The devil is always at work. Or at least in Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Nobel Prize winning novel The Slave, the Polish Jews of the seventeenth century believed this. Jacob, a pious Jewish slave who falls in love with a non-Jewish gentile girl by the name of Wanda, struggles with this belief throughout the book. After being ransomed out of Wanda’s village by other Jews living in the entirely Jewish community of Josefov in Poland, Jacob finds himself wandering back to the village for days to take Wanda away. Throughout his journey as well as the trials of Jacob and Wanda during her pregnancy, the birth of their son Benjamin, and Wanda’s death bringing him into the world, Jacob struggles with the forces of human nature. He believes them to be the work of Satan. This perceived direct connection between the devil’s tinkering and the desires of human nature place women in an inferior societal role stimulated further by the faith in the stories of the Old Testament.
At the core of the drive of human nature is the goal to procreate for the sake of survival. Women play a key role in the natural cycle of reproduction, being the object of men’s affection and the bearers of lust’s result. Yet the strict guidelines of Jewish law complicate and forcibly redirect men’s urges into the socially acceptable confines of what is supposedly pious. Jacob’s love for a non-Jewish woman sparks the conflict between his urges and his beliefs, developing a perceived role of the devil in Jacob’s desires. After Wanda deliriously exposes her secret that she is not actually a deaf and dumb Jew named Sarah while giving birth, a lie she had to keep to be married and live with Jacob in Josefov, she dies. Jacob, realizing he will be excommunicated and in overwhelming grief over the loss of his wife thinks, “Rather than troubling himself to induce a Jew to eat pork or kindle a fire on the Sabbath, Satan did easier and more important work, advocating those sins deeply rooted in human nature.” (Singer 247). But Jacob is not simply convinced that his desire for Wanda is the work of the devil. He sees parallels to his namesake, Jacob in the Old Testament. Like this Jacob, he loses his wife in childbirth and his newborn son survives. He names his son Benjamin as does the biblical Jacob. Jacob is portrayed as being much more biblically knowledgeable than his fellow Jews, further complicating his understanding of both God’s and Satan’s roles in his life. Yet aside from Jacob’s conflicting opinions, the relating of women to the devil still pervades the rest of the culture and is emphasized throughout the novel.
As the end goal of Satan’s lusty persuasion, women appear to be in collusion with evil, creating a mysterious and seemingly sinister existence of the feminine as perceived by ‘pious’ men. This connection between women and Satan is directly connected back to humanity’s Original Sin. The narrator’s description of the crowded room where Sarah is giving birth alludes to this connection. “There was silence and everyone listened to Sarah’s groans. Men bowed their heads; women covered their faces as if ashamed of Eve’s curse.” (Singer 229). The Reference to “Eve’s curse” is describing God’s punishment after Eve says to God, “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” (Genesis 3:13) God replies booming, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” (Genesis 3:16). Not only does this reference directly relate Original Sin to Wanda’s desperate situation, but the identity of the serpent in Genesis also emphasizes the sexual nature of women. Eve is beguiled by a serpent and punished with bearing children. The serpent’s phallic nature creates a direct reference to the sins of sex. This metaphor compounds sin and shapes the identity of women in traditional Jewish society.
Other descriptions of women as promiscuous pawns of the devil arise out of The Slave as well. Lady Pilitzky, the wife of a local Christian tyrant ruling over the Jewish town of Josefov, embodies a Jewish man’s betrayal to God, and the classic female sinner. Not only is she a Christian, a woman existing outside the bounds of purity, but from adultery to sodomy, Lady Pilitzky breaks every rule of the Torah. While speaking to Jacob when her husband is not around she even flirts with Jacob, the embodiment of temptation. “Lady Pilitzky smiled. ‘Ah, the Swedes are angels? No, Jacob, all men are alike. Frankly, I don’t blame them. Women have only one use for them. A child must nurse and doesn’t care if the breast belongs to a peasant or a princess. Men are like children.’ Demureness and coquetry met in Lady Pilitzky’s smile.” (Singer 188) Her words highlight the inferiority of women to men as well as the child-like nature of man’s lust. She describes a sexual correlation between the relationship of a son and his mother and the relationship of a man and his lover. By saying that “men are like children” while at the same time recognizing the superiority of men to women, the statement suggests that women are not inferior to men in simply a grounded societal sense, but rather in a spiritual sense. In more worldly terms, Lady Pilitzky’s statement highlights the power of women to be the ultimate desire of men throughout life from boyhood to manhood. Yet women are spiritually inferior because they are tainted by evil. This tarnishing comes both from Eve’s act of Original Sin as well as the association of women as sexual objects of temptation for men.
The manifestation of women’s relationships with evil is directly related with the assumptions and structures of a patriarchal culture. The historical origin of the Jewish faith from which the Torah was created was patriarchal, spawning descendents like the Canaanites and other regionally located cultures of the Fertile Crescent more than 5000 years ago, likely all of which have been consistently patriarchal as well. The dichotomy of the innate power of femininity and the inferiority of women in society would have created a major struggle for the male psyche in such a culture. A story like the Original Sin in Genesis is a perfect example of a cultural attempt at explanation for this dichotomy at the time. By telling a story about the creation of the human race and including the disobedience of specifically the first woman to be the first sin of mankind, the myth creates a reason for male superiority. God’s punishment upon Eve also creates an explanation for why women possess the most important role in humanity, bearing children to continue the survival of the human race. The creation of a human being inside of a woman is a God-like power innate in only femininity. By reshaping this power into a punishment through the story of Original Sin, this remarkable ability is discredited. By categorizing lust and desire as a sin, the power of women to sexually captivate men is also diminished. Man’s frequent inability to understand the mind of a woman only encourages a sexist mindset, for human beings tend to fear that which they do not understand. Fearing women gives women more power, but in the way that fearing the devil gives the devil more power. By attributing women to sin, the power of femininity is both explained and destroyed.
Isaac Singer’s novel The Slave combats this psychological debacle through Jacob’s character. Jacob’s extensive knowledge of the Jewish faith and his own piety allow him to seemingly transcend the dogmas of his own religion. This appears to be a contradiction, but it is Jacob’s understanding and acceptance of the true power of femininity represented in the novel that destroys the stigma of female inferiority. The feminine and a romanticized natural environment are connected by the innate fertility in both. “He was solitary here as the original Adam, with no sign anywhere of man and his works. The birds silent, only the song of the grasshoppers and the bubbling of a stream were heard. Glacial breezes blew from the mountains. Jacob breathed in deeply, savoring the familiar odors. Strange how he had missed not only Wanda but this.” (Singer 135). Jacob’s noting of his coupled desire for both nature and Wanda allude to the similarly fertile characteristics of each. This connection between nature and femininity by way of fertility is also a key element to the Garden of Eden, God the ultimate patriarch’s original feminine counterpart. The association with Earth as the mother of mankind is not only a common trait throughout many other mythologies around the world, but also lends great credit to the power of femininity. Jacob’s recognition of fertility’s holy value combined with his contrasting description of Josefov helps to separate his understanding of femininity from the Jews of the town. “The stale air of Josefov had been unbearable, windows tightly shut, nothing but books all day.” (Singer 135). Considering his scholarly nature, this rejecting attitude of his towards books in particular stands out in the novel. By including books in his negative view of a manmade environment outside of nature, Jacob indirectly and offhandedly is rejecting the ultimate book, The Torah. The word of the bible is being attached to man’s creation, not God’s. This characteristic helps to highlight the story of Original Sin as an explanatory product of the male psyche.
Singer helps to emphasize the connection between femininity and nature through the bond of fertility through more than just romanticized description. Even darker descriptions can be found in the novel after the death of Wanda. “He awoke and it was day. Coils of mist hovered over the naked fields. A crow flew low and croaked. At the edge of the horizon to his left a forest stretched like a sash of blue, and emerging from it like the head of a newborn child, small and bloody red, came the sun.” (Singer 252). This simile helps to connect the relationship between femininity and the natural world by making a less than appealing yet effective reference to fertility. The inclusion of blood in the description helps to highlight the taboos of perceived impurity in feminine sexuality while simultaneously including references to the first six days of creation in genesis embodied in the details of mist, animals, and the forest.
The Slave’s emphasis on women’s inferior societal position as well as the seemingly divine power of femininity to create life helps to create awareness of such a dichotomy. It is this comprehension of the conflicting holy power of femininity and the mortally created designation of feminine inferiority that allows so pious a Jew as Jacob to sin by lying with and even marrying Wanda, a non-Jew. Jacob sins against man’s religion, but remains true to God’s. Isaac Singer’s novel develops the struggle between feminine power and female inferiority in stunning fashion, illuminating the faults of man and the perfection of God.
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