How the Heck Did You Get Ivanhoe?

I have so many associations with Ivanhoe that's it's almost impossible to go into reading it without baggage. Here are some of my favorites:

1) The Fairie Tale Theatre Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I have five or so favorites from Shelly Duval's awesome series, and this is one of my top ones. Whenever I play charades, I can't help but think of the scene where Goldilocks and the Three Bears are playing charades (I know; you kind of have to see it to understand. . .) and Mama Bear jumps up and exclaims Ivanhoe, when it clearly is not Ivanhoe, and everyone wonders why in the world she guessed it. It's become a family in-joke.

2) Betsy in Spite of Herself. After their freshman year of high school, the crowd/the high school freshman class is told to read Ivanhoe over the summer for an essay the first day of sophomore year (this is the English teacher Betsy has problems with, the one who really wants to be teaching science; he leads to the amazing apple blossom scene that any Betsy/Joe shipper knows by heart). Most do not, though Betsy already has, and she ends of coaching them through it.

3) Wishbone! Oh, Wishbone; you've probably messed up my sense of many great novels for the rest of my life. I can distinctly picture the inner story for this one, but I cannot for the life of me remember what the outer story was. Let's see if Wikipedia can come to the rescue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oh, that's right. Samantha has an allergic reaction to coconut cookies, and David has to compete in the spelling bee to win against the resident school jerks.

All of this is to say, I had some preconceived notions going into this one. Specifically, I expected to hate it. Ivanhoe, how dare you not get with Rebecca! Why in the world do you love Rowena? Etc.

But, I didn't hate it. I actually really, really enjoyed it. Ivanhoe is long, but it is another super fast read. Sir Walter Scott is an interesting character, but I can see why this one made him as an author. First, he basically created this genre, which is amazing when you think about it (sort of like how Tolkien created the Medieval setting for fantasy novels that is now so ubiquitous).

Yes, I did prefer Rebecca to Rowena, but at the same time, I didn't actually want them to get together in the end. Given the social context Sir Walter Scott was writing about, it wouldn't have made sense, and I sort of like that tragic element. The social context is super important and super fascinating (though good lord, the Antisemitism; yeesh).

And now I have the Wishbone theme song in my head.