Anti-Semitism and Masculinity in Victorian Literature

By Madeline Deane

Trigger warning: sexual assault.

When we think of xenophobia, often we are susceptible to oversimplifying it, without considering the intersectionality of gender and race. Historically, antisemitism has largely existed within a repressive hetero-normative framework of gender identity and sexuality. Considering Antisemitism in Victorian England then, it’s important to take on a gendered perspective, looking at the relationship between Judeophobia and conceived ‘masculinity’.

The Victorian period saw the success of the novel, a form of story-telling which was new and revolutionary in the literary landscape. Novels were a way in which writers could speak to the sympathies of the public, underpinning their narratives with politics and ethics.

Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist was wildly suc cessful; a serialized story, published be tween 1837 and 1839. The novel’s villain is “Fagin”, an old Jewish man who is described as nightmarishly evil and deformed and is often referred to as the devil. The novel has been widely criticised for its outright antisemitism but is still considered to be one of Dickens’ greatest novels.

George Du Maurier’s Trilby was the number one best-selling novel of 1894, said to be one of the most popular novels of the whole Victorian period. Serialized, and further adapted into a successful play, it was a huge hit. Now, Trilby is more or less forgotten about and unread. The narrative follows “Trilby”, a half-Irish girl, and “Svengali”, a Jewish hypnotist, who puts the young girl under his spell. Du Maurier went as far as to include an artistic depiction of Svengali in the novel, in which he appears with the body of a spider and the face of a man. The illustration is titled ‘An Incubus’ - a demon, who in mythology, often attempts to sleep with women.

We may consider the villains of both of these texts then, as imaginations of monstrous ‘hyper-masculinity’, characters who wield immense power and use it for evil. Whether it be managing and exploiting a criminal gang of orphans, or manipulating a young girl under hypnosis (some critics interpreting this as a potential rape), the two characters intimately link the Western antisemitic Jewish caricature with the ‘hyper-masculine’ embodiment of evil. Despite this pattern, presenting a Jewish man as hper-masculine is not the only stereotype in Judeophobia. Historically, antisemitic depictions of Jews have markedly differed. The Jew has been characterised as hyper-masculine, effeminate, queer, the devil, and at times, a saint.

These seemingly binary oppositions converge and complicate the ways in which we theorize antisemitism. As a form of xenophobia which has had a deeply entrenched foothold in history, antisemitism in Victorian literature reflects an amalgamation of stereo- types which relate to ‘masculinity’ as a developing construct. The preceding Enlightenment period saw the theorizing of the ‘correct’ body as the Aryan male, embedding the standard for race, gender, and sexual behaviour. And the Victorian period was increasingly interested in how people may be categorised as ‘other’. It’s no surprise then that xenophobia often existed at an intersection with what we would now consider ‘queerphobia’. Jewish men were denigrated for their ‘unmanliness’, but also for being devilishly hyper-masculine. This paradox reflects a certain historical self-referentiality of antisemitism. As pointed out by Matthew Biberman, a published scholar in the field of literary antisemitism, early modern texts presented the Jewish man as ultra-masculine and villainous, and in turn, the Christian as “feminine” in his care and virtue. Throughout history, however, Christian men have attempted to realign themselves with a certain image of ‘masculinity’, and so depictions of Jewish men have mocked their ‘effeminacy’. It’s apparent then, that throughout different periods in history, there is a back and forth of antisemitic belief to reiterate ‘otherness’, which fluctuates with gender stereotypes.

In Oliver Twist’s “Fagin” and Trilby’s “Svengali”, we see Jewish characters who are presented as overtly “masculine” in their apt manipulation and power over others. They are reflective of the perceived loss of white Anglican supremacy during the Victorian period; the ‘manipulation’ carried out by individuals of other religions and races into previously white and Christian roles.

The 19th century saw an improvement in the conditions of the Jewish population in England. Many Jewish migrants had settled in London, and Judaism became the second biggest faith after Christianity. The British state was becoming more secular, and religion was an increasingly private practice. Significantly, ‘The Universities Tests Act’ of 1871 meant that non-Christians could teach at and attend university. This is just one of the shifts in Victorian society which meant that social, political and economic status was becoming less and less exclusive to white Anglicans.

The idea of white male supremacy started to be called into question, through the increasingly allowed upward mobility of minorities. Victorian literature was a way of asserting white masculinity in the form of somewhat unchallenged literary “tradition”, which was not always seen as racially problematic. Whether or not these authors were antisemitic in their personal lives, in any case, is an unproductive way of viewing their writings. Fundamentally, these antisemitic novels should not be referred to as a product of their time, they are intentionally hateful even by their own standards.