'Catching the charms of Jewishness': Identifying (with) the Jew in Reuben Sachs, 'The Duchess and the Jeweller,' and The Years

This study is both a critical analysis of Virginia Woolf's and Amy Levy's texts and a systematic consideration of criticism of those works. The approach is influenced most significantly by Jewish literary studies, but it is also inflected by feminist theory and by questions of biography---how Reuben Sachs by Levy and "The Duchess and the Jeweller" and The Years by Woolf adopt and adapt biographical concerns to fiction. This paper establishes a parallel between Levy's Reuben Sachs and Woolf's Oliver Bacon and demonstrates that Woolf's "Jewish story" follows Levy's model of representing Jewishness, whereby she defends Jewish characters and presents them humorously and sympathetically. For Levy, if a Jewish character is written with tenderness and the writer identifies with her creation then the portrayal may explore traditionally anti-semitic characterizations without succumbing to malice. Just as the slurs and images in Reuben Sachs are intended by Levy to be humorous---an inside joke to her Jewish readership---and a recognizable portrayal of the way non-Jews perceive Jewishness, so "The Duchess and the Jeweller" is Woolf's complex meditation on Jewish identity and her own tender and humorous portrayal of Jewishness. While the study on Jewish identity is a more serious contemplation of the effects of fascism in The Years, many critics have remarked upon some of the same workings that may be observed in "The Duchess and the Jeweller": mainly that Woolf identifies with Jewishness/the Jewish character as outsider, and that the Jewish character is presented as a victim who may be read as sympathetic.