Melville's Inconsolable Rachel and the Rise of Women's Bibles

Ilana Pardes

Many writers in antebellum America sought to reinvent the Bible, but no one was as insistent as Melville on redefining biblical exegesis while doing so. In Moby-Dick he not only ventured to fashion a grand new inverted Bible in which biblical rebels and outcasts assume central stage, but also aspired to comment on every imaginable mode of biblical interpretation, calling for a radical reconsideration of the politics of biblical reception. This lecture explores Melville's choice to end Moby-Dick with an evocation of Jeremiah’s verse on Rachel's inconsolable cry on behalf of her exiled children. I read Melville's rare allusion to a biblical female figure against the background of the rise of women's bibles and the growing involvement of women in the exegetical scene. Special attention is given to Victorian Rachels: from the image of weeping Rachel in Harper's Illuminated Bible to Harriet Beecher Stowe's readings of Jeremiah's Rachel in Uncle Tom's Cabin and in her less known book Women in Sacred History.