{"id":8052,"date":"2004-01-26T23:23:09","date_gmt":"2004-01-26T23:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/mrs_bowdler.html"},"modified":"2004-01-26T23:23:09","modified_gmt":"2004-01-26T23:23:09","slug":"mrs_bowdler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/mrs_bowdler.html","title":{"rendered":"Mrs. Bowdler"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nAs I told you a while back, Katie and I are reading Oliver Twist<\/strong> aloud. Still. Yeah, it’s been a little slow. I think we’re finally about on page 80.<\/p>\n

I have been taken aback, I must admit, by Dickens’ constant use of “the Jew” in referring to Fagin. I have to also admit that as I’ve read it aloud, I’ve done some normally forbidden p.c. adjustments – I don’t say it. I say “the old man” or “Fagin.” I mean, there were paragraphs in which he refers to him as “the Jew” in every single sentence. I literally couldn’t bear to say it as written there, because, although I’ll freely admit that I’m not an expert of the portrayal of Jews in literature, I’ll just guess that in using the phrase, Dickens is employing a sort of shorthand that will communicate a certain image – perhaps like the image of the moneylender in Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast<\/strong> – right out of the Protocols of Zion, it seemed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I told you a while back, Katie and I are reading Oliver Twist aloud. Still. Yeah, it’s been a little slow. I think we’re finally about on page 80. I have been taken aback, I must admit, by Dickens’ constant use of “the Jew” in referring to Fagin. I have to also admit that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nMrs. Bowdler - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/mrs_bowdler.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mrs. Bowdler - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As I told you a while back, Katie and I are reading Oliver Twist aloud. Still. Yeah, it’s been a little slow. I think we’re finally about on page 80. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. 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