Language:
English
Year of publication:
1996
Titel der Quelle:
Art Journal
Angaben zur Quelle:
55,2 (1996) 55-64
Keywords:
Bernhardt, Sarah,
;
Bournand, François; Viau, Raphael.
;
Antisemitism History 1800-2000
;
Jewish women in literature
Abstract:
Examines this subject with reference to François Bournand and Raphael Viau's antisemitic book "Les femmes d'Israël" (1898). Bernard and Viau were prominent members of a journalistic clique clustered around Édouard Drumont. Their book was very popular and went into a second printing soon after its publication. It begins with reverential homage to the Jewess and ends with her vilification. It describes the misogyny in Jewish law and ritual, the devaluation of women in the Bible, and the consequences of this degradation: the treacherous contemporary Jewess. The controversy over Jewish assimilation in France was manifested in antisemitic rhetoric attacking males and females, in the latter case including stereotypes used for centuries to denigrate Jewish males. Bournand and Viau attacked Sarah Bernhardt because she epitomized the perils of assimilation - she was the daughter of a Jewish mother and a Catholic father, baptized and educated in a convent, but retaining her Jewish identity. Concludes that rather than concretizing the embodiment of a dangerous type, Bournand and Viau inadvertently documented Bernhardt's successful evasion of efforts like theirs to fix her essential identity.
Note:
With reference to François Bournand and Raphael Viau's "Les Femmes d'Israël" (1898).
URL:
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