Fantasies of Conversion: The Sensational Jewess in Poe and Hawthorne's America

Abstract

Now it must be borne in mind that the veriest Shylock of her race is not more keenly alive to the value of money than is Rachel. Paris is full of stories illustrative of this. “She is not a Jewess—she's a perfect Jew,” said some one [sic] who wished to give epigrammatic intensity to the expression of the general sentiment. The above quotation from the Republican Quarterly Review is one of many denunciations of the Jewish tragedienne Rachel Felix to appear during her highly publicized American tour in 1855.1 Though audiences flocked to Northeastern theaters to hear Felix's impassioned performances, these denizens of culture were often mocked by critics skeptical of her overtly financial motivations, and scandalized by her alleged sexual promiscuity. The Broadway Belle thus offered a front-page cartoon and short sketch describing an audience made up of “cod-fish aristocrats” and “oyster house critics,” all of whom reflect the ignorantly “profuse liberality of Americans towards foreigners of every grade” (see Figure 1) (“Rachel's”). Similarly, wealthy New York attorney George Templeton Strong writes in his journal that, “George Anthon, who is not susceptible to histrionic impressions, is made captive by the Israelitish woman Rachel”—a description he follows by saying that Rachel's ability to elicit such responses is linked to a disturbing licentiousness. As he puts it, “The moral repute of this Jewish sorceress is certainly low, for though she's so prodigious a lion, she has been asked, I believe, to meet ladies but once, viz., at Trobriand's. People whisper very black things of her” (235–36). For Strong, as for the writer of the RQR piece, Felix threatens American sensibilities, both male and female. Indeed, comparing Felix with popular Swedish singer Jenny Lind, who was brought to America by P. T. Barnum in 1850, the RQR writer states that, “Jenny Lind came to us invested with the charm of certain qualities of heart and character, which the American people universally ascribed to her, and of which Rachel is as universally believed to be destitute” (“Rachel” 156; 159). ...

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