Racism and Bigotry in Literature

Cafe Society
21

I’m going to have to agree with Zev Steinhardt here about anti-semitism in historical works (I can’t address racism first hand). I used to have a keen interest in female authors of the 19th century and immoral Jewish characters (virtually never any moral ones) sometimes make an appearance. I tried to accept it as a product of its times, though evidently contemporary Jews did complain.

On the other hand one of these books had the first wedding between a black man and a white woman that I had ever heard of in literature, though the author was told to leave that out of future editions as it “gave the gentlemen the horrors.”

22

I got a good ways into Baroness Orczy’s Scarlet Pimpernel before I was so turned off by a stereotypically disgusting Jewish character that I put the book down and never managed to finish it.

Shakespeare’s Jessica is my namesake, so I feel a responsibility to speak up here. While Shylock undoutably embodies many hateful stereotypes, Shakespeare still makes him a man. We understand why he does the things he does – the Christians break their word, elope with his daughter, and generally screw him over. Shylock is a man who just wants his pound of flesh, what is due him. That right there elevates him from mere caricature to a powerful character.

If you want a truly anti-semitic subject from the same time period, try Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, where the Jews are portrayed as inhuman scum who are evil just because they are Jews. They have none of the depth or humanity of Shakespeare’s Shylock and Jessica.

In much the same way, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn cannot be called racist. Huck, even though he has been taught that helping a fleeing slave will damn his soul for all eternity, still helps Jim escape. “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” is still one of the greatest moments in all of literature, and I don’t care who knows it!

There’s been some interesting things going on in the X-Men comics lately. Granted, they’ve always been focused on bigotry and prejudice and racism, but I’m really digging the way the mirror has been turned on the mutants themselves, revealing their own hatreds. There’s a scene in a recent issue of Uncanny X-Men where a human character has been invited to a mutant character’s party. When she enters the club where the party is being held, she’s accousted by a waitress who wants to know if she’s a “spike” (mutant) or a “low-gene” (human), because this club segregates the two into different sections.

Later on, the same character, Annie, accuses a mutant character of being racist and homophobic. He defends himself far more fiercely against the charges of racism, insisting that no one knows the horrors of hatred better than he does. Annie then says that he’s just “passing”; he doesn’t want to be a normal low-gene human like her, but neither does he want to be a 24-7 mutant. He wants to be a mutant who can pass for human when it pleases him.

Yet another character, Paige, can’t understand why mutants, who are so “superior” to humans, aren’t universally better. As the next step in the evolutionary chain, she thinks that mutants should be an improvement over humans, but the mutants she knows don’t live up to her expectations. They aren’t kinder, more intelligent, or more tolerant, and this baffles her. Great stuff.

.:Nichol:.

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Personally, I liked Walter Scott’s portrayal of Rebecca in Ivanhoe - a male authour, but a female character. :wink:

The Saxon “heroine” Rowena was whiny. Rebecca was the real heroine. Naturally, given the prejudices of the times, the Christian hero Ivanhoe couldn’t marry her, but he certainly wanted to.

Her father was portrayed more as the stereotypical Jew.

24

I’ll refer you to the part of my post when I said this:

To further clarify, I understand that such subtley was not unusual and that not everyone was a foaming at the mouth racist. Where it gets annoying is how cliche it is that the “good” family takes a stand on superficialities such as the N-Word, but they do not see the wrongness of perpetuating black servitude. I cite the family in the book The Devine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood. One of the characters, a young Viviane Abbott, almost gets in a fist fight with a guy when he calls her maid a nigger. But throughout the rest of the story, she has black folks at her beckon call, nursing her children, cleaning her house, etc. So I, the reader, is left with the impression that although the character’s response against “nigger” is well-meaning enough, she’s a bit of a hypocrite in regards to race relations. Which means the author’s attempt to show the morality of her character (in this case, Vivian Abott) does not result in what I think was the intended response.

25

Edgar Rice Burroughs. I’m a huge fan of Tarzan, but just about every character is a stereotype.

Jane wasn’t the first woman Tarzan ever met; she was the first white woman he ever met, and as far as I can tell, that’s the only thing he saw in her. He’d met humans – the jungle natives – long before the Porter/Clayton party came around.

Heck, the name Tarzan even means “white skin” in the ape language. It’s the one time I was really glad Disney did its part to clean a story up.

26

WHOA!

Disney? Cleaning up a story?

Acccck! Thump!

[slumps to floor in state of cardiac arrest]

27

Edith Wharton—both writers whose work I enjoy a lot, but I have to swallow hard to get past their anti-semitism.
EveWhen is Edith Wharton anti-Semitic?

Hey, you with the face GWTW is a book about the South’s failures in the past, and blindness toward the future. Mitchell did not intend for you to sympathize with Scarlett - the character illustrates how mistakes are made - no more than Willa Cather intended you to sympathize with the romantic heroin of “My Mortal Enemy.” (Incidentally, Melanie is a villain, too.)

You seem to have read “Divine Secrets” with a more critical eye.

Excellent point, RealityChuck. A friend of mind was upset by the Jeeves stories because Jeeves is basically a slave. Failed to notice he’s always the hero, make the best of his lot in life, has a bit of fun at the expense of Bertie, etc. etc.
I don’t mind reading books in which the mores of the day are part of the story. I do mind reading literature from any time if the author has plotlines supporting the idea of equality while the story subverts or fails to uphold that ideal. A lot of modern fiction expects the reader to assume someone is bad or evil simply because he is a frat boy, or she works in marketing - or that someone is good simply because they’ve suffered abuse. I suppose typing out cheap stereotypes is easier than creating characters, but with the price of hardbacks I expect a bit more from a book.

28

The character of Sim Rosedale, a classic greasy, acquisitive, social-climbing Jew, who envies and tries to be one of the social elite, much to their amusement.

29

j.c.:

Yes, I know, Scarlett is one of those characters you’re not supposed to like. And I didn’t like her. I hated her. This made it hard for me to enjoy the story. I tend not to care that much about the lives of people I don’t like. The same goes for ficitious characters. YMMV.

30

I just finished reading a collection of anecdotes collected and/or written by Bennet Cerf, a highly respected editor and man about town in the '40’s and 50’s, and a person I greatly respect. So I did find it a bit jarring when I came across the odd story or two that showed a prejudice or at least an acceptance of a stereotype (sorry I can’t think of an example). I had to remind myself that the book had been written during WWII and ideas had changed. I console myself with the thought that, if Cerf were still alive, his aceptance of such things would also have changed.

31

Eve Some folks - put me in this camp - consider Rosedale the yin to Lily’s yang. She is beautiful and socially fit, but poor; he is physically ugly and socially unfit, but rich. He and some of Lily’s friends are shrewd enough to see that, together they are the perfect couple. Since Wharton says almost nothing else about Jews, I’d argue that Rosedale’s being a Jew is a device - a way for him to have poor social standing through no fault of his own. Isn’t his role more of a comment on that society than on Rosedale? They don’t dare mock him to his face. His financial skill gives him power.

It is true that he makes a business, rather than a romantic appeal to Lily. However, in the context of the book and that society, I don’t think Wharton considers that a bad or wrong thing. Just practical.

In fact did you know that in the movie “Citizen Kane,” the final word is “Rosebud” as an homage to the truth about “The word” that was never spoken between Lily and Selden is “Rosedale” - an acknowledgement by both that what they should have done was have Lily marry Rosedale for his bucks and take Seldon as a lover. You didn’t know that? How odd. It must be true in some parallel universe somewhere. Perhaps one where Rosedale and I are not cursed with oily skin.

You with the face Sorry. I inferred that you found GWTW a bad book because Scarlett is a bad person.

P.S. It just me - or is this one of the few threads that works today?

32

In fact did you know that in the movie “Citizen Kane,” the final word is “Rosebud” as an homage to the truth about “The word” that was never spoken between Lily and Selden is “Rosedale”

–So it’s not Marion Davies’ naughty bits?

I haven’t read the book in ages, but I recall even the physical description of Rosedale as being an annoyimg Jew stereotype.

33

Racism is wrong. We all know that now. We had the wonderful intelligence and grace to be born in an enlightened age. I’m thankful that I knew enough to be born when I did.

I also can’t stand when the literature from the ages gets it wrong about astonomy, the combustion engine, atomic theory and computer science. Boy am I glad that I was smart enough to be born in an age that understands these things.

34

Racism is wrong. We all know that now. We had the wonderful intelligence and grace to be born in an enlightened age. I’m thankful that I knew enough to be born when I did.

I also can’t stand when the literature from the ages gets it wrong about astonomy, the combustion engine, atomic theory and computer science. Boy am I glad that I was smart enough to be born in an age that understands these things.

35

EveRosedale is chubby, blond, bald, and has oily skin. Actually, various characters and Wharton describe it as shiny and polished and glossy - as a person with oily skin I took that to mean oily.

His nose is never mentioned, although he is said to be good with money - though never cheap. In fact, he’s quite generous without being a sap.

Is chubby blond and bald a Jew stereotype?I’m only aware of the hook-nose dark penny-pinching stereotype (Groucho).

Still, I think Wharton wants us to respect Rosedale. For example, there are many scenes where we see that a character, such as Lily herself, is foolish to assume that Rosedale is dull because doesn’t know all the rules of New York Society raindeer games. The only time Rosedale is in error is when he assumes he has a way with women because Lily agreed to go to the opera with him. When it comes to knowing what’s going on, Rosedale has the best track record of any character.

36

Zenster, please don’t give up on A Passage to India. The ending to it is beautiful, and overall it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read.

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Actually, Sambo was a derogatory name applied to black men at least 50 years prior to the writing of Little Black Sambo. And every copy of that book that I have seen printed prior to 1950 uses truly revolting stereotypes for its illustrations, giving Sambo and his entire family enormously thick lips, printed in flaming red, and bulging eyes.

I agree that the text of the book is fairly cute, making Sambo out to be quite ingenious as he escapes the tigers (tigers in Africa?), but the book was not trashed by later generations, it was offensive from its first publication.

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I thought it was set in India? That’s what made it so dumb…black stereotypes of Indians?

39

It was set in India actually ( remember many south Indians in particular get very dark ). Written in 1899 by Helen Bannerman, the daughter of a English chaplain and wife of a physician stationed in India, to entertain her daughters. The conflation with Africa is common, but mistaken ( both lions AND tigers occur in India, of course - though lions were more common then - now they are limited to a single population in the Gir forest ).

  • Tamerlane
40

I liked the book a lot, though probably more for the history and atmosphere. Scarlett was a bitch, though I sympathize with some of the things she did, even if they were horrible(she did save the family from losing Tara and somewhat from starving after the burning of Atlanta but those were about the only really good things she ever did). I don’t know how anyone could really see her as a role model or anything considering how emotionally shallow she is, and how towards the end she pretty much ends up hurting everyone she knows because of her selfishness.