The heroine of "Ivanhoe"

by Doctor Science

In Rebecca, Rowena, Puppies, Fanfic, Foz Meadows writes about reading Ivanhoe:

I was struck by the difference in characterisation between Rowena and Rebecca, and what that particular contrast still says about the way we write women in fiction. Rowena, as Ivanhoe's beloved, is meant to be the personification of all the feminine virtues of Scott's period -- beautiful and pure and obedient and yearning -- while Rebecca, reading between the very broad lines, is someone we're meant to root for despite her Jewishness without ever liking her best.

Except that, for precisely this reason, we do; but even though he wrote her that way, Scott doesn't seem to realise it. .... Rowena, passive and set on a pedestal, is what he thought women should be, while Rebecca, active and human, is what he grudgingly acknowledged women were; or could be, at the very least, if they actively tried to overcome the handicap of their gender.

Like Foz, I've always assumed that readers are *supposed* to think Rowena is better than Rebecca, but I've never actually met anyone who did.[1]

I've been thinking about this for the past few days, and have turned up some interesting stuff about how authors write women, and also about how much control authors (don't) have over what readers actually think they've written.

A universal preference for Rebecca over Rowena is one of the premises of Edgar Eager's Knight's Castle, in which children have magical adventures after having seen the 1952 Ivanhoe movie -- where the 20-year-old Elizabeth Taylor was cast as Rebecca, along with the 35-year-old Joan Fontaine as Rowena.

Who's the heroine, here? By Hollywood standards, it kind of has to be the younger, prettier one with more (anachronistic) makeup, right?

So I started wondering, has *anyone* ever liked Rowena better? Was she ever perceived as the rightful heroine, and was Rebecca really the one we were supposed to root for, without liking her best?

One of the great things about the Internet is that it's now easy (with luck) to read, in the comfort of one's home, the kind of primary sources that used to be only accessible in first-rate academic libraries. Starting from a list on the Walter Scott Digital Archive, I was able to track down reviews in five contemporary (1820) publications. To my surprise, they all agree: Rebecca is the best character in the story, and might even be called "the heroine".[2]

While I was looking for reviews, I came across plays based on Ivanhoe -- there were at least *four* productions in London alone in 1820: Ivanhoe; or, the Jew's Daughter by Thomas Dibdin, Ivanhoe; or, the Jew of York by W.T. Montcrieff within the first month, at illegitimate theatres, while Ivanhoe; or, the Knight Templar by Samuel Beazley and The Hebrew by George Soane soon appeared at the "legitimate" theatres.[3]

The plays' titles prove that, at least for the purpose of drama (and melodrama), Rebecca and her father Isaac were the most interesting characters in the novel. I assume that "the Knight Templar" in Beazley's play is Bois-Guilbert, Rebecca's pursuer, so she would have had a major role in that version as well as in the three others.

In other words: from the word "go", audiences (and presumably readers) were more interested in Rebecca than in the ostensible hero and (especially) heroine of the novel. This isn't a modern phenomenon at all.

But what about Scott himself? Did he intend to make Rebecca more interesting and attractive than Rowenna (and if so, why?), or was it -- as Foz suggests -- a case of Rebecca being started as a character, not a role ("love interest"), and then coming to life unexpectedly, as characters sometimes do.

The Abduction of Rebecca, by Eugène Delacroix.

It turns out that a really smart person has already thought about this question, and I think she's probably right. University of Indianapolis English Professor Jennifer Camden's PhD dissertation, The Other Woman: Secondary Heroines in the Nineteenth-Century British and American Novel, is available for free online; she later expanded in into a book, Secondary Heroines in Nineteenth-Century British and American Novels. Both works include chapters about Ivanhoe and Rebecca.

Camden writes:

Rowena is clearly the conventional heroine of romance. The opening chapter of the novel prepares the reader to sympathize with the Saxons, and Rowena is, genealogically, the most noble of all Saxons. In contrast, Rebecca's Eastern apparel and faith would seem to mark her as an enemy, especially during the Crusades, but Scott's careful presentation of Rebecca instructs the reader to see her as a model, while effacing Rowena's agency. ... As readers, we witness Rowena's response to a difficult situation, and then see Rebecca's. This comparison always reveals Rebecca as the stronger and more interesting character.

Camden has convinced me that we readers prefer Rebecca because we have been *taught* to. Scott has structured the narrative to lead (presumably anti-Semitic) readers down the path toward accepting, admiring, and in the end loving Rebecca, despite her religion and "race", and even *because* of them. Rebecca is more devout and articulate about her Judaism than any of the Christian characters (sad, sad Catholics that they be) are about their Christianity. And her Jewish "race" has given her admirable practical skills: Scott writes of

how often the females, during the dark ages, as they are called, were initiated into the mysteries of surgery, and how frequently the gallant knight submitted the wounds of his
person to her cure whose eyes had yet more deeply penetrated his heart. But the Jews, both male and female, possessed and practiced the medical science in all its branches ...

The beautiful Rebecca had been heedfully brought up in all the knowledge proper to her nation, which her apt and powerful mind had retained, arranged, and enlarged, in the course of a progress beyond her years, her sex, and even the age in which she lived.

It's part of Rebecca Jewish heritage that she tackles medicine not as a "mystery", but a "science": she's a great and trustworthy doctor *because* she's Jewish.

In the Introduction added in 1830, Scott writes:

The character of the fair Jewess found so much favour in the eyes of some fair readers, that the writer was censured, because, when arranging the fates of the characters of the drama, he had not assigned the hand of Wilfred to Rebecca, rather than the less interesting Rowena. But, not to mention that the prejudices of the age rendered such an union almost impossible, the author may, in passing, observe, that he thinks a character of a highly virtuous and lofty stamp, is degraded rather than exalted by an attempt to reward virtue with temporal prosperity.

He then goes on to call Rebecca's feelings for Ivanhoe "a rashly formed or ill assorted passion", not worthy of being a reward for such a virtuous person.

From Scott's day to ours, many (most?) readers have felt sad or even betrayed because Rebecca doesn't end up with Ivanhoe, though most acknowledge that Scott's correct, that their union would have been "almost impossible" for the period.

But that doesn't acknowledge that Scott set it up this way. He deliberately chose to write a Jew as the most admirable character, so that the hero cannot end up with her -- foredooming the "Romance" promised on the title page to an unhappy ending. Of course readers felt betrayed: then as now, people read romance for a Happy Ending, dammit, we're not here for "realism" much less Tragedy.

I hope to write more about this later, but this should be enough for a start.

---

[1] I have never actually read "Ivanhoe" for real, I only just picked it up at Project Gutenberg. I believe I read a children's abridged version c. 1968, one that stayed true enough to the original to have the correct ending (i.e. Rebecca's farewell speech to Rowena). I think I also saw the 1952 movie at some point, on TV in the late 60s or early 70s.

[2] 1. The London Literary Gazette:

Isaac's daughter Rebecca, too, to whom we are afterwards introduced, is a charming character, and though Rowena is the nominal heroine, far superior to that lady in mental endowments, in energy, and in the interest which her adventures inspire.

2. The Edinburgh Review:

... the wooing of the lovely Rebecca. We have hitherto said too little of this delightful personage; who is from the beginning the most angelic character in the story, and ends with engrossing its chief interest. The author, it may be observed, has generally one poetical or impossible character in each of his pieces -- somebody too good and enchanting to be believed in--and yet so well humanized and identified with our lower nature as to pass for a reality;--and Rebecca is the goddess of the work before us.

3. The Quarterly Review:

Ivanhoe and Rowena are the traditionary hero and heroine of romance. He, brave, and strong, and generous; she, beautiful and amiable; and both of them constant -- very well qualified for their employment at the end of the story, to marry and live happily together, but a little insipid during its progress.

... in Rebecca the beauty of the execution more than redeems the improbability of the conception.

4. The British review and London critical journal:

The character of Rebecca touches the loftiest point of altitude in virtuous courage and the self devotedness of religious principle throughout this whole transaction.

-- but they find it a fatal flaw in Ivanhoe that "robbers, and Jews, and Christian homicides, and drunkards in the dress of priests" make too much use of "the tremendous name of the great Creator, and with the language and narratives of the Holy Scriptures".

5. The Eclectic Review, which considers the book a failure as both romance and history:

[Ivanhoe's] attendant is a lovely Jewess, the magnanimous heroine of the tale, upon the delineation of whose character the Author has bestowed his very best efforts.

---

[3.] List from Reading Adaptations: Novels and Verse Narratives on the Stage, 1790-1840 by Philip Cox.

Comments

[Steve Wright]

Oh, I've read Ivanhoe. All of it; aloud, even (for reasons that seemed excellent at the time).

While the fair Rowena is probably the best contender for the title of "least interesting character", she faces considerable competition from Wilfred of Ivanhoe himself. It's almost as if Scott put these two in as deliberate stereotypes of the romantic hero and heroine, letting them go through the motions of driving the story, while the truly fascinating cast of secondary characters gets on with all the fun stuff.

Of the "officially designated" major characters, the only interesting one is the villainous Templar, Brian de Bois-Guilbert. He's a study in built-in conflicts; a knight who's aware his chivalry is irrevocably stained, a Christian crusader who's been completely Easternized in his habits... ultimately, it's his inner conflicts that finish him off, in what Robertson Davies called "one of the most interesting psychological deaths in all literature".

But the "designated" hero and heroine are rather flat and uninteresting people - and I find it hard to believe that a writer of Scott's talent and experience wasn't aware of that as he wrote.

[bookworm1398]

I haven't done any research on the subject, but from reading Ivanhoe, I always assumed Rebecca was supposed to be the heroine. How much clearer a sign can you get than God striking down her persecutor during a trial by combat?

[wj]

I wonder how similar the cases are of the "ideal hero/heroine" and elves (especially Tolkein elves). Both, in some sense, reflect an ideal to which we think we ought to aspire.

In both cases, I think we can admire from afar. But we only really get attached to the ones who step off their pedestal and become real people.

[Yama]

My favorite is the BBC Ivanhoe, with the great Ciaran Hinds as Bois-Guilbert. Really amazing, and Rebbecca is clearly the heroine in that version. I love the old movies, but that 1952 Ivanhoe cannot compare.

I have never been fond of love triangles, but wow, what a set up in that story.

I have the paperback of Ivanhoe; perhaps one day I will get to it, if I can break away from watching the SFF flame war.

[Eva]

I find myself agreeing very much with the idea that Wilfred and Rowena are intentional cardboard cutouts. They are both so boring and bland that they deserve each other.

Rebecca is an example of superior character building in a book where you really don't expect it. She is intelligent, articulate, religious, but not a zealot, brave and just simply a good person.

Another character of whom I'd love to read more: Wamba. He is extremely clever and knows just how to hide it and play the fool so he gets on reasonably well in a time not very good for clever Saxons. I even used to have an idea of writing a retelling of Ivanhoe where Wamba was the mastermind in the background all along.

[Doctor Science]

Eva:

I even used to have an idea of writing a retelling of Ivanhoe where Wamba was the mastermind in the background all along.

Doooooo eeeeeeeeeet. This is the sort of thing that could be quite the bestseller, you know.

[Hartmut]

Ironically, the first version of Ivanhoe I came in contact with as a kid (an audio play) left the Jewish angle out completely, and the final duel between Ivanhoe and Bois-Gilbert was about Prince John's attempt to pseudo-legally take over the throne for good. The Knight Templar was also into Rowena of course.
Wamba was a major character, maybe even the main driver of the action for most of the time.
Given that it was aimed at children and probably less than an hour long, I see no problem there and do not suspect any ideological mmotive.
A saw the 1952 movie many years later (long after reading the book itself) and was not overly impressed. 2 newer adaptations are still waiting for me to watch on my DVD shelf.

[JakeB]

If anyone else has read Dorothy Dunnett's Crawford of Lymond series . . . is the monster Gabriel partly a riff on Brian?

[Doctor Science]

Hartmut:

Was that audio play in German, or English? and what decade was it?

JakeB:

I consulted with Mr Dr Science, who's read the Lymond series many times, and we think Gabriel isn't really a riff on Bois-Guilbert, except in that they're both Templars. B-G never pretends to be humble, God-fearing, etc., he's always upfront about being proud and interested in doing what he wants.

[Hartmut]

Hartmut:

Was that audio play in German, or English? and what decade was it?

In German, made in 1974 (other sources say 1976 or 1978) by Kurt Vethake, length slighly above 45 minutes.

It seems that guy made a significant percentage of the audio plays I loved as a kid (and that introduced me to a lot of literary classics). Feeling a wave of nostalgia sweeping over me.

[Hartmut]

slightly not slighly