I think it was on Ivanhoe’s Wikipedia entry that I first read something like, “…and many critics in fact consider Rebecca the true heroine of the story.” At first I dismissed it as a meaningless point. But that was months ago, and now I’m going to argue that it is indeed very interesting and it does signify something more important than just a subjective response to a likable character. It hints towards the fact that Ivanhoe is a really good book and is much more than a simple adventure book for kids.
The hero in a Romance – and Ivanhoe’s subtitle is “A Romance”—is the character upon which a society’s ideals are projected (Frye 186). [Note: Like Kenneth Sroka, I’m using Northrop Frye’s descriptions of Romance in his Anatomy of Criticism. See especially the section called “The Mythos of Summer: Romance” in Fry’s third essay in the Anatomy.] If Rebecca is the romantic hero of the story, then it follows that it is her ethical code that is being championed, and not the ethical code of more traditional romantic heroes like Ivanhoe or King Richard.
Your Traditional Romantic Hero
Certainly King Richard’s code, even though it is the code of your traditional romantic hero, is not championed much at all. The narrator tells us his reign is “brilliant, but useless” (458) because Richard is more concerned with winning personal glory in Jerusalem than, you know, governing his country.
Ivanhoe is a little more difficult, because he is a hero; just not for the traditional reasons one might think. First, the narrator does not seem to give a hoot for Ivanhoe’s martial prowess or skill in battle, which Ivanhoe has in abundance. Other characters praise his skill and the glory he won in Jerusalem, and he demonstrates his skills when, disguised as the Disinherited Knight, he wins the tournament at Ashby. Except the narrator facetiously describes the end of the tournament as follows:
Thus ended the memorable field of Ashby-de-la-Zouche, one of the most gallantly contested tournaments of that age; for although only four knights, including one who was smothered by the heat of his armour, had died upon the field, yet upwards of thirty were desperately wounded, four or five of whom never recovered. Several more were disabled for life; and those who escaped best carried the marks of the conflict to the grave with them. Hence it is always mentioned in the old records, as the Gentle and Joyous Passage of Arms of Ashby. (149)
This is the chivalry of the time, where fellow knights, who otherwise have no quarrel with each other, kill each other for sport. There are a bunch of such deflations of chivalry throughout the book, which Joseph Duncan pointed out way back in 1955 (and he’s been cited a bunch of times since then).
But Ivanhoe is still heroic; he’s still the title character, and he is still a pretty likable guy. He’s just not heroic for the reasons we’d think. Frye defines a romantic hero as follows:
If superior in degree to other men and to his environment, the hero is the typical hero of romance, whose actions are marvelous but who is himself identified as a human being. The hero of romance moves in a world in which the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended (33).
What makes most of the heroes in Ivanhoe seem Romantic is their superiority in combat to other humans. Ivanhoe wins the tournament. Robin Hood does his arrow splitting thing. In battle, Ivanhoe’s heroes are like the heroes of Homer’s Iliad, swatting away regular people until they can fight one-on-one with another hero. The ideals associated with this type of martial prowess usually have to do with courage in the face of danger, and this is what often defines the main hero in a traditional romance (think of Gawain trying not to flinch in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight). But in Ivanhoe, virtually every hero and villain in the book has these characteristics. The villains have nothing against a fair fight. They’re evil, but they aren’t cowards.
In Ivanhoe, martial skill isn’t idealized and violence doesn’t solve problems any more than it creates them. It should be noted that at the climax of Ivanhoe’s quest to save Rebecca, he doesn’t defeat Bois-Guilbert with skill in combat—he’s too wounded to stand any chance against the formidable villain. Ivanhoe saves the day simply by showing up, by being willing to sacrifice himself to save a woman he knows to be innocent.
The Alternative to Chivalry and Violence
What separates Ivanhoe from the other knights are his ideals of self-sacrifice, defense of the helpless, domestic practicality and non-violence. Relative to the other knights, Ivanhoe represents balance, practicality and foresight. He is able to embody the best of both Norman and Saxon ideals. He counsels Richard not to muck around so much fighting bandits as a knight errant. All these ideals are, of course, similar to the ideals championed by Rebecca, who favours an ideal grounded in “domestic love, kindly affection, peace and happiness” (Scott 316).
But Rebecca does it even better than Ivanhoe. Recall that she saves his life when he is wounded and helpless before he has a chance to reciprocate. She also helps other Christians who would never return the favour. Even Ivanhoe himself is barely able to see past her religion. I think I might be one of the few people who was glad that Rebecca didn’t end up with Ivanhoe, because she deserves better.
Rebecca rejects an England that isn’t ready for her or her ideals. The ideals championed by most of the characters in Ivanhoe, in twelfth-century England, and in actual medieval romances, are all about chivalry. Historian John Huizinga writes that in the Middle Ages, “chivalry was…the strongest of all the ethical conceptions which dominated the mind and the heart” (Huizinga 47). Ivanhoe is a self-conscious critique of this ideology which is so steeped in unnecessary violence, and Rebecca is the alternative.
Another trope of romances surrounding the romantic hero is their death or isolation evoking an “elegiac mood” that “presents a heroism unspoiled by irony” (Frye 36). Rebecca is the one character who’s heroism is not undermined in some way by the narrator, and it is no coincidence that she is the one character who leaves England. This elegiac mood (think of the deaths of Beowulf, Roland, and Arthur) is about the melancholic sense that, inevitably, a time of darkness must come when the hero has passed on. A time of darkness is exactly what descends upon the world in Ivanhoe after the events of the story, which is made explicit by the narrator. Richard’s more traditional Romantic heroism sheds an “unnecessary and portentous light, which is instantly swallowed up by universal darkness” (458). This is a nod that in the traditional medieval romance, Richard would be the hero whose death we mourn. But the light he shines is “brilliant, but useless,” and we don’t follow his story up until his death. It is Rebecca’s heroism that might be able to prevent darkness, only twelfth-century England and isn’t ready for her.
By the nineteenth century people were finally ready for her ideals, as evidenced by the fact that so many critics were upset by Scott’s treatment of Rebecca and the fact that she didn’t end up with Ivanhoe. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, for example, thought Rebecca’s “foreseen hopeless” made the book a “wretched abortion” and he never finished it. Scott’s critics often considered Ivanhoe a traditional romantic adventure book for kids that praised chivalry and screwed Rebecca over just because she was Jewish. But it is a far more mature and self conscious work.
Stuff I Mentioned:
Coleridge, Samuel T. “Coleridge on the Novels.” Scott: The Critical Heritage. Ed. John O. Hayden. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited, 1970. 178-84. Print.
Duncan, Joseph E. “The Anti-Romantic in “Ivanhoe”" Nineteenth-Century Fiction 9.4 (March, 1955): 293-300. Print.
Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton UP, 2000. Print.
Huizinga, John. The Waning of the Middle Ages. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications,, 1924. Print.
Scott, Walter. “An Essay on Romance.” 1824. Chivalry and Romance. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1892. 127-216. Print.
- – - . Ivanhoe. Ed. Ian Duncan. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Print. Oxford World’s Classics.
A long time ago I came across this Chocolate Chip Oreo Cookie Recipe at Two Peas and Their Pod. The recipe was good, but it was mostly a chocolate chip cookie with a few chunks of Oreos in each cookie (which, indeed, is a perfectly fine idea for a cookie). But I wanted an entire cookie that had a kind of Oreo taste, yet maintained the chewiness of a regular chocolate chip cookie throughout. I find the chunks of hard Oreos (a relatively dry cookie) don’t fit well with an otherwise soft and chewy cookie.
It took me a surprisingly long time to find an oatmeal cookie recipe that I wanted to try (like, 10 minutes on Google). I just wanted plain, thin, and buttery oatmeal cookies. I finally adapted a 
I mentioned in my 
I am more of a blondie man than a brownie man, myself, but my girlfriend likes brownies. So here are some brownies.
Here’s the 
Alternatives to Chivalry and Romantic Heroes in Ivanhoe
The hero in a Romance – and Ivanhoe’s subtitle is “A Romance”—is the character upon which a society’s ideals are projected (Frye 186). [Note: Like Kenneth Sroka, I’m using Northrop Frye’s descriptions of Romance in his Anatomy of Criticism. See especially the section called “The Mythos of Summer: Romance” in Fry’s third essay in the Anatomy.] If Rebecca is the romantic hero of the story, then it follows that it is her ethical code that is being championed, and not the ethical code of more traditional romantic heroes like Ivanhoe or King Richard.
Your Traditional Romantic Hero
Certainly King Richard’s code, even though it is the code of your traditional romantic hero, is not championed much at all. The narrator tells us his reign is “brilliant, but useless” (458) because Richard is more concerned with winning personal glory in Jerusalem than, you know, governing his country.
Ivanhoe is a little more difficult, because he is a hero; just not for the traditional reasons one might think. First, the narrator does not seem to give a hoot for Ivanhoe’s martial prowess or skill in battle, which Ivanhoe has in abundance. Other characters praise his skill and the glory he won in Jerusalem, and he demonstrates his skills when, disguised as the Disinherited Knight, he wins the tournament at Ashby. Except the narrator facetiously describes the end of the tournament as follows:
This is the chivalry of the time, where fellow knights, who otherwise have no quarrel with each other, kill each other for sport. There are a bunch of such deflations of chivalry throughout the book, which Joseph Duncan pointed out way back in 1955 (and he’s been cited a bunch of times since then).
But Ivanhoe is still heroic; he’s still the title character, and he is still a pretty likable guy. He’s just not heroic for the reasons we’d think. Frye defines a romantic hero as follows:
What makes most of the heroes in Ivanhoe seem Romantic is their superiority in combat to other humans. Ivanhoe wins the tournament. Robin Hood does his arrow splitting thing. In battle, Ivanhoe’s heroes are like the heroes of Homer’s Iliad, swatting away regular people until they can fight one-on-one with another hero. The ideals associated with this type of martial prowess usually have to do with courage in the face of danger, and this is what often defines the main hero in a traditional romance (think of Gawain trying not to flinch in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight). But in Ivanhoe, virtually every hero and villain in the book has these characteristics. The villains have nothing against a fair fight. They’re evil, but they aren’t cowards.
In Ivanhoe, martial skill isn’t idealized and violence doesn’t solve problems any more than it creates them. It should be noted that at the climax of Ivanhoe’s quest to save Rebecca, he doesn’t defeat Bois-Guilbert with skill in combat—he’s too wounded to stand any chance against the formidable villain. Ivanhoe saves the day simply by showing up, by being willing to sacrifice himself to save a woman he knows to be innocent.
The Alternative to Chivalry and Violence
What separates Ivanhoe from the other knights are his ideals of self-sacrifice, defense of the helpless, domestic practicality and non-violence. Relative to the other knights, Ivanhoe represents balance, practicality and foresight. He is able to embody the best of both Norman and Saxon ideals. He counsels Richard not to muck around so much fighting bandits as a knight errant. All these ideals are, of course, similar to the ideals championed by Rebecca, who favours an ideal grounded in “domestic love, kindly affection, peace and happiness” (Scott 316).
But Rebecca does it even better than Ivanhoe. Recall that she saves his life when he is wounded and helpless before he has a chance to reciprocate. She also helps other Christians who would never return the favour. Even Ivanhoe himself is barely able to see past her religion. I think I might be one of the few people who was glad that Rebecca didn’t end up with Ivanhoe, because she deserves better.
Rebecca rejects an England that isn’t ready for her or her ideals. The ideals championed by most of the characters in Ivanhoe, in twelfth-century England, and in actual medieval romances, are all about chivalry. Historian John Huizinga writes that in the Middle Ages, “chivalry was…the strongest of all the ethical conceptions which dominated the mind and the heart” (Huizinga 47). Ivanhoe is a self-conscious critique of this ideology which is so steeped in unnecessary violence, and Rebecca is the alternative.
Another trope of romances surrounding the romantic hero is their death or isolation evoking an “elegiac mood” that “presents a heroism unspoiled by irony” (Frye 36). Rebecca is the one character who’s heroism is not undermined in some way by the narrator, and it is no coincidence that she is the one character who leaves England. This elegiac mood (think of the deaths of Beowulf, Roland, and Arthur) is about the melancholic sense that, inevitably, a time of darkness must come when the hero has passed on. A time of darkness is exactly what descends upon the world in Ivanhoe after the events of the story, which is made explicit by the narrator. Richard’s more traditional Romantic heroism sheds an “unnecessary and portentous light, which is instantly swallowed up by universal darkness” (458). This is a nod that in the traditional medieval romance, Richard would be the hero whose death we mourn. But the light he shines is “brilliant, but useless,” and we don’t follow his story up until his death. It is Rebecca’s heroism that might be able to prevent darkness, only twelfth-century England and isn’t ready for her.
By the nineteenth century people were finally ready for her ideals, as evidenced by the fact that so many critics were upset by Scott’s treatment of Rebecca and the fact that she didn’t end up with Ivanhoe. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, for example, thought Rebecca’s “foreseen hopeless” made the book a “wretched abortion” and he never finished it. Scott’s critics often considered Ivanhoe a traditional romantic adventure book for kids that praised chivalry and screwed Rebecca over just because she was Jewish. But it is a far more mature and self conscious work.
Stuff I Mentioned:
Coleridge, Samuel T. “Coleridge on the Novels.” Scott: The Critical Heritage. Ed. John O. Hayden. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited, 1970. 178-84. Print.
Duncan, Joseph E. “The Anti-Romantic in “Ivanhoe”" Nineteenth-Century Fiction 9.4 (March, 1955): 293-300. Print.
Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton UP, 2000. Print.
Huizinga, John. The Waning of the Middle Ages. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications,, 1924. Print.
Scott, Walter. “An Essay on Romance.” 1824. Chivalry and Romance. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1892. 127-216. Print.
- – - . Ivanhoe. Ed. Ian Duncan. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Print. Oxford World’s Classics.