Ivanhoe

Ivanhoe

by

Walter Scott

Rebecca is the daughter of Isaac of York. She is an uncommonly beautiful woman, whose grace and noble bearing impress everyone from noble Ivanhoe to Prince John and King Richard, the putative rulers of England, to the notoriously antisemitic Grand Master of the Templar Order, Lucas de Beaumanoir. She is skilled in the medical arts and tends to everyone from lowly peasants like Higg to yeomen like Locksley and noble knights like Ivanhoe himself. Her beauty draws Prince John’s attention at the tournament and she becomes Ivanhoe’s doctor after he is wounded there; Sir Brian kidnaps her and falls in love with her while he keeps her imprisoned at Torquilstone; the accusation of witchcraft leveled against her by Albert of Malvoisin and Beaumanoir leads to the judicial combat that marks the climax of the third volume. Of all the characters in the book, Rebecca most fully embodies the moral and ethical imperatives of her religion, including charity and kindness, honesty, generosity, faith, and chastity. A lifetime of facing segregation, violence, and abuse have taught her to remain calm and courageous in the face of danger, and she, more than anyone else in the book, has mastery over her emotions. Although she clearly has feelings for Ivanhoe, she relinquishes them as impossible to fulfill. Unlike Ulrica, she prefers to face death rather than dishonor. And she allows herself to be scared by no man, even ones as potentially dangerous as Sir Brian and as cold-hearted as Lucas de Beaumanoir. However, in part to escape her feelings for Ivanhoe and in part to escape the ongoing threat of violence she faces in England, Rebecca ultimately chooses a life of exile in Grenada where she plans to devote herself to the care of the poor and helpless.

Rebecca Quotes in Ivanhoe

The Ivanhoe quotes below are all either spoken by Rebecca or refer to Rebecca. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Merits of Chivalry Theme Icon
).
Dedicatory Epistle Quotes

What I have applied to language, is still more justly applicable to sentiments and manners. The passions, the sources from which these must spring in all their modifications, are generally the same in all ranks and conditions, all countries and ages; and it follows, as a matter of course, that the opinions, habits of thinking, and actions, however influenced by the particular state of society must still, upon the whole, bear a strong resemblance to each other. Our ancestors were not more distinct from us, surely, than Jews are from Christians; they had “eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions;” were “fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer” as ourselves. The tenor, therefore, of their affections and feelings must have borne the same general proportion to our own.

Related Characters: Lawrence Templeton (speaker), Rebecca, Isaac, Reverend Dr. Jonas Dryasdust
Page Number: 10
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 1, Chapter 6 Quotes

[T]here was no race existing on the earth, in the air, or the waters, who were the object of such unintermitting, general, and relentless persecution as the Jews of this period. Upon the slightest and most unreasonable pretences [… or] absurd and groundless [accusations], their persons and property were exposed to every turn of popular fury; for Norman, Saxon, Dane, and Briton, however adverse these races were to each other, contended which should look with greatest detestation upon a people, whom it was accounted a point of religion to hate, to revile, to despise, to plunder, and to persecute. […] It is a well-known story of King John that he confronted a wealthy Jew in one of the royal castles, and daily caused one of his teeth to be torn out, until, when the jaw of the unhappy Israelite was half disfurnished, he consented to pay a large sum, which was the tyrant’s object to extort from him.

Related Characters: Lawrence Templeton (speaker), King Richard (the Black Knight), Rebecca, Wilfred of Ivanhoe (the Palmer, the Disinherited Knight), Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, Isaac
Page Number: 61-62
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 1, Chapter 7 Quotes

The figure of Rebecca might indeed have compared with the proudest beauties of England. […] Her form was exquisitely symmetrical, and was shewn to advantage by a sort of Eastern dress, which she wore according to the fashion of the females of her nation. Her turban of yellow silk suited well the darkness of her complexion. The brilliancy of her eyes, the superb arch of her eyebrows, her well-formed aquiline nose, her teeth as white as pearl and the profusion of her sable tresses[…]—all these constituted a combination of loveliness, which yielded not to the loveliest of the maidens who surrounded her. […] The feather of an ostrich, fastened in her turban by an agraffe set with brilliants, was another distinction of the beautiful Jewess, scoffed and sneered at by the proud dames who sat above her, but secretly envied by those who affected to deride them.

Related Characters: Rebecca, Isaac, Cedric, Athelstane of Coningsburgh, Prince John, Rowena, Ulrica (Dame Urfried)
Page Number: 71-72
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 1, Chapter 10 Quotes

“Ay,” answered Isaac, “but if the tyrant lays hold on them as he did to-day and compels me to smile while he is robbing me—O daughter, disinherited and wandering as we are, the worst evil that befalls our race is, that when we are wronged and plundered, all the world laughs around, and we are compelled to suppress our sense of injury and to smile tamely, when we should revenge bravely.”

“Think not thus of it, my father,” said Rebecca; “we also have advantages. These Gentiles, cruel and oppressive as they are, are in some sort dependent on the dispersed children of Zion, whom they despise and persecute. Without the aid of our wealth, they could neither furnish forth their hosts in war, nor their triumphs in peace; and the gold which we lend them returns with increase to our coffers.”

Related Characters: Rebecca (speaker), Isaac (speaker), Cedric, Wamba, Prince John
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 2, Chapter 7 Quotes

“By the mass, thou meanest the fair Jewess,” said De Bracy.

“And if I do,” said Bois-Guilbert, “who shall gainsay me?”

“No one that I know,” said De Bracy, “unless it be your vow of celibacy, or a check of conscience for an intrigue with a Jewess.”

“For my vow,” said the Templar, “our grand master hath granted me a dispensation. And for my conscience, a man that has slain three hundred Saracens, need not reckon up every little failing[…].”

“Thou knowest best thine own privileges,” said De Bracy. “Yet, I would have sworn thy thought had been more on the old usurer’s money bags […].”

“I can admire both,” answered the Templar; “besides, the old Jew is but half prize. […] I must have something that I can term exclusively my own by this foray of ours, and I have fixed on the lovely Jewess as my peculiar prize.”

Related Characters: Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert (speaker), Maurice de Bracy (speaker), Rebecca, Isaac, Rowena
Page Number: 172-173
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 2, Chapter 15 Quotes

“Glory?” continued Rebecca; “alas, it is the rusted mail which hangs as a hatchment over the champion’s dim and mouldering tomb—is the defaced sculpture of the inscription with which the ignorant monk can hardly read to the inquiring pilgrim—are these sufficient rewards for the sacrifice of every kindly affection, for a life spent miserably that ye make others miserable? Or is there such virtue in the rude rhymes of a wandering bard, that domestic love, kindly affection, peace and happiness are so wildly bartered, to become the hero of these ballads which vagabond minstrels sing to drunken churls over their evening ale?”

[…] “Thou speakest, maiden of thou knowest not what. Thou wouldst quench the pure light of chivalry, which alone distinguishes the noble from the base, the gentle knight from the churl and the savage; which rates our life far, far beneath the pitch of our honor […].”

Related Characters: Rebecca (speaker), Wilfred of Ivanhoe (the Palmer, the Disinherited Knight) (speaker), King Richard (the Black Knight), Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, Cedric, Locksley/Robin Hood (The Yeoman Archer), Maurice de Bracy, Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, Rowena, Cleric of Copmanhurst
Page Number: 249
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 3, Chapter 1 Quotes

At this moment the door of the apartment flew open, and the Templar presented himself […]. “I have found thee,” he said to Rebecca; “thou shalt prove I will keep my word to share weal and woe with thee—There is but one path to safety […] up, and instantly follow me.”

“Alone,” answered Rebecca, “I will not follow thee […]—save my aged father—save this wounded knight.”

“A knight,” answered the Templar […], “a knight […] must encounter his fate […], and who recks how or where a Jew meets with his?”

“Savage warrior,” replied Rebecca, “rather will I perish in the flames than accept safety from thee!”

“Thou shalt not chuse, Rebecca—once didst thou foil me, but never mortal did so twice.”

So saying, he seized on the terrified maiden, who filled the air with her shrieks, and bore her out of the room in his arms […].

Related Characters: Rebecca (speaker), Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert (speaker), Wilfred of Ivanhoe (the Palmer, the Disinherited Knight), Isaac
Page Number: 265-266
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 3, Chapter 3 Quotes

“Nay, beshrew thee, man, up with thee! I am English-born, and love no such eastern prostrations—Kneel to God, and not to a poor sinner like me.”

“Ay, Jew,” said Prior Aymer, “kneel to God, as represented in the servant of his later, and who knoweth, with thy sincere repentance and due gifts to the shrine of Saint Robert, what grace thou mayest acquire for thyself and thy daughter Rebecca? I grieve for the maiden, for she is [beautiful…]. Also Brian de Bois-Guilbert is one with whom I may do much—bethink thee how thou canst deserve my good word with him.”

“Alas! alas!” said the Jew, “on every hand the spoilers arise against me […].”

“And what else should be the lot of an accursed race?” answered the Prior; “for what saith holy writ […]—I will give their women to strangers […] and their treasures to others.”

Related Characters: Isaac (speaker), Locksley/Robin Hood (The Yeoman Archer) (speaker), Prior Aymer (speaker), Rebecca, Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert
Page Number: 288
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 3, Chapter 9 Quotes

“Thus,” said Rebecca, “do men throw on fate the issue of their own wild passions. But I do forgive thee, Bois-Guilbert, though the author of my early death. There are noble things which cross over they powerful mind; but it is the garden of the sluggard, and the weeds have rushed up, and conspired to choak the fair and wholesome blossom.”

“Yet,” said the Templar, “I am, Rebecca, as thou hast spoken me, untaught, untamed—and proud, that, amidst a shoal of empty fools and crafty bigots, I have retained the pre-eminent fortitude that places me above them. I have been a child of battle from youth upward, high in my views, steady and inflexible in pursuing them. Such must I remain—proud, inflexible, and unchanging; and of this the world shall have proof.—But thou forgivest me, Rebecca?”

“As freely as ever victim forgave her executioner.”

Related Characters: Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert (speaker), Rebecca
Page Number: 345
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 3, Chapter 13 Quotes

It was a scene of bustle and life, as if the whole vicinage had poured forth its inhabitants to a village wake, or rural feast. But the evident desire to look on blood and death, is not peculiar to these dark ages; though in the gladiatorial exercise of single combat and general tourney, they were habituated to the blood spectacle of brave men falling by each other’s hands. Even in our own days, when morals are better understood, an execution, a bruising match between two professors, a riot, or a meeting of radical reformers, collects at considerable hazard to themselves an immense crowd of spectators, otherwise little interested, excepting to see how matters are to be conducted, and whether the heroes of the day are, in the heroic language of insurgent tailors, flints or dunghills.

Related Characters: Lawrence Templeton (speaker), King Richard (the Black Knight), Rebecca, Lucas de Beaumanoir
Page Number: 382
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Ivanhoe LitChart as a printable PDF.
Ivanhoe PDF

Rebecca Quotes in Ivanhoe

The Ivanhoe quotes below are all either spoken by Rebecca or refer to Rebecca. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Merits of Chivalry Theme Icon
).
Dedicatory Epistle Quotes

What I have applied to language, is still more justly applicable to sentiments and manners. The passions, the sources from which these must spring in all their modifications, are generally the same in all ranks and conditions, all countries and ages; and it follows, as a matter of course, that the opinions, habits of thinking, and actions, however influenced by the particular state of society must still, upon the whole, bear a strong resemblance to each other. Our ancestors were not more distinct from us, surely, than Jews are from Christians; they had “eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions;” were “fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer” as ourselves. The tenor, therefore, of their affections and feelings must have borne the same general proportion to our own.

Related Characters: Lawrence Templeton (speaker), Rebecca, Isaac, Reverend Dr. Jonas Dryasdust
Page Number: 10
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 1, Chapter 6 Quotes

[T]here was no race existing on the earth, in the air, or the waters, who were the object of such unintermitting, general, and relentless persecution as the Jews of this period. Upon the slightest and most unreasonable pretences [… or] absurd and groundless [accusations], their persons and property were exposed to every turn of popular fury; for Norman, Saxon, Dane, and Briton, however adverse these races were to each other, contended which should look with greatest detestation upon a people, whom it was accounted a point of religion to hate, to revile, to despise, to plunder, and to persecute. […] It is a well-known story of King John that he confronted a wealthy Jew in one of the royal castles, and daily caused one of his teeth to be torn out, until, when the jaw of the unhappy Israelite was half disfurnished, he consented to pay a large sum, which was the tyrant’s object to extort from him.

Related Characters: Lawrence Templeton (speaker), King Richard (the Black Knight), Rebecca, Wilfred of Ivanhoe (the Palmer, the Disinherited Knight), Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, Isaac
Page Number: 61-62
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 1, Chapter 7 Quotes

The figure of Rebecca might indeed have compared with the proudest beauties of England. […] Her form was exquisitely symmetrical, and was shewn to advantage by a sort of Eastern dress, which she wore according to the fashion of the females of her nation. Her turban of yellow silk suited well the darkness of her complexion. The brilliancy of her eyes, the superb arch of her eyebrows, her well-formed aquiline nose, her teeth as white as pearl and the profusion of her sable tresses[…]—all these constituted a combination of loveliness, which yielded not to the loveliest of the maidens who surrounded her. […] The feather of an ostrich, fastened in her turban by an agraffe set with brilliants, was another distinction of the beautiful Jewess, scoffed and sneered at by the proud dames who sat above her, but secretly envied by those who affected to deride them.

Related Characters: Rebecca, Isaac, Cedric, Athelstane of Coningsburgh, Prince John, Rowena, Ulrica (Dame Urfried)
Page Number: 71-72
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 1, Chapter 10 Quotes

“Ay,” answered Isaac, “but if the tyrant lays hold on them as he did to-day and compels me to smile while he is robbing me—O daughter, disinherited and wandering as we are, the worst evil that befalls our race is, that when we are wronged and plundered, all the world laughs around, and we are compelled to suppress our sense of injury and to smile tamely, when we should revenge bravely.”

“Think not thus of it, my father,” said Rebecca; “we also have advantages. These Gentiles, cruel and oppressive as they are, are in some sort dependent on the dispersed children of Zion, whom they despise and persecute. Without the aid of our wealth, they could neither furnish forth their hosts in war, nor their triumphs in peace; and the gold which we lend them returns with increase to our coffers.”

Related Characters: Rebecca (speaker), Isaac (speaker), Cedric, Wamba, Prince John
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 2, Chapter 7 Quotes

“By the mass, thou meanest the fair Jewess,” said De Bracy.

“And if I do,” said Bois-Guilbert, “who shall gainsay me?”

“No one that I know,” said De Bracy, “unless it be your vow of celibacy, or a check of conscience for an intrigue with a Jewess.”

“For my vow,” said the Templar, “our grand master hath granted me a dispensation. And for my conscience, a man that has slain three hundred Saracens, need not reckon up every little failing[…].”

“Thou knowest best thine own privileges,” said De Bracy. “Yet, I would have sworn thy thought had been more on the old usurer’s money bags […].”

“I can admire both,” answered the Templar; “besides, the old Jew is but half prize. […] I must have something that I can term exclusively my own by this foray of ours, and I have fixed on the lovely Jewess as my peculiar prize.”

Related Characters: Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert (speaker), Maurice de Bracy (speaker), Rebecca, Isaac, Rowena
Page Number: 172-173
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 2, Chapter 15 Quotes

“Glory?” continued Rebecca; “alas, it is the rusted mail which hangs as a hatchment over the champion’s dim and mouldering tomb—is the defaced sculpture of the inscription with which the ignorant monk can hardly read to the inquiring pilgrim—are these sufficient rewards for the sacrifice of every kindly affection, for a life spent miserably that ye make others miserable? Or is there such virtue in the rude rhymes of a wandering bard, that domestic love, kindly affection, peace and happiness are so wildly bartered, to become the hero of these ballads which vagabond minstrels sing to drunken churls over their evening ale?”

[…] “Thou speakest, maiden of thou knowest not what. Thou wouldst quench the pure light of chivalry, which alone distinguishes the noble from the base, the gentle knight from the churl and the savage; which rates our life far, far beneath the pitch of our honor […].”

Related Characters: Rebecca (speaker), Wilfred of Ivanhoe (the Palmer, the Disinherited Knight) (speaker), King Richard (the Black Knight), Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, Cedric, Locksley/Robin Hood (The Yeoman Archer), Maurice de Bracy, Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, Rowena, Cleric of Copmanhurst
Page Number: 249
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 3, Chapter 1 Quotes

At this moment the door of the apartment flew open, and the Templar presented himself […]. “I have found thee,” he said to Rebecca; “thou shalt prove I will keep my word to share weal and woe with thee—There is but one path to safety […] up, and instantly follow me.”

“Alone,” answered Rebecca, “I will not follow thee […]—save my aged father—save this wounded knight.”

“A knight,” answered the Templar […], “a knight […] must encounter his fate […], and who recks how or where a Jew meets with his?”

“Savage warrior,” replied Rebecca, “rather will I perish in the flames than accept safety from thee!”

“Thou shalt not chuse, Rebecca—once didst thou foil me, but never mortal did so twice.”

So saying, he seized on the terrified maiden, who filled the air with her shrieks, and bore her out of the room in his arms […].

Related Characters: Rebecca (speaker), Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert (speaker), Wilfred of Ivanhoe (the Palmer, the Disinherited Knight), Isaac
Page Number: 265-266
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 3, Chapter 3 Quotes

“Nay, beshrew thee, man, up with thee! I am English-born, and love no such eastern prostrations—Kneel to God, and not to a poor sinner like me.”

“Ay, Jew,” said Prior Aymer, “kneel to God, as represented in the servant of his later, and who knoweth, with thy sincere repentance and due gifts to the shrine of Saint Robert, what grace thou mayest acquire for thyself and thy daughter Rebecca? I grieve for the maiden, for she is [beautiful…]. Also Brian de Bois-Guilbert is one with whom I may do much—bethink thee how thou canst deserve my good word with him.”

“Alas! alas!” said the Jew, “on every hand the spoilers arise against me […].”

“And what else should be the lot of an accursed race?” answered the Prior; “for what saith holy writ […]—I will give their women to strangers […] and their treasures to others.”

Related Characters: Isaac (speaker), Locksley/Robin Hood (The Yeoman Archer) (speaker), Prior Aymer (speaker), Rebecca, Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert
Page Number: 288
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 3, Chapter 9 Quotes

“Thus,” said Rebecca, “do men throw on fate the issue of their own wild passions. But I do forgive thee, Bois-Guilbert, though the author of my early death. There are noble things which cross over they powerful mind; but it is the garden of the sluggard, and the weeds have rushed up, and conspired to choak the fair and wholesome blossom.”

“Yet,” said the Templar, “I am, Rebecca, as thou hast spoken me, untaught, untamed—and proud, that, amidst a shoal of empty fools and crafty bigots, I have retained the pre-eminent fortitude that places me above them. I have been a child of battle from youth upward, high in my views, steady and inflexible in pursuing them. Such must I remain—proud, inflexible, and unchanging; and of this the world shall have proof.—But thou forgivest me, Rebecca?”

“As freely as ever victim forgave her executioner.”

Related Characters: Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert (speaker), Rebecca
Page Number: 345
Explanation and Analysis:
Volume 3, Chapter 13 Quotes

It was a scene of bustle and life, as if the whole vicinage had poured forth its inhabitants to a village wake, or rural feast. But the evident desire to look on blood and death, is not peculiar to these dark ages; though in the gladiatorial exercise of single combat and general tourney, they were habituated to the blood spectacle of brave men falling by each other’s hands. Even in our own days, when morals are better understood, an execution, a bruising match between two professors, a riot, or a meeting of radical reformers, collects at considerable hazard to themselves an immense crowd of spectators, otherwise little interested, excepting to see how matters are to be conducted, and whether the heroes of the day are, in the heroic language of insurgent tailors, flints or dunghills.

Related Characters: Lawrence Templeton (speaker), King Richard (the Black Knight), Rebecca, Lucas de Beaumanoir
Page Number: 382
Explanation and Analysis: