I hate when people call books like Oliver Twist anti-semitic

[Carousel]

But is Fagin a dangerous character? And unfortunately the answer is: oh yes, very much so.

What point are you making? Literature is populated with thousands upon thousands of dangerous characters of all cultures, religious beliefs and skin colours etc.

It surprises me that no one has mentioned the scene near the novel's end in which Dickens actually distances Fagin from Judaism.

Oh he did that far earlier in the novel; Fagin is pictured with a toasting fork cooking sausages for himself and the boys. Sausages that invariable would have contained pork and strictly non kosher.

Did Jewish child gang masters exist in London of the 1830s? Very probably but I think certainly not to the extent that non Jews were. However some Jews were heavily engaged in both women and child prostitution in the 19th century. It had a name ‘White Slavery’ and of course money lenders who date back to Shakespeare’s time and before. Money lending is not a crime in itself but recovering the loan plus the high interest rate charged from destitute borrowers often resulted in vicious criminal practises.

This is not to say that Jewish criminals were more or less evil that their English contemporary’s, but to deny any writer the right to expose their activities on the grounds that they were Jewish doesn’t ring my bell.

Dickens drew his characters from all walks of life and most could be judged as stereotypes or characterisations that made them easy recognizable to the general public which was the audience his work was aimed at.
To infer that Fagin was a dangerous character for the Jews would at least call for some proof that he was i.e. after publication of the book if attacks on the Jewish population occurred. That fact is they definitely did not, actually rather the opposite as around that time the bill for the Emancipation of the Jews was passed.

In the east end of London at that time both Jews and the English poor lived cheek by jowl with each other and suffered equally in the abject poverty together. Both were the victims of the rigid class system, the overhangs of which are still around today. ‘Know your place and stay there; it is the will of God’. If you are looking for a writer who supported the class divide look no further than Agather Christie--- Miss Marple on being told of the murder of her servant girl “Oh such a pity, it takes so long to train another girl”
An attitude that Dickens fought against all of his life.

[Pompey Bum]

What point are you making?

That accusing Dickens of racism is not helpful and that attempting to contextualize Fagin is potentially dangerous to Jews. And that rather than waste our time with self-serving platitudes (that which you have called political correctness), we need to understand and teach about why a good man and social reformer like Dickens would have felt in 1837 that there was no harm in evoking in the ancient calumny of Jewish diablolism.

Literature is populated with thousands upon thousands of dangerous characters of all cultures, religious beliefs and skin colours etc.

Right, well like I said that point is irrelevant. It's also a fallacious one (called the appeal to common practice), but we don't need to get into it. My view is that we need to understand and teach about other dangerous characters, too. Making excuses for them doesn't help any more than sanctimonious accusations against their creators or (God forbid) politically correct Bowdlerizing of their texts.

Oh he did that far earlier in the novel; Fagin is pictured with a toasting fork cooking sausages for himself and the boys. Sausages that invariable would have contained pork and strictly non kosher.

Interesting point, although it's probably a stretch. Dickens may have been using the sausages to show that Fagin was a hypocrite (hypocrisy being a part of the anti-Jewish calumny from which Fagin sprang); or (less likely) that he was somehow to be distinguished from other Jews. I say less likely because in that earlier part of the novel, Dickens repeatedly refers to Fagin as "Fagin the Jew" or even simply "The Jew." (Reducing the frequency with which he used the epithet was the way Dickens toned down his rhetoric in the later chapters of the book). And you are certainly wrong that "the sausages would invariably have contained pork and [been] strictly non kosher." Kosher meats had been widely available in Europe since the 17th century (or earlier), and there would have been no problem for Jews to obtain kosher sausages in a super-metropolis like Fagin's London. Still, I like the idea that the demonic Fagin, as he sits by his fire with his fork, is sneaking pork sausages behind the Torah's back. It's a clever joke. Does Dickens ever say that they were pork sausages?

Did Jewish child gang masters exist in London of the 1830s? Very probably but I think certainly not to the extent that non Jews were. However some Jews were heavily engaged in both women and child prostitution in the 19th century. It had a name ‘White Slavery’ and of course money lenders who date back to Shakespeare’s time and before. Money lending is not a crime in itself but recovering the loan plus the high interest rate charged from destitute borrowers often resulted in vicious criminal practises.

That is also irrelevant to the argument. We are agreed that Dickens believed himself to be satirizing a real social problem. It is the history of that satire (pre-and post-Dickens) that presented and continues to present the danger. That is the point--not whether Dickens was a Jew-hater. He wasn't.

This is not to say that Jewish criminals were more or less evil that their English contemporary’s, but to deny any writer the right to expose their activities on the grounds that they were Jewish doesn’t ring my bell.

Me neither, Carousel. Understand my argument and I think you'll see that. But for now, what you've got is a just another fallacious argument (straw man this time).

Dickens drew his characters from all walks of life and most could be judged as stereotypes or characterisations that made them easy recognizable to the general public which was the audience his work was aimed at.

I'll do you even better than that. Dickens was a satirist par excellence. Fagin, Smallweed, Krook, Scrooge, Uriah Heep: these are caricatures. They were not supposed to be "photographs" of people any more than political cartoons are today. Again, my argument is not that Dickens was picking on Jews when he made Fagin. It's that he drew on an existing caricature (the demonic Jew from John 8:44) that had already contributed to centuries of anti-Jewish violence and was a part of the Jewish Holocaust in the 20th century. Dickens did not cause the Holocaust and neither did Fagin. But Fagin is the popular and acceptable face of that caricature today. That, and the persistence of anti-Jewish violence into the 21st century make Fagin a "handle with care" character. The caricature (in which Fagin participates) remains a danger.

To infer that Fagin was a dangerous character for the Jews would at least call for some proof that he was i.e. after publication of the book if attacks on the Jewish population occurred. That fact is they definitely did not, actually rather the opposite as around that time the bill for the Emancipation of the Jews was passed.

Well, it would require evidence, right? Not "proof" of an inference. (But let's not get into that again). Unfortunately, there is no shortage of evidence of Jewish blood shed over the demonic Jew stereotype that produced Fagin, either before or after Oliver Twist. To cite only one example (albeit one of mass murder), images of Jews with demonic physical features were posted in the Third Reich (along with passages from John 8:44) to encourage Christians to hand over Jews during the Holocaust (which they did in the millions). But please understand what I am arguing, Carousel. It is not that Dickens caused all that by creating Fagin, or even that the demonic Jew stereo type alone was responsible for those deaths (although it had a role). It is that Dickens drew on the ancient calumny that Jews were physical as and moral heirs of the devil (as evidenced by Fagin's diabolical physiognomy); that that stereotype contributed to the murder of Jews before and after Dickens time; and that the caricature must not be uncritically accepted or excused because of the potential for danger that it--the caricature--can still represent (especially in the environment of increasing anti-Semitism in 21st century Europe). Fagin is a dangerous character because of his participation in that caricature.

In the east end of London at that time both Jews and the English poor lived cheek by jowl with each other and suffered equally in the abject poverty together.

Um yeah, well I mean, the Jews of England were (and are) English, right? Anyway, I know what you're trying to say.

Both were the victims of the rigid class system, the overhangs of which are still around today. ‘Know your place and stay there; it is the will of God’.

We agree that the English class system was (and is) wrong.

If you are looking for a writer who supported the class divide look no further than Agather Christie--- Miss Marple on being told of the murder of her servant girl “Oh such a pity, it takes so long to train another girl” An attitude that Dickens fought against all of his life.

We agree that Agatha Christie sucks.

[kev67]

Phillip Horne in the introduction of my copy writes:

Dickens' defence that Fagin was Jewish 'because it unfortunately was true of the time to which the story refers, that that class of criminal almost invariably was a Jew' is inadequate justification of the array of stereotypical stage properties with which he adorns his old crook (the most notorious Jewish fence of the time, Ikey Solomons, was brown-haired and beardless, and wore smart modern dress).


I have been pondering what the stereotypical stage properties were. I don't know how Jews were portrayed on stage in the C19th. Ikey Solomons might have been brown-haired and beardless and wore smart modern dress, but Ikey Solomons is definitely a Jewish name while I don't think Fagin is. Apparently, someone Dickens met at the blacking factory was called Fagin, which more an Irish name. Red hair is not a particularly Jewish characteristic. In the musical and the Polanski film, Fagin wears unusual clothing, which could be stereotypically Jewish, but when Oliver first meets him he is described as wearing a greasy flannel gown, not particularly Jewish. I have not read any mention of his nose. He is portrayed as being like the Devil, and he is constantly referred to as the Jew. All the same, he must have been recognizably Jewish, or this sentence, when Oliver meets Fagin for the first time, would not make much sense.

"In a frying-pan which was on fire, some sausages were cooking; and standing over them, with a toasting fork in his hand, was a very old shrivelled Jew, whose villainous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair."

When Sikes first appears, he calls Fagin a 'covetous, avaricious, in-sa-ti-able old fence'. That is a Jewish stereotype.

Fagin and Sikes wanted to stop Oliver from peaching on them, basically by killing him. Jews have been accused of child-killing in the past, but that is surely more Mediaeval folk-lore. Would C19th readers have been aware of those associations? They would have been aware of the anti-Semitism in the Gospel of St John. Splitting hairs, I would not call that stereotyping.

So, I don't think that the problem is that Fagin is more stereotypically Jewish than Ikey Solomons was. The problem is that he is represented as a Jew being like the Devil and as a Jew being a child killer.

Actually, despite Dickens' defence that that class of criminal almost invariably was a Jew may not have been true. While I was googling the Fagin surname, I came across a newspaper article that suggested Fagin was based on a black child-stealer called Henry Murphy.

[Pompey Bum]

"In a frying-pan which was on fire, some sausages were cooking; and standing over them, with a toasting fork in his hand, was a very old shrivelled Jew, whose villainous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair."

Although I am now toying with the idea that Fagin is such a hypocrite that he is actually sneaking pork sausages on the sly, the symbolism of this image is all too obvious: Fagin is a fiery devil who skewers souls with his fork and roasts them on his fire.

Jews have been accused of child-killing in the past, but that is surely more Mediaeval folk-lore. Would C19th readers have been aware of those associations?

Unfortunately the "blood libel," that Jews abducted and murdered Christian children, sometimes to use their blood in ceremonial foods, sometimes to crucify them as human sacrifices, and sometimes just for the hell of it, was well known and continued to be reported through the 19th century (as was the calumny of diabolical Jewish physiognomy). For the record, blood libels were also reported in the 20th century, and are currently all the rage in the Middle East. The most recent one mentioned in this Wiki is from August 2014--five months ago. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel

So, I don't think that the problem is that Fagin is more stereotypically Jewish than Ikey Solomons was. The problem is that he is represented as a Jew being like the Devil and as a Jew being a child killer.

Stereotypical or not, I agree that those things are the problem. Fagin partakes in an ancient lie that is still potentially lethal to Jews.

[Carousel]

Unfortunately, there is no shortage of evidence of Jewish blood shed over the demonic Jew stereotype that produced Fagin, either before or after Oliver Twist haracter because of his participation in that caricature.

Have you considered that a stereotype has no meaning to the public if it doesn’t at least bear some relationship to the type of person the writer is characterizing i.e. that the public can recognize? All characterizations follow the same principle.

I suggest that your insistence that the character created by Dickens was dangerous because of the threat it fueled of an anti Semitic response against the Jewish people is only feasible if such a reaction happened. It didn’t then nor did it happen when Oliver Twist was repeated in numerous plays and movies over the ensuing hundred years plus in which there was no major adjustment made on Dickens’ description of Fagin in fact the movies graphically enhanced the Jewish nature of the character.

Although you refute the connection with Dickens portrayal of Fagin and the Holocaust you still allude to both in the same paragraph. While Fagin is a fictional character Dickens used as a tool to tell a story; the Holocaust was prepared by a nation wide wave of anti Semitic propaganda on a massive basis. Sorry, to say that both have even remotely any connection with each other is laughable.

The musical Oliver was written by Lionel Bart ne Lionel Begleiter, a Jew who presumable had no qualms about Fagin warbling 'Gotta Pick a Pocket or Two' would bring about dire retribution on his race. It gets worse; Ron Moody the actor who played Fagin, said quote “I'm 100% Jewish — totally kosher!"

[Pompey Bum]

Have you considered that a stereotype has no meaning to the public if it doesn’t at least bear some relationship to the type of person the writer is characterizing i.e. that the public can recognize?

So you're suggesting that the reason that the character of Fagin resonated with Victorian audiences is that Jews really were the descendants of Satan? That's a pretty lame argument, Carousel, not to say dangerously bigoted.

All characterizations follow the same principle.

So blacks are lazy and stupid? How about Poles and Italians? Are they comically dumb, as the popular racist stereotype would have it? And women? Too emotional for the workplace? Because all of those things follow from the "same principle."

I suggest that your insistence that the character created by Dickens was dangerous because of the threat it fueled of an anti Semitic response against the Jewish people is only feasible if such a reaction happened. It didn’t then nor did it happen when Oliver Twist was repeated in numerous plays and movies over the ensuing hundred years plus in which there was no major adjustment made on Dickens’ description of Fagin in fact the movies graphically enhanced the Jewish nature of the character.

So the murders of "demonic" and "child-stealing" Jews between the reign of Theodosius the Great and the Holocaust (and beyond) never really happened? Because, as you know, my argument is:

that Dickens drew on the ancient calumny that Jews were physical as and moral heirs of the devil (as evidenced by Fagin's diabolical physiognomy); that that stereotype contributed to the murder of Jews before and after Dickens time; and that the caricature must not be uncritically accepted or excused because of the potential for danger that it--the caricature--can still represent (especially in the environment of increasing anti-Semitism in 21st century Europe). Fagin is a dangerous character because of his participation in that caricature.

Although you refute the connection with Dickens portrayal of Fagin and the Holocaust you still allude to both in the same paragraph.

Well, that's not really what the word "refute" means, Carousel perhaps you meant rebutted?) But it's pretty clear in any case that you aren't really following the argument. Granted it is a nuanced argument, but you should still be able to get it. Why don't you take a deep breath and just try to work it out again. Remember that we don't have to agree about everything to agree about some things. Good luck!

While Fagin is a fictional character Dickens used as a tool to tell a story; the Holocaust was prepared by a nation wide wave of anti Semitic propaganda on a massive basis.

That argument again:

Dickens drew on the ancient calumny that Jews were physical as and moral heirs of the devil (as evidenced by Fagin's diabolical physiognomy); that that stereotype contributed to the murder of Jews before and after Dickens time; and that the caricature must not be uncritically accepted or excused because of the potential for danger that it--the caricature--can still represent (especially in the environment of increasing anti-Semitism in 21st century Europe). Fagin is a dangerous character because of his participation in that caricature.

Sorry, to say that both have even remotely any connection with each other is laughable.

Heh heh. Yup, ipsa res loquitur all right.

The musical Oliver was written by Lionel Bart ne Lionel Begleiter, a Jew who presumable had no qualms about Fagin warbling 'Gotta Pick a Pocket or Two' would bring about dire retribution on his race. It gets worse; Ron Moody the actor who played Fagin, said quote “I'm 100% Jewish — totally kosher!"

What could be less relevant to the question of whether the character of Fagin is dangerous to Jews? Good luck with your endeavors in any case!

[JoeLopp]

It is really impossible to separate the historical from the current when it comes to ingrained, societal prejudices. One flows nearly seemlessly from one place in time to the other over the generations. It is both correct in lit. criticism to question the stereotypes an author may be consciously, or not, promoting... just as it is to take the character for what he/she is quite apart from ethnicity and regard whether that character was successfully deployed in the story on purely technical grounds.

Whether we, if we take a more 'western' view of things today, and to wit, we would be much less inlined to portray a Jewish person in the way Dickens did, but would we feel the same reticence about a Muslim 'villain'?

[Pompey Bum]

It is really impossible to separate the historical from the current when it comes to ingrained, societal prejudices. One flows nearly seemlessly from one place in time to the other over the generations.

Yes, unfortunately that has been the historical reality. Attempts to contextualize bigotries only give them an innocuous-looking haven until their embers flare up again. Better to understand about them and to teach about them, in my view.

It is both correct in lit. criticism to question the stereotypes an author may be consciously, or not, promoting... just as it is to take the character for what he/she is quite apart from ethnicity and regard whether that character was successfully deployed in the story on purely technical grounds.

I agree. Without Fagin, Oliver Twist would lose about a third of its effectiveness--the other two thirds mostly involving Bumble et al., and the Dodger. (I suppose Nancy and Sykes work, too, but they seem a creative echelon lower, at least to me). Fagin is one of Dickens' great characters, and his greatest villain in my opinion. But he is dangerous, too. We need to understand that and to help others understand.

Whether we, if we take a more 'western' view of things today, and to wit, we would be much less inlined to portray a Jewish person in the way Dickens did, but would we feel the same reticence about a Muslim 'villain'?

It's a great point. The same could be said for Eastern Europeans. There was a great character in Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, called Boris. Boris was maybe Ukrainian, maybe Polish, maybe Russian. He had converted to Islam at one point, but was no longer observant. He was roguish, devil-may-care, an IV drug user, an IV drug dealer, and a player in the world of international organized crime. He was emotional, fiercely loyal to the main character, and fierce and defiant in general. Without Boris, The Goldfinch would probably have been the boated and plodding thing that Tartt's critics (unfairly) claim it to be.

But The Paris Review excoriated Tartt for her characterization of Boris, claiming that it was based on a popular American stereotype of Eastern Europeans as over-the-top criminals. And in a way, the paper was correct. It is useless to plead that (the oddly likable) Boris isn't all that bad; or to point to the Eastern Europeans who really are over-the-top criminals. My own take on Boris--and for me, his saving grace--is that his personality and his "dark twin" relationship to the main character seem drawn in part from the character of Rogozhin, Prince Myshkin negative image in Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. (Boris reads and discusses The Idiot in the course of the story, The Goldfinch's tenth chapter is called "The Idiot," and Tartt discusses some of Dostoyevsky's novel's troubling ambiguities in the later pages of her own). But the truth is that the parts of Boris that are not drawn from Rogozhin are fleshed out with the popular prejudice.

That does not, of course, make Tartt a "Ukranian-hater," nor does it make the Pulitzer-Prize-winning The Goldfinch a novel that ought to be suppressed or Bowdlerized. It just means that one of Tartt's more interesting characters is flawed in a way that deserves to be discussed and understood.

And so, too, of Dickens, Fagin, and Oliver Twist.

[Carousel]

All Jews as descendants of Satan?

Well no, that’s your understanding of how the character of one tired old Jew is portrayed in the Oliver Twist and a hilarious one at that.

Further, it was certainly not the view of how the English of the time distinguished the Jewish race. England provided safety for Jewish immigrants escaping from the many pogroms against them in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Neither would they have knighted a Jew or allowed them to become Members or their Parliament or elected a Jew as their Prime Minister if the English had thought of Jews as guys with forked tails and brandishing tridents.

So African Americans actually are lazy and stupid? How about Poles and Italians? Are they comically dumb, as the popular racist stereotype has it? And women? Too emotional for the workplace? Because all of those things follow from the "same principle."

No, did I ever suggest that any racial stereotype was an authentic description of any race or gender? However by saying stereotyping is invalid as an educated evaluation of any race or gender (Which I agree it certainly is) it ignores the fact that it is a very common appraisal held by many and not restricted to race or colour. Take a look at the Jewish jokes told by Jewish comedians virtually all are about the Jewish stereotype, is that not ‘dangerous’ in your opinion?

While Fagin is a fictional character Dickens used as a tool to tell a story; the Holocaust was prepared by a nation wide wave of anti Semitic propaganda on a massive basis.

That argument again:

Yes that argument again, which is the basis of your argument i.e. that the portrayal of Fagin by Dickens posed a threat to Jewish race. You really can’t make a statement like that without any evidence (Happy now?) to back it up.
As I stated earlier; it didn’t then nor did it happen when Oliver Twist was repeated in numerous plays and movies over the ensuing hundred plus years in which there was no major adjustment made on Dickens’ description of Fagin in fact the movies graphically enhanced the Jewish nature of the character.
How much more time do you need before any evidence comes to light that supports your argument?

The musical Oliver was written by Lionel Bart ne Lionel Begleiter, a Jew who presumable had no qualms about Fagin warbling 'Gotta Pick a Pocket or Two' would bring about dire retribution on his race. It gets worse; Ron Moody the actor who played Fagin, said quote “I'm 100% Jewish — totally kosher!"

What could be less relevant to the question of whether the character of Fagin is dangerous to Jews?

Relevant? Oh yes in as much that the author and the actor who played Fagin and being both English Jews obviously do not share in your views, because they understood that bringing Oliver to the silver screen posed no threat to the Jewish nation.

. Oliver Twist is a work of fiction, right? The Oxford dictionary defines the word fiction as--Something that is invented or untrue: I repeat; invented or untrue.

Racialists don’t need fictional roll models to fuel their hatred; it’s already ingrained in their nature and it certainly doesn’t rest on one fictional character they might have read from a novel.
If all fictional characters were removed from books because some objected to their portrayal what would we be left with? The recent events in France come to mind.

Fagin is dangerous? Oh yes simply on the grounds he was depicted as a Jew, a not very convincing picture of a Jew apart from the large nose and a grossly overdone manner of speech.
I was born and brought up in London and knew quite a few of the Jewish faith and never met one who had red hair. Fagin, as I remember, showed no connection to the Jewish faith i.e. he never observed the Sabbath or the Jewish holidays the Pesah
(Passover), Sukkoth (Tabernacles) never ate kosher food and never attended the synagogue etc. Neither did he mention his family which is very strange considering the Jewish connection to family is very strong. Even on the eve of his execution he didn’t call on his god.
In fact the only part that rings true of Fagin was his trade in stolen goods i.e. a Fence because if you were a criminal looking for somewhere to sell your proceeds from a robbery a Fence was the answer and more often or not in the London of the 1830s, the Fence would be a Jew.

So why was Fagin presented in the book as an outcast not only from society and from his own people? In many respects a cartoon facsimile of a real person. It was not that Dickens had scant knowledge of the Jewish population of the East End, he knew far more about them than we could ever know. Interesting.

In your last post you say this--- Fagin is one of Dickens' great characters, and his greatest villain in my opinion. But he is dangerous, too. We need to understand that and to help others understand.

Really? I think we know who the most dangerous person is in Oliver. Who would you be keen to avoid meeting in a dark alley in the East End of the 1830s Fagin or Bill Sykes?
I think most of us understand who we would choose but thanks for your help.

[Pompey Bum]

really?

Yup, really.

[Pompey Bum]

thanks for your help.

Oh you're welcome. Take care!

[kev67]

There was a bit in the second book that slapped me in the face:

When the inmates of the house, attracted by Oliver's cries, hurried to the spot from which they proceeded, they found him, pale and agitated, pointing in the direction of the meadows behind the house, and scarcely able to articulate the words 'The Jew! the Jew!'.

Oliver had had a waking dream that Fagin and Monks had been looking into the window of his room.

imo, it is as well that Dickens responded to Mrs Davis' upbraiding of him, or his reputation would have been more damaged. I wonder how that conversation came to be reported.

[kev67]

I read this in Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor. This was actually said by a Jewish buyer and seller of clothes.

'It is very seldom,' my informant stated, 'very seldom indeed, that a Jew clothes man takes away any of the property of the house he may be called into. I expect there's a good many of 'em,' he continued, for he sometimes spoke of his co-traders as if they were not of his own class, 'is fond of cheating - that is, they won't mind giving 2s. for a thing that's worth 5s. They are fond of money, and will do almost anything to get it. Jews are perhap the most money-loving people in all England. There are certainly some old-clothes men who will buy articles at such a price that they must know them to have been stolen. Their rule, however, is to ask no questions, and to get as cheap an article as possible. A Jew clothes man is seldom or never seen in liquor. They gamble for money, either at their own homes or at public houses. The favourite games are tossing, dominoes, and cards.'

Fagin is a bit more culpable than that obviously. It is not just that he does not ask questions, and he fences more than clothes.