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Author
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Comment
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(11/2/05 11:17 am)
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Anti-semitism
I was re-reading one of my favorite childhood tales yesterday, Snow White and Rose Red. I hadn't read it since childhood--not really read it, just remembered it--and I was struck for the first time by what seem to me to be really blatant and upsetting overtones of anti-semitism in it. There's a wicked, rude little man. He's short, he hordes gold and precious jewels, and he has an absurdly long beard. When the good little girls cut his beard, he's ridiculously outraged. When angry, he wishes the little girls in Jericho, an Old Testament reference. Eventually the wicked little man is killed and the girls and the bear take his money. I couldn't help but think of Germany a hundred years later, when Nazis were shaving the beards of Orthodox Jewish men and laughing at them--not to mention taking their money.
I remember that Jane Yolen finds Rumplestiltskin to be disturbingly anti-semitic; I see her reasoning and understand her analysis. I find SW and RR more so, though, if only because as a tale it seems unique, while Rumplestiltskin shows up in a variety of forms and the dwarf in question is often named Terrytops or Tom Tip Tot or something equally non-Jewish, and because taking children shows up often enough in fairy tales that it doesn't seem to me to be necessarily a reference to the blood libel. And in the end of the original tale the Grimms' collected, he flies away on a ladel, which strikes me as very Baba Yaga-ish.
So here's my question: has any work been done on SW and RR that discusses such implications?
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catja1
Registered User
(11/3/05 12:56 am)
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Re: Anti-semitism
I think you're really on to something there -- SW and RR is one of my favorites too, and that had never occurred to me. The more I think about it, the more I think you're right. But I'd toss in a couple... not really caveats, but nuances? My first one being that stories collected at the time rarely had any compunction about specifically naming a villain as a Jew -- I'm thinking of "The Jew in the Brambles," but there are certainly others. So, SW and RR may be more a case as "Jew furnishing the TYPE of villain" rather than "Jew AS villain," if that makes sense? It could depend on an individual storyteller of more "delicate" sensibility, as well; as you said, SW and RR isn't all that widespread, so the story didn't really get to acquire non-suggestive variants.
Do you know Carole Silver's book Strange and Secret Peoples? Her thesis is that fairy lore was one of the locations where 19th-century folk worked out their sexual and racial anxieties -- fairies as the feared but seductive Other. Because the way the dwarf behaves in SW and RR isn't out of keeping with general dwarf lore -- dwarves as a rule are short, obsessed with treasure, truculent at best, and get very shirty if you mess with their beards. There are good and heroic dwarves, but even they aren't really the most attractive characters. All this is leading up to: I wonder if there's some kind of connection between dwarf lore and anti-Semitic stereotypes? There's certainly some overlap between anti-Semitic representations of Jews and and negative representations of dwarves.
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DividedSelf
Registered User
(11/3/05 5:30 am)
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Re: Anti-semitism
Just asking, because I don't know...
Couldn't it be the other way round?
I realise that anti-semitism in Europe goes back at least as long as fairy tales, but I suppose what I want to believe is that figures such as the evil dwarf survive in spite of anti-semitic connotations rather than because of them. ("Don't Look Now".)
I just feel if stories survive it's because they have value to a culture, and if they survive long enough it's because they have value across many cultures.
For me, that implies some kind of equation between story survival and a measure of truth... and the same goes for recurring figures. I want to believe that ugly dwarves and such like represent something real, if unpleasant, about our inner fears.
It is offensive - to people with dwarfism, but not inherently (I wouldn't have thought) to Jews. Unless you think this particular race has a monopoly of gnarled and gurning old men. (It doesn't, of course.)
While this is obviously a Jewish stereotype that goes way back, is it not possible that it's a stereotype (lie) hung on an archetype (truth)? i.e. the political/advertising practice of sneaking "what I want you to believe" on the back of "what you already fear/desire"...
I have no idea to what extent the Grimms (or Shakespeare) might have been guilty of this. But my prejudice is that unconscious fears of "the other" in a community were probably imposed on an already existing archetype.
In short, the evil dwarf might not in itself be an anti-semitic image, but one which has been abused to demonise. (Some of that Nazi propagandist drawing is clearly straight out of fairy tale, after all.)
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(11/3/05 8:59 am)
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Re: Anti-semitism
Quote:
I wonder if there's some kind of connection between dwarf lore and anti-Semitic stereotypes?
You know, I've heard this idea before, usually in the context of Wagner's Ring cycle, but since I know so little about the Ring cycle, I can't comment too much. It does seem to me that the usual dwarf character (setting aside the less usual Snow White and the 7) has a great deal in common with anti-semitic stereotypes. I think you're absolutely right--it is a case of "Jew as furnishing type of villain" rather than a straight one-to-one correspondence of "Jew as villain." More like a set of behaviors and attributes understood to be villainous and associated with Jews that then get put on dwarfs. It was just a shock to me upon re-reading--I really liked this tale when I was a little girl, and there's still a lot to like about it.
Divided Self, I don't agree with some of your understandings about why stories survive--or rather, I agree, but don't think such things are always positive. I agree that stories survive because they have value to a culture, but I don't always think that value is a positive thing. Almost all cultures base their identity on not being like some other creature--I think a story can survive because it presents a negative common cultural trope, i.e. let's laugh at the Jew with his silly clothing and beard. And while I don't think that Jews have a monopoly on gnarled old men, that is definitely one of the major anti-semitic stereotypes. Not that I disagree with you--I don't think this analysis precludes a psychoanalytic reading of what it means to fear dwarfs, etc., but I think both things are coming into play here, especially because the Nazis didn't really have to invent their propaganda out of whole cloth. The ideology of the evil, money-hoarding, bearded Jew had been floating around for hundreds of years before that.
When I think of it that way, I suppose it would actually be a bigger surprise if it hadn't informed folklore.
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DividedSelf
Registered User
(11/4/05 5:59 am)
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Re: Anti-semitism
Quote:
I agree that stories survive because they have value to a culture, but I don't always think that value is a positive thing. Almost all cultures base their identity on not being like some other creature--
I wouldn't disagree with that - a lot of mainstream film testifies to the sheer cash value of demonisation of various "others".
I'm not talking with any special historical knowledge but from gut feeling (or there's a less polite intestinal reference)... that what is most valuable in a story is its truth - and that, in the end, is what lasts.
So, up to '89 it was okay to demonise Russians. Now, it's apparently acceptable to demonise Islam. This sort of stuff had or has a clear material value to our culture, but it'll immediately date when the "enemy" changes.
But the stories we're talking about have survived from times when most of the world was behind a shroud, when streets were running with excrement, when science and magic were more or less the same thing and when God was real and threatening. They've survived re-telllings from hovel to salon to royal court, academic study, literary interpretation, bowdlerisation, Disneyfication, picture book simplification and political reassessment across the spectrum.
I suppose if a story transcends its various forms, it begs the question of what the essence of a story is... but (dodging that one) it does suggest a value that transcends the needs of any particular culture.
That's why I feel the figure of the ugly old man (often a money lover) is a universal of some kind and not specifically anti-semitic. It's everywhere in non-semitic contexts from Bosch to Dickens to Sergio Leone.
Similarly, if and when anti-semitism is just a historical footnote, I suspect there will be some form of Rumplestiltskin story and people will still get positive value from it. (There will also probably be people seeking to use it negatively to demonise someone else.)
I don't think we really disagree... I think what you're saying is that many of the retellings of these stories betray an anti-semitic prejudice... I just don't want to throw the stories out with the tellings...
Edited by: DividedSelf at: 11/4/05 6:04 am
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(11/4/05 8:52 am)
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Re: Anti-semitism
My goodness, I would never advocate throwing SW and RR out! What a dreadful thought. As I said, I loved it when I was a kid, and while I can't enjoy it with quite the same, oh, whole-heartedness now that I think it's employing tropes used as excuses to attack a group of people, I still think it's an interesting and valuable tale.
I am also interested in the fact that it seems to be unique--while related to the animal bridegroom tales, it doesn't seem to have correspondences across cultures the way many other tales do. Odd.
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neverossa
Registered User
(11/4/05 10:24 pm)
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Jews and abnormal bodies
That's a great topic!
I've been working on Jews and on the blood libel. The first tale to which I think is The Jew Among Thorns, that's quite horrible... You have the Jew that is let among the thorns, been scratched, in a kind of reversal magic, that spills the blood, from the former blood-stealer.
Many of Rackham goblins have Semitic features, to show their wickedness. I think that the relation between Jews and dwarfs or monsters (in a quite famous map of the world of the 13th century Ebstorf Mappa Mundi, there are the biblical monsters Gog and Magog, at the borders of the known land, drinking blood from human severed limbs, and they have semitic features - they were also called the Red Jews) is previous to the antisemitism . it comes from a particular perception of the body, that can be quite dreadful and so attributed to the chosen scapegoat. According to medieval and early modern thought, Jews had abnormal bodies - they had menstruations, despite of their sex, they suffered of terrible skin diseases, they were distinguished by the stench, the foetor judaicus, they were affected by blindness since birth. And they need Christian blood to cure their several illnesses. The body is the first place of horror - it decays, it brings in itself the path of death - an abnormal or "grotesque body" is something with which people in the past felt very unconfortable... Even the stereotyped witch was quite gruesome, and smelt. Defining the Jew as an abnormal being people of the past placed him in a marginal zone, between life and death. Every real danger was a mortal one. Every abnormality was close to a supernatural state, and therefore a deadly one. It is a long, long discourse and this are just scattered ideas, to which I'm working myself.
Edited by: neverossa at: 11/4/05 10:27 pm
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(11/4/05 11:33 pm)
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Re: Jews and abnormal bodies
That's fascinating stuff--I never knew any of that lore about the Jewish body and Medieval/Renaissance stuff. I wonder if there is a connection with the hypersexuality attributed to Jews in anti-semitic thought pre-WW2 (Jewish women as rapacious and sultry, Jewish men as lusting after pure, innocent gentile women and girls). Is there a similar association between hypersexuality and dwarves? Because as a symbol of sexuality, a Bettelheimian reading of SW and RR might connect the beard-cutting with castration.
I've always wondered about correspondences between anti-semitism and the vampire legend (blood, foreignness, the fear that they walk among us and can't be identified), and I read a very interesting article about vampirism and Irishness some years ago--one of the pieces of support was a cartoon Tenniel drew for Punch featuring Parnell a vampire bat, and then there was Stoker himself.
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Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(11/5/05 6:02 pm)
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Rumplestiltskin
And in the end of the original tale the Grimms' collected, he flies away on a ladel, which strikes me as very Baba Yaga-ish.
-----------------
That's interesting. I looked up some variants of "Name of the Helper", mostly at Ashliman's, and found a variety of helpers who had to be named. One was a tall splendid fairy lady. I don't recall anyone flying away on a ladle tho. Do you have more key words for this one?
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neverossa
Registered User
(11/5/05 6:23 pm)
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Jews, vampires and the dead
Yes, there's a link between Jews and vampires. An Italian academic , Jesi, wrote a book related to the late accusations of ritual murder to the Jews (in the nineteenth century) finding comparisons with the belief in the vampire in south eastern and central Europe. The problem of strangeness is related to the dead - every unknown person is an outsider, and the dead are the scaring outsiders of ever. The ethnic vampire is different from the one of literature - usually the vampire is a dead person that attacks his kinship or that anyway acts inside his community.
About sexuality: witches were also known for their insatiable lust. And the stereotype wants dwarves particularly lustful.
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AliceCEB
Registered User
(11/5/05 7:32 pm)
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Re: Jews, vampires and the dead
Regarding hyper-sexuality--this is a stereotype used in all sorts of circumstances: in the U.S., African-Americans were given this stereotype, as were chinese immigrants in the West. In England, Indians (from the subcontinent) were also subjected to this stereotype. I view it as an excuse by the dominant males to grab women (since "they want it") while having to treat men harshly (since "the'll take what isn't theirs").
My favorite story as a result of this horrid stereotype comes from Charlie Black, a professor of law at Yale who died several years ago. He was a white man from Texas, and worked on the NAACP, Inc. team that brought Brown vs. Board of Education to the Supreme Court back in the early 1950s. As a teenager he was told to beware of that "N, double A, C, P" because, as he explained in his heavy Texan drawl, he was warned that "they have a room, up in New York City. And in that room they have a closet. And at the back of that closet, they have another closet. And when you go into that closet you find a room lined with thousands of keys--every key to every white woman's bedroom in the South!" Charlie would pause. "And that," he would say, "is when I knew I had to join them!" :lol
Best,
Alice
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neverossa
Registered User
(11/5/05 8:13 pm)
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Sexual intercourses with the Devil
Hi Alice!
:rollin funny story!.
mhm - about sex, I think it is a bit more complicated.
If you look back in history, you find that sexual, obscene practices have been attributed to all the various scapegoats. In particular in medieval and early modern Europe (that is the main field for the origin of all the traditional fairy tales'motifs), heretics and, consequently, witches were part of a devilish orgiastic sect, which the main ritual employed the sacrifice of a child (more or less the same of the ritual murder) and sexual intercourses among themselves (the heretics) and with demons (the witches, both female and male). All these people were supposed to attack the comunity, through the principal elements of life, that is its "fluids". Blood, sperm, milk, but also the rain (witches were accused of causing storms); while both Jews and heretics were accused to poison the waters. In a few words they attacked fertility, and they claimed the power of the fluids for themselves. Therefore diabolical copulation is to be understood in terms of sympathetic magic. Witches copulated with the devil and caused impotence among human beings. They spoiled crops, cattle, children. They craved, like the Jews, life's liquid essence. It is always the main opposition death-life that is at work here: the enemy is always the "dried" one, belonging to the ideal realm of death and the victim is the living being, plenty of bodily fluids. Early modern people perceived the bodies quite differently from us: bodies were ruled by the four humours, and blood didn't circulate, but it ebbed and flowed, like a tide. It was a limited source, "a limited good", going to an end with ageing. The circulation of blood was discovered by the English doctor, Harvey only during the 17th century, and then things started slightly to change, having blood has a recycling force, more than a limited one.
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AliceCEB
Registered User
(11/5/05 9:05 pm)
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Re: Sexual intercourses with the Devil
Neverossa, that is really interesting. But how does this historical association with sexuality and the control of life translate into the hypersexuality stereotype that is part and parcel of the racism that is more recent than the 17th century? I can see, from your account, how historical anti-semitism would grab hold of this stereotype, but then it was passed onto groups that don't have the same historical association with European cultures--African slaves, chinese laborers, subjugated Indians. Makes me wonder.
Best,
Alice
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neverossa
Registered User
(11/5/05 9:58 pm)
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Re: Sexual intercourses with the Devil
The context is always a western one and it's quite interesting to see how these not so nice ideas diffused in Europe, increased their proportion once carried in the New Continent. But the matrix is the same. The scapegoat symbolism repeats itself through history, though the beliefs change, and so the settling and the experiences of the people involved. This is an implicit path of difference, danger and pollution that shifts from religion, to illness (the lepers in the medieval times... could be AIDS nowadays? I guess Susan Sontag had something interesting toi say about that), to race.
In the Roman Late Empire Christians were part of a cannibal-orgiastic sect. To the Christians Jews, heretics and witches. To the Christians and Muslims Jews (the ritual murder accusation occurred in Damasco as well during the 19th century). To the first colons in America Indians and then black people. To the western world during the Cold War the comunists (who "ate" children...). And so on... Human beings advance in discoveries and progress, but don't really change too much, I'm afraid.
Edited by: neverossa at: 11/5/05 9:59 pm
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(11/6/05 10:46 pm)
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thanks
I just wanted to thank you, Alice and Neverossa! I followed your conversation with great interest; very, very intelligent and thoughtful.
And Rosemary--I got the info on the ladle from none other than our own Heidi! From the Surlalune annotations to Rumplestiltskin:
"The Grimms changed the ending of the story from the oral tale they originally collected. In the oral version, the manikin flies out a window riding a cooking ladle. The little man's rage was perhaps added and accentuated to make him less sympathetic and more demonic in appearance. "
Edited by: Veronica Schanoes at: 11/6/05 10:49 pm
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