Anti-Semitism in Dorian Gray's Recounts

 When reading Dorian Gray's recount of how he first came to know of Sibyl to Lord Henry, one thing seemed to catch my attention--and retain it for the rest of the chapter, even if it wasn't mentioned as much. It was Dorian’s anti-semitic comments towards the Jewish theatre manager, Isaacs. If it wasn’t enough to call Dorian’s attitude towards Isaacs as Sibyl’s unforgiving captor via contract, Dorian goes so far as to describe him as a “hideous Jew” with “greasy ringlets” and an “enormous diamond” on display on Isaacs’s shirt. Now, it’s no secret that Europe had anti-semitic ideas and perceptions proliferate throughout its various populations; however, something that I’ve noticed personally is that many people, especially Americans, often overlook how deeply embedded such ideas are in European culture.

Perhaps this is because of our limited exposure to European cultures. This makes perfect sense, as we’ve had centuries to develop a unique American culture separate from our European counterparts–if we’re just considering white Americans. In fact, the universal critique I’ve heard last for The Picture of Dorian Gray is not the book’s perpetuation of anti-semitic imagery; all I’ve been exposed to was the outrage sparked by the homosexuality Oscar Wilde implied through his characters’ actions, words, and mannerisms. 

However, the stereotypical image of the Jewish European is one that I’ve been distastefully familiar with for years. As an Albanian-American, these kinds of things are well-known to my family members who grew up knowing that kind of stereotype. Europe has a problem with this kind of representation, and it all but disappeared after World War II. 

Yes, it’s easy to think that this kind of attitude is long gone. After all, who would even think to continue discrimination against such a heavily oppressed group? The truth, though, is that Europe has always had some form of anti-semitism embedded within its culture, whether it be mainstream or fragments of a long-practiced way of hatred. Victorian-era literature is the most obvious representation of this fact. The Picture of Dorian Gray, one of the most famous Victorian novels, provides excellent examples of this embedding, but She, a History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard depicts one of its characters, Ayesha, claiming that Jewish people “would care naught for any God if he came not with pomp and power”.

The Victorian era may be known for its advancements in science, the arts, and self-expression, but let us not be distracted from the horrifying stereotypes it helped perpetuate–not just in Victorian England, but the rest of Europe during this time period as well.