Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Ivanhoe, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Merits of Chivalry
Disguise and Discovery
Inheritance and Displacement
The Vulnerability and Power of Women
History vs. Romance
Summary
Analysis
Meanwhile, Rebecca awaits her fate in an isolated turret room occupied by a wrinkled old crone called Dame Urfried. Muttering darkly that no one will hear her screams from this remote room, Urfried regards the beautiful young Rebecca and her foreign mode of dress, then demands to know if she’s an Egyptian or Saracen. Rebecca answers in English, but her accent or her words reveal her Jewishness. Urfried tells Rebecca to expect little mercy, if any, from Front-de-Boeuf. Before leaving Rebecca alone, Urfried describes her own experiences of Norman “courtesy”: theft, murder, and rape.
Rebecca’s experience in the tower will parallel Isaac’s. But, like her father before her, she faces not just more extreme but more likely physical danger, since her identity as a Jewish Englishwoman leaves her triply vulnerable: as a woman, as a subject of Norman rule, and as a Jewish person. To drive home the reality of this violence, Dame Urfried describes her own history with the Normans, who take what they want from their subjects without kindness, chivalry, or nobility.
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Rebecca knows that she faces more danger than Rowena, since she doesn’t share her captors’ religion. But possessing a stronger character than her Saxon counterpart, she faces her fate with more equanimity. She carefully inspects the room to look for a means of escape. Finding none, she summons up the courage to face the expected danger. Still, she blanches when she hears someone ascending the stairs.
Despite the dangers and difficulties she faces, Rebecca possess true strength of character. She has greater reserves of courage and conviction than her father and almost everyone else in this world; the only others who come close to matching her fortitude are Ivanhoe and King Richard. It’s in her captivity that the book begins to allow her space to develop as a character, and she both demonstrates the true power of a virtuous and courageous woman and provides the book’s moral center from this point on.
Themes
A tall man enters the room, still dressed as a bandit. He stands silently, apparently unsure of what to say, as Rebecca offers her jewelry in exchange for her freedom and Isaac’s. The masked man replies that he values beauty over wealth and her eyes sparkle brighter than the diamonds she offers him. Then, abruptly switching from Saxon to Norman, he adds that he will accept only her “love and beauty” as ransom. Realizing her captor is a Norman, Rebecca demands his name; Sir Brian removes his mask.
Rebecca naturally assumes that, just like Front-de-Boeuf looks at her father as an excellent ransom opportunity, her captor wants her riches. But in terms far less stylized and more sincere than de Bracy offered Rowena, Sir Brian seems to confess a very genuine attraction to Rebecca. This suggests the dangerous power her beauty wields over men—power which exposes her to sexual violence.
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Sir Brian tells Rebecca that, far from taking her jewelry, he longs to “hang [her] arms and neck with pearls and diamonds.” But he does not offer marriage, both because the law forbids the union of Christians and Jews and because his vows of chastity as a Templar prevent it. Marriage represents an “enduring crime” against those vows, but he expects easy absolution for the “lesser folly” of keeping a mistress. Besides, he maintains, his service to God in the Templar Order has earned him a few free sins. Rebecca criticizes him sharply for his self-serving twisting of scripture to justify his actions. He retorts that he will accept no dissent from his captive. She promises to tell the world if he rapes her, and he replies that she can only do that if she escapes the castle.
Templar Knights took monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience; they were knights and monks at the same time. Sir Brian’s disordered and unexpected feelings for Rebecca point toward the general corruption of the Norman nobles (and the elements of the Crusader Army that had become more interested in worldly power and wealth than their supposedly divine mission to claim and preserve the so-called Holy Land for Christianity). Prior Aymer shares this disorder in his actions, too. Moreover, his inability to practice self-control suggests that he cannot fully embody the chivalric virtues his society values. When Sir Brian threatens violence should Rebecca refuse him, he leans on the traditional playbook of the invading Norman ruling class, which has controlled its Saxon subjects with violence and coercion for decades.
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Sir Brian stalks towards Rebecca. She throws open the window and leaps to the sill, prepared to throw herself from the tower rather than suffer rape at his hands. Sir Brian pauses, moved more by her courage than he was by her distress. He promises by the only thing he values—his own word—not to harm her. She descends but remains near the window, content to trust the peace between them only if he keeps his distance. Somewhat cowed, Brian explains that he wasn’t naturally hard-hearted towards women; he only learned to be after one broke his heart. Then he joined the Templars, trading the “dearest rights of humanity”—a wife and children—for power.
Although both Rowena and Rebecca successfully thwart the advances of their admirers, the book allows Rebecca to do so in a much more assertive way and makes no reference to her “feminine weakness”; it thus places her as an admirable example for all to follow. And Rebecca’s courage and fortitude contribute to the book’s arguments in favor of chivalry as a value system, since she is just as stalwart and brave as other paragons of chivalric virtue, like the Black Knight and Ivanhoe. In contrast, Sir Brian betrays the shallowness of his value system when the only thing he can swear to is his own word—not to the God or the Order or the chivalric value system he allegedly represents. His weakness of will fails to make a convincing argument for chivalry, as does his thirst for power and his blaming others for his own character flaws.
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Indeed, Sir Brian explains to Rebecca, the Templar Order offers a perfect arena for a man like himself to exercise his ambition; it has more wealth and power than any European monarch. In the “proud and powerful soul” of Rebecca, Sir Brian feels he’s found a partner worthy of himself. But before he can fully explain how the Templars have insinuated themselves into positions of power, he and Rebecca hear the commotion at the gates, and he goes to investigate.
Sir Brian’s confession provides an example of the book’s occasional historical anachronisms; although secrecy, great wealth, and political ambition became the foundational charges against the Order when it was dissolved in the early 14th century (and have been the basis of countless conspiracy theories about the Templars well into the 21st century), little historical fact supports them. More importantly for the book and its claims, Sir Brian’s ambitions belie the organizing principles of chivalric virtue, point toward the Normans’ hunger for power and domination, and provide the basis for his feelings for Rebecca. In her courage and steadfast commitment to her beliefs, he sees a natural partner for his aggressive and avowedly ambitious plans.
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