Harrington

by Maria Edgeworth, Susan Manly (Editor)

Harrington (1817) is the personal narrative of a recovering anti-Semite, a young man whose phobia of Jews is instilled in early childhood and who must unlearn his irrational prejudice when he falls in love with the daughter of a Spanish Jew. In this novel, Edgeworth attempts to challenge prejudice and to show how literary representations affect public policy, while at the same time interrogating contemporary understandings of freedom in English society. This Broadview edition includes a critical introduction and a judicious selection of appendices, including correspondence between Edgeworth and Rachel Mordecai Lazarus, excerpts from John Toland’s Letters to Serena and Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews , an excerpt from Isaac D’Israeli’s article on Moses Mendelssohn, and contemporary reviews of the novel.

Genres: Classics, Romance, Fiction, British Literature, Grad School, Historical Fiction, Irish Literature

325 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1817

About the author

Maria Edgeworth was an Anglo-Irish gentry-woman, born in Oxfordshire and later resettling in County Longford. She eventually took over the management of her father's estate in Ireland and dedicated herself to writing novels that encouraged the kind treatment of Irish tenants and the poor by their landlords.

Reviews

[Maria Maniaci · Rating 4 out of 5]

The plot is just hilarious in that there are about seven people living in 1800's London and they all keep running into each other at the most opportune moments. "Help, we're being chased by a mob! Oh, how cool! There's my friends house and we can go in and be saved but also show how wrong we are in our prejudices by providing the world's most convenient contrast."

No, seriously, I mock because I love. And I've yet to read a Romance-era novel with a plot that wasn't total crack. So considering the novel in its context...

Edgeworth, here, is strongly influenced by Wollstonecraft and Vindication on the Rights of Woman. She does a very credible job of playing learned prejudice against Enlightenment ideals, and goes a long way, I think, toward de-mythologizing blood libel, for example, etc. I liked the book. You have to be quick to duck the plot devices raining from the sky, but it's worth the effort if you like writers of Austen's era.

[Lilia Anderson · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book...where to begin. It is, at its core, an apology for racism and xenophobia. The protagonist is rewarded, again and again, for overcoming prejudice in the most minimal way possible. He still retains anti-Semitism, still retains bigotry, and certainly surrounds himself with very racist individuals. Yet, he is granted with a beautiful English-protestant bride by the novel's end.

[Lila · Rating 4 out of 5]

This contextualized and well edited edition contains correspondence between Edgeworth and Rachel Mordecai, who politely held the author to task over her anti-Semitic stereotypes in her previous novels, a correspondence that led to the writing of Harrington. Although this novel, like George Eliot's Daniel Deronda, has characters who are upper class Sephardic Jews, the cover shows an Ashkenazi woman at Ellis Island. However, the placement of the action against the Gordon Riots and a discussion of the Jewish Naturalization Act of 1753 takes the novel into a general discussion of tolerance and learnt racism. It is slow going through the moral instruction (I blame Edgeworth's father), but the portrayal of the Harrington family appears to be based on Edgeworth's sharp observation of overemotional women and stubborn men. Most find the ending, in which we learn that the beloved is actually Protestant, disappointing; however, the fact remains that the love interest does have a Jewish father, thus a Jewish inheritance. She is not adopted, which would have been an easier conclusion.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember liking this book well enough when I read it, but just a few years later, I already can't remember any of the details!

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging and fascinating read from the early 19th century, aiming to combat contemporary anti-Semitism.

Things I enjoyed:
- The attacks on prejudice of all kinds and anti-Semitism in particular
- The consideration and representation given to childhood trauma and the understanding shown given the lack of knowledge at the time
- The fact that the hero went to Cambridge and the villain to Oxford 😂
- The plots and intrigue by the villains
- The Shakespeare references
- The funny Irish orange lady

Caveats:
- Was not expecting the vivid representation of childhood trauma and PTSD, so content warning there
- The ending - without giving spoilers, it was annoying that Harrington's parents were never truly forced to overcome their prejudices, and neither to some extent was Harrington. It felt like a deus ex machina plot contrivance by Egdeworth to make it more palatable to her readership, but that detracted from the book's message.
- I don't think Harrington ever explicitly recognised how awful his actions to Jacob had been or apologised for them, despite them becoming friends...
- Berenice's character wasn't hugely developed, I don't feel like we really got to know her - this is a general criticism of Edgeworth's heroines in books written from the hero's pov
- sexism and classism

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't remember much about the plot of this novel of social improvement and education, but it had some nice lines.

"We must be content to begin at the beginning if we would learn the history of our own minds" (78).

"Those who give a child a witty instead of a rational answer do not know how dearly they often make the poor child pay for their jest" (83).

"When the mind is full of any one subject, that subject seems to recur with extraordinary frequency--it appears to pursue or to meet us at every turn; in every conversation that we hear--in every book we open--in every newspaper we take up, the reigning idea recurs, and then we are surprised and exclaim at those wonderful coincidences" (100).

". . .I am glad to change my identity, like all other mortals or chickens, once in seven years; and I hope you think I have changed for the better" (113).

"The emphasis and enthusiasm with which Macklin spoke pleased me--enthusiastic people are always well pleased with enthusiasm" (117).

"She confessed she could not see what use either of the universities were in this world, except to make bears and bores of young men" (127).

". . .the hundred-times-quoted remark that poets always succeed better in fiction than in truth" (144).

"Could not a man look grave for two minutes without my racking my fancy for two hours to find a cause for it? Perhaps the man had a tooth-ache; possibly the head-ache; byt why should I, therefore, insist upon having the heart-ache?" (176).

[Erin S · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, rounded up. 1817 novella written in response to a reader calling Edgeworth out in a letter for propagating antisemitic attitudes. The plot follows a young gentleman whose early life is steeped in antisemitism, but who renounces that prejudice, befriends several Jewish men, and falls in love with and pursues a beautiful young Jewish lady. Most of the antisemitism depicted is really overt stuff, although at points Edgeworth also acknowledges more casual ways that prejudice is enacted and inculturated. There are also several places where antisemitism is compared to oppression of other religious minorities. As one would expect, the language for referring to Jewish characters is not up to current standards, and some of the handling of the topic leaves a bit to be desired from a modern perspective, but I went in with low hopes on this front and was pleasantly surprised at how well Edgeworth did. My other concern was that the didactic, moral purpose of the novella would make it a dull read, but while it sometimes felt a little one-note, particularly at the beginning, once the hero is grown up and meets the lady, the plot gets moving and it is plenty fun.

[Lulu]

1817 Following an anti-Semitic remark in The Absentee, Edgeworth received a letter from an American Jewish woman named Rachel Mordecai in 1815 complaining about Edgeworth's depiction of Jews. In response, Harrington was written as an apology to the Jewish community. The novel was a fictitious autobiography about overcoming antisemitism and includes one of the first sympathetic Jewish characters in an English novel.

[Mills College Library]

Fiction E23h 2004

[Miles Hill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not by choice.