"The Spanish Gypsy" hinges upon the legend of Gypsy kidnapping/child swapping/foundlings, although in this case Fedalma, Gypsy child, is stolen and raised by whites. Fedalma is set to wed a duke when her long-lost father reappears, as a prisoner of the Spanish court, and calls his daughter back to her "rightful" place as the leader of her people. Drama and heartache ensues.
It would not be unfair to call Eliot's poem heavy-handed, as she nearly beats to death the question of nation, identity, and roots. However, the poem offers several points of departure that relate to our discussions this semester. I've included some general questions that occurred to me while reading--feel free to add your own.
1. Based on the "rules" of this text, would Fedalma have been able to marry Silva and become a duchess if she had never seen or known her father? Would her heritage have lain dormant?
2. What role do Jews and/or Judaism play in the text? (For ex: Sephardo) Can we compare this text to Daniel Deronda?
3. Within the poem, do we have any hope that people of different backgrounds can ever mingle? Does Eliot herself believe that mingling can occur?
4. Zarca's great goal for his people is to establish a homeland for them, a place that will be their nation. What do we make of this longing for stability--and do we read it as Eliot's English gaze imposing English values on Gypsy characters?
I don't have more specific questions, but I do have topics that I think we should consider here or discuss in class: the representations of Christianity within the text, the form of the poem, the angels of Memory and Reason.
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ReplyDeleteThanks, Stephanie, for wonderful questions! A quick reply to your second question—the relation between the Jews and the Gypsies. I found this issue interesting, too, especially when considering that Feldama’s fate (not only Zionism-like desire for the land, but also the episode of changeling by a “trivial accident” (106)) takes so much after Moses’ fate. Although Eliot seemingly endows Gypsies a sense of community other than religion, namely, that based on “fidelity”—“O, it is a faith/ Taught by no priest, but by their beating hearts. /Faith to each other: the fidelity/ Of fellow-wonderers in a desert placer” (110)—she constructs Gypsies not as different from those other racial/religious groups. After all, as Zarca himself declares—“Punishing cruel wrong by cruelty/ We copy Christian crime. Vengeance is just” (249)—Gypsies (and their “kindred by the warmth of Eastern blood”) in this poem (or, play?) repeats the “failure” of exclusionist nationalism of the West, nullifying the idyllic utopianism that has long been assigned to Gypsy’s “ahistorical” nomadic life. In this sense, as Stephanie says, this work might be read as “Eliot’s English gaze imposing English values on Gypsy characters,” but also it might be read as a displacement of her pessimism over modern nationalism under the cloak of medieval romance.
ReplyDeleteMemory is crucial to this poem, and also to "Hep!" Because of this memory it seems that her wedding to Silva would have ended up as some permutation of Deronda marrying Gwendolen / Gwendolen's marriage to Grandcourt. Fedalma already feels the call of rebellion against Silva before she marries him, and Zarca tells her, "Lay the young eagle in what nest you will, / The cry and swoop of eagles overhead / Vibrate prophetic in its kindred frame."
ReplyDeleteI have an extremely broad and probably useless question that relates to connecting "The Spanish Gypsy" to Daniel Deronda: What role does fate play in these texts? I think it might be too broad to be productive, but I feel like there are connections between a lot of the issues we discussed in DD (chance, gambling, race, chosenness, etc.) and the notion of fate—being destined to encounter certain situations that reveal a developmental narrative for the characters in question. In TSG, Eliot begins by discussing Christopher Columbus who feels 'chosen' to find a new world. It seems like a thematic signposting for the poem, which, like DD, investigates what we might call 'racial fate' (Fedalma returning to her 'rightful' place, as Stephanie notes, seems related).
ReplyDeleteI couldn’t help but make comparisons with Daniel Derronda. Fedalma is initially deprived of her “national” heritage, but upon its rediscovery looks to establish a homeland. Similar to Derronda’s discover and response to his Jewish heritage. I wondered about this idea of gypsies motivated to find/establish a national place. Emily notes another similarity with Derronda, and I agree with her point. Emily, your reference to memory is intriguing to me because I’ve found it interesting that, from what we’ve read, gypsies themselves have no certainty about their origin/history, a gap in their national memory. On a different note, I wonder about Fedalma and the reversal of the fear/myth of gypsies kidnaping children themselves. How do we read that?
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