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.
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In this play/novel I was originally confused as to what Fedalma’s race or nationality was. She does not belong with the aristocratic group because she does not have pure blood due to the fact that they don’t know where she derives from. Then the Gypsy, who we later discover is her father, looks at her funny or weird while she is free. Fedalma’s character is torn between races and age. She wants the freedom of being a child but have the responsibility and power as a Duchesse to save the Gypsies. Then there is the fact that she has the freedom to choose to accept her position as a Gypsy Queen or shame her race and marry a Christian. We have never read a play or story where the protagonist was a Gypsy but lived with the aristocrats. Usually it’s the other way around. As a reader I wanted Fedalma to stay where her heart was and marry the Duke. Who wants to be with a race that is despised? The Christians ranked the Gypsies lower than the Jews and Moors. They were not even worthy of going to heaven, they could work on earth and be cast to hell. So she is hated by the Duke’s Father because she is not pure blood and she will be hated her people if she decided to stay with her current life.
On another note, I see that the Gypsies and on occasion, Fedalma is associated with dirty and blackness. However, we once again have to question how different can she look if the Duke is willing to marry her and the people in town can not tell she is of Gypsy birth. What is the difference? Is Gypsy truly a race? I also notice that in this play a person is fixed in their category. The Duke’s Father claims that it does not matter the Fedalma converted because she will never be a Christian. I find the boundaries to be very strict where race is concerned.
The use of dancing in this work interests me.
In race and choice in The Spanish Gypsy is displayed by the character Fedalma as she interacts with the different peoples.
Religion is relevant as well due to the especial contrast between Moors and Gypsies, as the setting is Spain, and much suspicion followed these two groups from the Caholics.
The relationship between the body and race is very well expressed on Adobe page 55, "The Gypsies chained in couples, all save one,/ Walk in dark file with grand bare legs and arms/ And savage melancholy in their eyes/ That star-like gleam from out black clouds of hair;" because this quotation expresses the coloration associated with the gypsies. Clearly the "dark file", or line (remember the days of walking "single file" in elementary school) they walk in reflects the people's race as a whole. Additionally, the "black clouds of hair" indicates a lack or overlooking of people with light colored hair, implying a lack of people with a light complexion. What I found most impacting in this section of the story is the "savage melancholy in their eyes." Why did I trip over this a bit? Because what band of people, or what individual person for that matter, would have mirth or happiness when chained together? The gypies only objective classification, if that, here is darkness.
Ok, I would first like to request questions that are easier to follow. I understand how much there is to discuss with this piece but i had to re-read the blog three times.
The Epic poem, and I mean "EPIC" becuase I believe Beowulf(read in 6th grade) was a quicker read is very interesting. The open comparison to Gypsy's and Jews is a key point for discourse. They are both seen as dangers against christianity. In the very astute reasoning of Blasco as he beleives the Gypsy's must wander as punishment from God because they did not offer Mary and Joseph shelter.
It is the Gypsy's apparent lacking of Christianity that makes him such an unwanted visitor to Spain. Same can be said for the Jewish people. There has become a natural understanding that to be nationaly Jewish you are also religiously Jewish. Judaism is a religion!!! the nationality is extremely diverse; they were polish, german, swiss, english etc. Yet much like the Gyspy's they've only been unilaterily recognized as "the Jews".
There seems to be a context of purity that we keep seeing in the works that we are reading, and what is a larger representation of purity than the purity of faith and religion? I'm seeing a correlation between race and religion because of the aspect of purity. It makes the question of can you choose to be one thing or another and that changes how you view yourself and how the world views you? If one can convert from the "wrong" beliefs to the "right" beliefs and be absolved of what taints them, then can one convert their race and become pure? Race seems to be mutable, it isn't set in stone. Race seems to have become a choice rather than an inescapable physical confine. If Fedalma is seen a dirty and filthy when with the Gypsies and at other times has no traces of "otherness" at all, then it leads me to believe that it is the reflection of her surroundings that influence how she is seen and not her actually race or appearance.
The relationship between race and religion seem to be somewhat intertwinable in that both are perceived as biological and something that one cannot be rid of. The Prior beseeches upon Don Silva when he begs “Miserable man! Your strength will turn to anguish, like the strength of fallen angels. Can you change your blood? You are Christian, with the Christian awe in every vein” (64-65). Here he is saying that Christian blood runs through his veins thus saying that blood can be linked with religion. If you really think about it, both race and religion are something that humans made up to describe themselves. In the beginning of time I really don’t see a small group of humans being like “Oh yes I am Jewish, or Christian, and I am this or that race.” So yes I do believe that race is more than skin deep and beyond the body as well as religion is, but it is so hard to wrap my head around why it is so important.
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