What Does it Mean to Be Courageous?

When Is a Fight Truly Courageous?

In the comment to his definition, Mr. Siegel writes:

Courage is a love of the external, and a belief in it, even when we fight it. For to know that we can fight something beautifully is to love that which enables us to fight beautifully.

This, I believe, describes Rebecca, the daughter of Isaac and the most courageous person in Ivanhoe. Rebecca has tremendous strength, is deeply thoughtful and very beautiful. She is often in great peril and must fight, yet under the greatest duress she believes in the goodness of the world, represented to her by the goodness of God. And does she ever "fight beautifully"!

Bois-Guilbert and his evil cohorts kidnap Rebecca, Isaac, the Saxon landowner Cedric and others, and imprison them in the castle, Torquilstone. Rebecca is locked high up in the turret, and when Bois-Guilbert enters and threatens to take advantage of her, she is so magnificently courageous that he is stunned:

"Stand back," said Rebecca; "stand back, and hear me ere thou offerest to commit a sin so deadly! My strength thou mayst indeed overpower, for God...trusted [woman's] defense to man's generosity. But...God...hath opened an escape to his daughter-even from this abyss of infamy!"

As she spoke, she threw open the latticed window...and in an instant after, stood on the very verge of the parapet..."Remain where thou art, proud Templar, or at thy choice advance!—one foot nearer, and I plunge myself from the precipice...the Jewish maiden will rather trust her soul with God than her honor to the Templar!"

While Rebecca spoke thus, her high and firm resolve...gave to her...a dignity that seemed more than mortal. Her glance quailed not, her cheek blanched not...on the contrary, the thought that she had her fate at her command...gave...yet a more brilliant fire to her eye. Bois-Guilbert...thought he never beheld beauty so animated and so commanding.

Just as the world seems most against Rebecca, when she could understandably be most cowering, she has a "dignity that seemed more than mortal." I came to love Rebecca; she had me see the depths of women in a new way, and has me value the courage I've been fortunate to see firsthand in women I know, including my wife, Meryl.

In the novel, Scott shows, too, that ill-will makes one an inefficient coward, no matter how tough a person is. Mr. Siegel writes that "Courage is an organic like of the facts," and says "Wherever courage does not have the facts with it, it is unformed, and therefore...headstrong." This describes the nobles in Torquilstone who hear that Saxon peasants are gathering in the forest to assault the castle and rescue the prisoners. They make contemptuous jokes, saying they will be "besieged by a jester and a swineherd." They do not want to know the facts and they pay the price—over 500 people storm the castle, free the prisoners, and Torquilstone burns to ashes.

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