Melindam's Reviews > Ivanhoe

Narration by David Rintoul: 5 stars

Story by Walter Scott: 3 stars-ish



Had so many conflicting feelings while re-reading this book after more than 30 years. And even after considering this carefully, I am still confused and would really like to be able to pick Scott's mind while he was writing this.

As a modern reader, I could say that this is a mixture of The Merchant of Venice, A Game of Thrones (without the dragons, the sex and the gore, lol, but nevertheless there is the struggle for power) and the movie A Knight's Tale and Robin Hood (the Errol Flynn version).

It is also an example of (non too accurate) historical fiction: Scott presents us a pastiche of some historical facts, lots of folklore and myth. Putting it into historical context: the novel was published in 1819, depicting the long gone period of 12th century England under the rule of Richard Lionheart viewed through the pink lens of romanticism.
I guess there were certainly some ideas and messages he intended to pass on to his contemporary readers (maybe along the line of "conciliation is better than fighting") and wanted them to draw some parallels between the "then" and the "now" for sure.

My biggest problem was with the eponymous hero, (Wilfred) Ivanhoe.

He is an archetype of the knight in shining armour. Scott hung lots of literary attributes on him (courage, nobility, honesty, courtesy, etc), but nothing that would make him stand closer to the reader – he is hardly ever present in the book and when he is, he is distant and inhuman.
He is either fighting with his identity, face, thoughts/feelings utterly hidden behind his armour or lying injured.
He hardly utters any sentences and those only in the last third of the book. He has two miniscule scenes with his beloved (?) Rowena, but actually they do not exchange a single sentence between them (at least not when Ivanhoe is openly himself vs disguised as some monk), which may be the oddest thing I ever came across in a book.

The dubious honour of actually talking to Wilfred goes to the unsung, Jewess heroine of the book, the awesome Rebecca, but to what avail? In the anti-Semitic fashion of the 1200s (the question is: is it only from the 1200s or also from the 1800s?) what she gets from Ivanhoe is patronising. (view spoiler)[ In a way I am glad she does not get together with him: she would deserve so, so much better! but obviously and Scott is very clear about it: only young, good looking, white Christian knights are worthy to be considered. As a Jewess, Rebecca is obviously not deserving, no matter her personal qualities. And herein lies the great hypocrisy of the author! (hide spoiler)]

For all I know WS may have come out as the preacher of religious tolerance with this novel. Very hard to decide. Making Rebecca the shining star of the whole Medieval circus stands in favour of this. Scott also does not hesitate to show the difference between bad Christians (the Templars and the Norman knights) and the good ones (King R, Ivanhoe, Cedric and the Saxons). Maybe he wanted his audience to draw parallels (in Scotland at least) between the Scottish and the English people. The Jacobite uprising was not far away when he wrote the novel.
On the other hand there is Isac of York, representing all the repulsive clichés medieval Christian society attributed to Jews, but possibly WS and his contemporaries did so as well. The sanctimonious behaviour of the “good Christians” is also there: they are feeling repulsed and behave condescendingly to Jews.
It is all assumptions on my part, but either this was the accepted norm in WS’s time and he thought he was historically accurate or he was afraid to show more support.

Another issue for me was that all the good characters were passive and it was the baddies who took action.
Secondary characters were much more interesting than the supposed main ones.

So, here I am right now. This is not a very coherent or logical review, rather a collection of my thoughts and feelings as I was reading the novel.