discussion of Deronda's relationship to space and identity ("shift his centre till his own personality would be no less outside him than the landscape" (189) in comparison to Gwendolen's 'terror' at open spaces and sense of powerlessness.

4) Or, comment on Deronda's rescue of Mirah. Note the immediate link to his (unknown) mother (191). Note also the blurring of "Jewess" and "Spanish" (193). Note also that he imagines the Meyrick girls will see her as Literary ("a lovely Jewess with Rebecca in 'Invanhoe'")--p.194. What also do you make of the phrase "she is a Jewess--but quite refined" (200)?

"A Statue Into Which the Soul of Fear Had Entered"---Gwendolen, Performance, and the Body

Taking into account all of Book I of Deronda, I'd like you to think specifically about the Hermione scene (Chapter 6, p.61) in which Gwendolen freezes in terror. Given that you've all started to think about this novel in theoretical terms, you have the tools with which to read this scene. However, I'd also like for you to think about it in terms of two issues:

1) First, Performance. We've talked about her tendency to think about herself and her world as a performance. How does this scene fit into this and/or alter our understanding?

2) Second, Desire and the Body. Gwendolen has a "physical repulsion" to being wooed directly by Rex (p.70) and is even described as hardening like a "sea anemome" (81). What do you make of her resistance (figured in physical even oddly erotic terms) to eroticism?

Looking forward to talking about these issues.

"The Pregnant Differences Which Lie in Race"---Arnold, Race, and 'Culture'

Given that Matthew Arnold uses "Hebraism" to refer to strains in British, Christian society, how did you understand the place of 'Jewishness' in this text? What (especially) did you make of the section from which I took the blog title for today---the section in which he discusses the "science" which has taught us about the differences in race and temperament.

Arnold goes out of his way to argue that Hellenism and Hebraism both strive for perfection and must be in balance. Does he exemplify this balance? What do you make of his calls for a return to Hellenism? Finally, what is the place of real Jews in Arnold's transcendent idea of 'culture'? In fact, is there any place for difference in 'culture'?

Please feel free to address any of these ideas.

Jewishness, Money, and Embodiment

Given the representation of Jewishness in Oliver Twist as an inhuman, dark, dirty, and deformed body, how do we read the figuration of Jewishness in Way we Live Now? How is it embodied? Is there a gender difference in the way Jewishness is represented? What is the relationship between the figure of the Jew and money?

Other questions to consider include: What about the relationship between the Jew and the larger society? While critique is leveled against Melmotte’s inauthenticy and deception, what about the society that enables him?

"A thief, a liar, a devil": Jewishness and Criminality

Given our conversations about the ambiguity of the figure of the Jew in British culture, comment on how Dickens represents Fagin---both in physical terms and ethical terms. What kinds of criminality is he associated with? What kinds of threats does he represent? When thinking about this take into account the illustrations (these are the original illustrations for the 19th century text).

P.S. Sorry for leaving out a few pages at the end.

Conversion, Freedom, and British Tolerance

There's a lot to talk about in the Michael Ragussis excerpt on the often paradoxical logic that drives the 'culture of conversion' in late 18th and 19th century Britain. I wanted to try to link this text both to the other texts we've read on Jewishness (Gilman and Cheyette) and to larger questions about race and identity that we've been discussing.

1) How did you interpret the contradictory/various ways in which conversion was represented in British culture? How do we make sense of the way in which the Jew is at once represented as unconvertible (a 'permanent' type) and a kind of 'natural' Christian (whereby becoming a Christian is the perfection of the Jew)? Is this just a split between a racial and a religious reading of the Jew or something more complicated?

2) What did you make of Ragussis's discussion of gender---of the use of the Jewish woman as ripe for conversion but also a figure that must exit the novel (preferably by dying)?

3) Finally, what did you make of the link between British tolerance of difference and conversion? This gets at BIG questions we've been discussing about identity politics. What does it mean to tie citizenship (Britishness) to assimilation? Does thinking of this in terms of assimilation clarify the idea that in order to be a 'free' British person, a citizen of a tolerant country, one must convert?

Comment on any or all of these questions.

Badges? We don't need no stinking badges

Now that we've all finished The Spanish Gypsy (all of us right!), I'd like to continue our discussion about race and identity in Eliot's poem.

1) Given the ease with which Silva is brought in as a Gypsy brother (merely by taking an oath and wearing a badge), what do you make of the earlier claims of pure "blood" of the gypsy? Of course, related to this is what you make of the complete failure of this "conversion" and the terms of that failure. But, I'm curious how you read the take on race and identity in the poem as a whole. Does the poem embrace the 'essential' or 'permanent' or 'natural' character of racial categories? Does it critique this idea?

2) What do you make of the conflict between desire and race/family? Are there any individuals in this poem or is everyone somehow a site of the collective?

3) What do you think of the final stanza of the poem with the two figures looking at each other without being able to distinguish the individual from the darkness.

These are just a few of the topics I'd like to discuss

"The Many in the One"--Race, Nation, and Inidividuality in Eliot's "Spanish Gypsy"

For our first session on George Eliot's The Spanish Gypsy, I'd like to look at a number of questions that all circle around the relationship between the individual and the racial type, the subject and his or her 'nation,' the individual present and collective the past. My title for the post is from p.38, where Juan is talking about Zarca (they Gypsy Chief): "As painters see the many in the one./ We have a Gypsy in Bedmar whose frame/ Nature compacted with such fine selection,/ 'T would yield a dozen types." In Fedalma's struggle and conflict, the poem plays out the human drama of being at once a person and a Type, a woman (with desires) and a 'national/racial' figure. This also represents a conflict between the biological/familial ("blood") and the affective---the realm of love and desire. How is this conflict represented? What are the terms of the debate?

A couple other things to think about:
1) What is the relationship between religion and race or "blood"?
3) (Related): What is the relationship between race and *choice*? That is, there is a lot of discussion of choosing to affiliate or not, as well as a lot of discussion of conversion (the Inquisition).
2) What is the relationship between the body and race--Is race made legible here?

Please feel free to address any of these.

'Funny, you don't look like a Gypsy'---Otherness and Choice in Verdi

Many of the issues that we've been circling around, especially the relationship between race and agency (or choice). So, I'd like you to think about a couple of questions/paradoxes in this drama:

1) What does it mean for Manrico to be at once a "gypsy" and Not a gypsy at all? How do you stage this?

2) What do you make of the fact that, even after he (kind of) finds out that he is not Azucena's son, both Manrico and his mother continue to use the tropes of *biological* maternal ties (i.e. "blood," "offspring")? Is this just a result of her effort to backtrack from her inadvertent admission? Or is it something more complicated?

3) What is the role of race in desire? Leonora only finds out he is a "Gypsy" (even at this point he doesn't know that he is) after they are already in love. Where does this play fit in as a drama of miscegenation?

There's a lot more to talk about, but this should get us started,
Dan

Encountering the Other and the place of Narrative

Our two excerpts---one from Austen's Emma (1815) and one from George Eliot's Mill on the Floss (1860)---both narrate an encounter with Gypsies who are on the margins of "safe" and "respectable" social space. I'd like for you to comment on a couple of related issues:

1) How do both of these texts define and navigate the boundaries (both spatial and metaphorical) between same and other, familiar and strange, white Englishmen and Gypsy?

2) What is the role of imagination and (especially) literature or fairy tales in how Austen's narrator (and Emma herself) describes the Gypsies, or in how Eliot's narrator (and Maggie) approaches the gypsies. What is the tone of these descriptions? Ironic? At whose expense?

3) What role does gender play in these encounters?

I'm looking forward to talking about it,
Dan

Race, Masquerade and the Law---Hoyland on the Gypsies

In reading Hoyland's Survey of the Gypsies, there are a number of claims made and laws discussed that may have surprised you.

1) What do you make of the various iterations of the same laws Hoyland notes regarding punishments not only for being a Gypsy but also for pretending to be a Gypsy?

2) What do you make of the evidence Hoyland rejects and that which he accepts on the issue of Origins? That is, what how do you feel about his claim that it's somehow 'clear' that the Gypsies are of Indian origin? What kind of proof does he offer?

You can comment on either or both of these as well as any other issues.

Race, Projection and Identity--British and Gypsies

The images of the Gypsy in Deborah Nord's essay emerges as a kind of ghostly figure---outside of history but acting *in* history; alien other yet a familiar part of the British landscape. What did you make of the paradoxes of "gypsiness" in Nord's reading? How did you respond to Nord's discussion of race as at once biological and cultural at the end of the essay? Does the term "race" lose or gain meaning when racial figures are so difficult to define?

Feel free to comment on this or any other aspect of the essay.
--Dan

Purity and Danger

We have talked briefly about the symbolic significance of Lucy's violation as a kind of allegorical violation/invasion of England itself. Is there anything different about the way Mina's relationship to Dracula is represented? Specifically, I'm thinking of the scene described on 250-252. In discussing this feel free to comment on the gender politics of this section of the book---for example, the way in which the men attempt to protect Mina from dangerous knowledge.

A related question (which you do not have to answer) returns us to the question of Whiteness in this book. Dracula is always represented as too pale. And, as Mina is being 'turned' people like Renfield notice that she is too pale ("I don't care for pale people"). Can one be too white to be (racially)"white"?

See you Monday,
Dan

Invasion, Transfusion, and the Woman's Body in Dracula

Hi all,
Sorry for the late post. While I had promised that I would have you address the reviews of Dracula in this session's post, I changed my mind:)

Instead, I'd like you to think about the role that the female body plays in dramatizing the kinds of fears we've been talking about---Invasion, miscegenation (mixing of 'blood'), sexual impurity etc... What do you make of the drama around Lucy? This includes the time in Whitby (the sleepwalking episode), the three suitors who all become her blood donors, and the violence that attends her (second) death. What is the role of gender, of desire, and of foreign-ness?

Eastern Promises--Race, Blood and Desire in Dracula

Having started Dracula, I'd like you to comment on a number of issues, all of which naturally intersect.

1) How does Harker describe the "East" in his travels and what is the difference between how he describes 'ordinary' people and the Count?

2) Thinking about the Count's discussion of his "blood" (metaphorical that is), what is the role of 'race' here (a word the Count uses often)?

3) What is the role of Gender, especially in the scene with the women in the Castle? How is female desire represented? How is male desire represented? How is Harker gendered?

There's a lot here, but then, there's a lot in the book!
--Enjoy,
Dan

Boucicault, Theatre, and Race

Boucicault's The Octoroon represents a departure from the texts we've been reading in two ways.

First, it's a different genre. In your response, please take into account the question of how race is represented on stage---that is, both how race is visualized and how it is performed (in the sense of manifested, constructed, and created on stage).

Second, as opposed to the selections we looked at last week, which seemed to echo Curtis's argument about the simianization of the Irish, I'd like your response to how Boucicault represents Irishness here. Specifically, think about how situating the 'irishman' not only in a 19th century U.S. Southern plantation but also among a variety of racial others (native americans, African Americans etc...). Perhaps more important, how does Zoe's racial identity affect how we read Irishness or even race itself in the play?

Feel free to address other issues, but I just wanted you to think about these for the post and for class.

Otherness, Irishness, and the 19th century novel

Hi all,
This is just a post to get you started with our reading for Friday. I've given you very short excerpts from both Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights. The readings continue the discussion we've been having in class, regarding the way in which widely different representations of Otherness get mapped onto Irishness in particular. You may write about either text. In the case of Frankenstein I've provided images that directly link Frankenstein to Irishness. In the case of Wuthering Heights I'm thinking of the work of people like Elsie Michie (LSU Professor!) who have argued that the representation of Heathcliff is connected to the kinds of representations we saw in Curtis's book.

Please familiarize yourselves with the plots of these texts if you haven't read them or if it's been a while... See you Friday,
Dan

Views of the Famine

Hi All,
So, I forgot that you have to be a member of the blog to make a new post. Sorry about that! Just do your responses to the "Views of the Famine" in the Comments section. Remember, you only have to comment on one article among all of them.
--Dan

Jopi Nyman Essay--Respsonses and Questions

Hi All,
So this is our first time blogging on a text for class. I'm looking forward to getting your reactions. I know it's a long essay, but try to read and respond to this post.

In his Eighteenth-century satire, "The True Born Englishman" Daniel Defoe pokes fun at the invention of a 'pure' Englishness when (historically and biologically) this is absurd. Here's an excerpt:

"Thus from a mixture of all kinds began,
That het'rogeneous thing, an Englishman:
In eager rapes, and furious lust begot,
Betwixt a painted Britain and a Scot.
Whose gend'ring off-spring quickly learn'd to bow,
And yoke their heifers to the Roman plough:
From whence a mongrel half-bred race there came,
With neither name, nor nation, speech nor fame.
In whose hot veins new mixtures quickly ran,
Infus'd betwixt a Saxon and a Dane.
While their rank daughters, to their parents just,
Receiv'd all nations with promiscuous lust.
This nauseous brood directly did contain
The well-extracted blood of Englishmen."

Building on what we've read in Said, Anderson, and Nyman about how nationality, race, and community is imagined I'd like you to think about how this applies to our own American experience. Obviously, it's different, and I'd like you to take this difference into account. While I'd like you to refer to the ideas in the text for this week, this post invites you to speculate about Americanness. You're welcome to discuss any questions, either contemporary or 18th/19th century. Some examples might be: What is an American? How do we define ourselves? Against whom? Who and what do we point to as a point of origin?

I look forward to hearing what you have to say.
--Dan

Welcome

Hi all,
Welcome to English 4104, our Capstone Seminar on the representation of the Irish, Jews, and Gypsies in Nineteenth-century literature and culture. This blog will serve as an informal space in which to respond to the readings and to each other. While "informal," it is also *required* and a part of your participation grade.

I look forward to a great semester.
--Best Wishes,
Dan