Scott, Walter.  Ivanhoe

     (Originally published in 1819; republished in 1962 by Signet Classic, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson St., New York City, NY  10014).  This review is so long that I am giving it separate billing!  When he became embroiled in financial difficulties, poet Walter Scott set out, in 1814, to write a cash-cow. The result was Waverley, a novel which did not name its author. It was a tale of the "Forty-Five" Jacobite rising in Scotland with its English protagonist Edward Waverley, by his Tory upbringing sympathetic to Jacobitism. The novel met with considerable success. There followed a succession of novels over the next five years, each with a Scottish historical setting. Mindful of his reputation as a poet, he maintained the anonymous habit he had begun with Waverley, always publishing the novels under the name Author of Waverley, and they became known as the "Waverly novels."  Scott's identity as the author of the novels was widely rumored, and in 1815 he accepted the credit.  In 1819 he broke away from writing about Scotland with Ivanhoe, a historical romance set in 12th-century England. It too was a runaway success and, as he did with his first novel, he wrote several more books along the same lines. Among other things, the book is noteworthy for having a very sympathetic Jewish major character, Rebecca, considered by many critics to be the book's real heroine - relevant to the fact that the book was published at a time when the struggle for the Emancipation of the Jews in England was gathering momentum. 

     Wilfred of Ivanhoe is a young Saxon knight of England whose father, Cedrick of Rotherwood, wishes his ward Rowena, of royal Saxon blood, to marry his distant relative, Athelstane of Coningsburgh, also of royal Saxon blood, in an attempt to overthrow the Normans and return the Saxons to the throne of England.  Unfortunately, Wilfred falls in love with Rowena, so he is banished by Cedric and follows King Richard to the Crusades; in return for his support, Richard promises to make him lord of Ivanhoe.  As the book opens, Richard has been held for ransom in Austria, while Wilfred, returning home in disguise as a palmer on a pilgrimage, leads the Templar knight Brian de Bois-Guilbert to his father's house for refuge in a storm.  A Jew named Isaac of York also takes refuge from the storm at Cedric's house.  Wilfred overhears Brian's plans to rob Isaac, so he and the Jew escape.  In payment for this, Isaac helps Wilfred outfit himself for a jousting tournament at Ashby, overseen by Prince John who, in league with various Norman nobles, is trying to steal the throne from his brother Richard.  At the tournament, Wilfred, identifying himself only as "The Disinherited One," defeats Bois-Guilbert and is given the honor of naming the queen of the tournament.  He chooses Rowena, who is in attendance with Cedric and Athelstane.  However, Isaac and his daughter Rebecca are also there, and Bois-Guilbert is smitten with her.  Another of Prince John's supporters, Maurice de Bracy, also wants Rowena.  The next day, in the tournament, Wilfred is wounded and is saved by a mysterious Black Knight who then disappears.  Rebecca is a healer and tends to Wilfred's wounds.  As Isaac and Rebecca, with Wilfred secretly in their litter, meet up with Cedric and his party and start traveling together for safety, the whole group is captured by De Bracy and Bois-Guilbert with their forces disguised as highwaymen and taken to the nearby castle, Torquilstone, of Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, another Norman who has been awarded Wilfred's lands by Prince John.  De Bracy woos Rowena, Bois-Guilbert does likewise with Rebecca, and Front-de-Boeuf threatens to torture Isaac for ransom, while Cedric and Athelstane are imprisoned.  Wamba the jester and Gurth the swineherd, Cedric's servants who escaped capture, join forces with a large gang of an outlaws led by Locksley (Robin Hood), a number of local Saxon peasants who are angered by the oppressions of Front-de-Boeuf, and the Black Knight to besiege the castle.  Front-de-Boeuf is killed and De Bracy surrenders to the Black Knight, who is revealed as King Richard, but Athelstane is thought to be killed and Bois-Guilbert escapes with Rebecca to the Templar Preceptory of  Templestowe.  There Rebecca is tried as a witch and condemned to death, but she demands a champion to defend her.  Bois-Guilbert is chosen as champion of the temple, and at the last minute Ivanhoe comes to be Rebecca's champion.  In the joust, Ivanhoe is unhorsed, but Bois-Guilbert falls down dead.  Richard then arrives to arrest Rebecca's accusers on charges of treason.  Robin Hood follows and becomes a true follower of Richard.  Athelstane, who reappears, renounces his claim to Lady Rowena, who marries Ivanhoe.  Isaac and Rebecca leave England for Spain.

     Our son Mark did four novels for his senior English Literature, and this was the first (followed by A Tale of Two Cities, 1984, and The Screwtape Letters).  Scott is called the father of the historical novel.  That is largely true, but Scott's novels sometimes tended to be a little "light" on the history.  As the accompanying Afterword by Sharon Kay Penman points out, by 1194 the kind of Saxon-Norman antipathy pictured in the book no longer existed, and Richard certainly did not travel around England incognito following his release from captivity.  Yet, there is a great deal of good historical background about medieval England presented in the book.  Ivanhoe is sometimes given credit for helping to increase popular interest in the Middle Ages in nineteenth century Europe and America.  Also, the character that Scott gave to Robin Hood in Ivanhoe helped shape the modern notion of this figure as a cheery noble outlaw.  There is hardly anything objectionable in the book from a moral standpoint--very few instances of what might be considered cursing or taking the Lord's name in vain, and several references to drinking alcoholic beverages.  It is generally said that most readers are disappointed that Ivanhoe does not marry the noble Rebecca, but Rowena is no slouch herself.  Both women are true heroines who refuse to compromise their principles even in some very tough circumstances.  From a literary standpoint, the book is long, but not as complex as later Victorian novels and the story is interestingly told, although there are places where some might wish that things moved along a little more quickly.  All in all, I enjoyed it.  Language level: 2.  Reading level: older teens and up, but could be done with editing as a read aloud for younger children.  Recommendation: GOOD.  Here are Scott's other novels, besides Waverly and Rob Roy (the latter of which I purchased with Ivanhoe and plan to read later) both mentioned above. 

Guy Mannering or The Astrologer (1815)

The Antiquary (1816)

The Black Dwarf (1816)

The Old Mortality (1816)

The Heart of Midlothian (1818)

The Bride of Lammermoor  (1819)

A Legend of Montrose (1819)

The Monastery (1820)

The Abbot (1820)

Kenilworth (1821)

The Pirate (1822)

The Fortunes of Nigel (1822)

Peveril of the Peak (1822)

Quentin Durward (1823)

St. Ronan's Well (1824)

Redgauntlet (1824)

The Betrothed (1825)

The Talisman (1825)

Woodstock (1826)

Chronicles of the Canongate (short stories, 1827)

The Fair Maid of Perth, or St Valentine's Day (1828)

From Gileskirk to Greyfriars (1828)

Anne of Geierstein, or The Maiden of the Mist (1829)

Count Robert of Paris (1832)

Castle Dangerous (1832)

Rickenbacker, William F., editor.  The Twelve-Year Sentence: Radical Views of Compulsory Schooling

     (Published in 1974 by Open Court Publishing Inc.,; republished in 1999 by Fox and Wilkes, 938 Howard St., Ste. 202, San Francisco, CA  94103).  This review is also going to be long because I believe that this book is really great.  The material in the book was originally written as papers presented at a symposium at Milwaukee, WI, in November of 1972 and then first published in book form in 1974.  The book was updated by David Boaz, who was vice-president of the Cato Institute, and republished in 1999 with a new foreword, additional material in the bibliography, and the omission of some technical analysis.  David Boaz sets the stage for the entire book in the Foreword.  “Rereading The Twelve-Year Sentence a quarter-century after it was first published is an interesting experience.  By many measures it would seem that the time is even more ripe to discuss the problems with compulsory schooling.  Not a week goes by without another report on the declining or inadequate quality of the government schools.  Polls show that public dissatisfaction continues to grow.  Even as the schools fail to teach children reading, writing, and arithmetic, they are expanding their warrant into new areas.  Education theorists explain that we can no longer teach morality in the government schools because not all Americans hold the same moral values.  Fair enough.  But this turns out to be mere cover for a very different position: that the schools shouldn’t teach traditional morality, that is, the values of patriotism, free enterprise, sexual restraint, and especially traditional religion.  In fact, today’s schools—especially in large metropolitan areas and university towns—vigorously push such politically charged moral values as anti-business environmentalism, welfare statism, multiculturalism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, “safe sex,” victimology, and faith in big government.  The schools have not in fact become value-neutral, as bad as that would be; they have simply changed the particular morality they seek to impose on impressionable young minds” (p. vii).

     Wow!  No better case could be made for homeschooling!  However, this book is not about homeschooling per se.  The subject is mentioned in the new Foreword, written in 1999.  “An uncertain number of children—perhaps as many as a million—are being educated outside of any formal school, as ‘homeschooling’ has caught the imagination of hundreds of thousands of parents…and 1 percent being homeschooled” (p. ix).  However, the majority of material dates back to 1972, long before the modern homeschool movement began to be noticed (remember, HSLDA was not founded until 1983).  One writer, attorney Gerrit H. Wormhoudt, examines crucial Supreme Court cases about compulsory schooling, many of which later had an important bearing on the fight for the right to homeschool, and another, attorney Robert P. Baker, explores many of those same cases in discussing the limits of educational variety permitted in various locales with special emphasis on the right of parents to educate their offspring at home (yes, there were homeschoolers in those days, but most of them had to stay indoors and keep their window shades drawn!).   Also HSLDA attorney Chris Klicka provided a summary of additional legal cases in the bibliography for the new edition.  Otherwise, this book is primarily about the dangers associated with the whole concept of compulsory schooling and the problems that it has engendered, but the information that it provides is still a homeschooler’s dream.

     Be warned that many of the authors come from a libertarian background.  I do not consider myself a libertarian.  I identify myself as a traditional conservative.  There are some specific aspects of the modern Libertarian Party with which I distinctly disagree, and therefore I cannot support it or its candidates (except in special circumstances, such as one election where the only candidate running against a Democrat for Congress in the district where we lived was a Libertarian).  However, libertarians and traditional conservatives have a lot in common and thus should be able to find many areas in which they can work together.  Libertarian scholars provided a lot of the ideas that fueled the Reagan revolution in the 1980s and also Newt Gingrich’s work in Congress following 1994.  Also, many Republicans and conservatives in government have turned to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, for information.  At the same time, we would not agree with every observation or suggestion made in the book.  The Introduction notes of the authors, “Some come at it with the value sets and presuppositions of the conservative right, others of the anarcho-capitalist or traditional Liberal or New Left positions.”  For example, Dr. Joel Henry Spring, in “Sociological and Political Ruminations” argued, “Equality for women will not take place until this family structure is changed.  The elimination of compulsory schooling and the integration of children and youth into a creative technological society would make possible the liberation of women from the structure of family.  It would also make possible the elimination of marriage.”   I assume that Dr. Spring is one of those “anarcho-capitalists,” liberals, or leftists mentioned.  Yet, even his article had some useful material in it. I had never heard and thus know very little about any of the authors, except economist Murray Rothbard, whose review of the historical origins of compulsory education is very enlightening. 

     I could give numerous quotations from the various articles that I found especially interesting and beneficial but shall refrain from doing so for lack of space and time.  I shall say that Professor E. G. West’s “Economic Analysis, Positive and Normative,” while somewhat arcane, contained many good points.  And just reading through the legal bibliography was like a thrilling review of the important court cases that have been used to defeat anti—homeschooling regulations and win the fight for homeschooling freedoms.  You need to be aware that this book is not written on a “popular” reading level.  The men who produced the papers were all academics and approached the subject from an academic standpoint.  Hence, it is not always easy to read and follow.  However, if you have an “academic” in your family or acquaintanceship who opposes homeschooling, this book should provide sufficient ammunition in the way of historical background, statistics, logical reasoning, and anecdotal evidence to give anyone (at least anyone who is reasonable) cause for seriously questioning the wisdom of compulsory schooling.