Nina Balatka | Page 2

allowed into England by William the Conqueror. For a while they prospered, largely through money-lending, an occupation to which they were restricted. In the 13th century a series of increasingly oppressive laws and taxes reduced the Jewish community to poverty, and the Jews were expelled from England in 1290. They were not allowed to return until 1656, when Oliver Cromwell authorized their entry over the objections of British merchants. Legal protection for the Jews increased gradually; even the "Act for the More Effectual Suppressing of Blasphemy and Profaneness" (1698) recognized the practice of Judaism as legal, but there were probably only a few hundred Jews in the entire country. The British Jewish community grew gradually, and efforts to emancipate the Jews were included in various "Reform Acts" in the first half of the 19th century, although many failed to become law. Gradually Jews were admitted to the bar and other professions. Full citizenship and rights, including the right to sit in Parliament, were granted in 1858--only seven years before Trollope began writing Nina Balatka. By this time wealthy Jewish families were growing in number. This upward mobility and increasing economic and political power no doubt made the British upper classes envious and resentful, fuelling anti-semitism.
Trollope chose to have Nina published anonymously in _Blackwood's Magazine_ for reasons which he described in his autobiography:
From the commencement of my success as a writer . . . I had always felt an injustice in literary affairs which had never afflicted me or even suggested itself to me while I was unsuccessful. It seemed to me that a name once earned carried with it too much favour . . . The injustice which struck me did not consist in that which was withheld from me, but in that which was given to me. I felt that aspirants coming up below me might do work as good as mine, and probably much better work, and yet fail to have it appreciated. In order to test this, I determined to be such an aspirant myself, and to begin a course of novels anonymously, in order that I might see whether I could succeed in obtaining a second identity,--whether as I had made one mark by such literary ability as I possessed, I might succeed in doing so again. [1]
Why did Trollope start his "new" career with a novel whose central theme was a subject of distaste at best--more likely revulsion--to the vast majority of the reading public? Perhaps the nature of the novel itself led him to consider publishing it anonymously, although we know he was not averse to controversial subjects. In his first book, _The Macdermots of Ballycloran_, which he thought had the best plot of all his novels, the principal female character is seduced by a scoundrel and dies giving birth to an illegitimate child.
Certainly Nina was well-suited for the experiment because of it's different setting and subject matter. Perhaps further to disguise his authorship, Trollope wrote Nina in a style of prose that reads almost like a translation from a foreign language.
The experiment did not last long enough to test Trollope's hypothesis. Mr. Hutton, critic for the Spectator, recognized Trollope as the author and so stated in his review. Trollope did not deny the accusation.
One cannot discuss Nina Balatka without addressing the question, was Trollope himself anti-semitic? A careful reading of his works does not provide a clear answer. Jews appear in some of his books and are referred to in others, often as disreputable characters or money-lenders. They are seldom mentioned by his Christian characters with respect, probably realistically reflecting the sentiments of the classes he wrote about. Some of his greatest villains in his later novels--Melmotte in _The Way We Live Now (1875) and Lopez in The Prime Minister_ (1876)--are rumored to be Jewish, but Trollope never unequivocally identifies them as Jewish. Perhaps his Christian characters expect them to be Jewish because they are foreigners and villains.
However, if one ignores the dialogue of his characters, even the descriptive and editorial comments by Trollope himself at first seem anti-semitic. He consistently uses "Jew" as a pejorative adjective instead of "Jewish." His descriptions of the appearance of Jewish characters are usually unflattering and stereotypical. Even Anton Trendellsohn, the hero of Nina Balatka, is described as follows:
To those who know the outward types of his race there could be no doubt that Anton Trendellsohn was a very Jew among Jews. He was certainly a handsome man, not now very young, having reached some year certainly in advance of thirty, and his face was full of intellect. He was slightly made, below the middle height, but was well made in every limb, with small feet and hands, and small ears, and a well-turned neck. He was very dark--dark as a man can be, and yet show