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Study for Obedience - Sarah Bernstein (Granta) Allegory on antisemitism

In Sarah Bernstein’s unsettling novel, Study for Obedience, we are presented with an unnamed narrator who has moved to an unnamed northern country to take care of her older brother whose wife has left him. This role of carer is not unusual for our narrator who, even as the youngest child, took care of her needy siblings.

But almost as soon as she arrives at her brother’s baronial home, in this country where they are both strangers, a series of unfortunate events occur to the local animals for which the townspeople hold her responsible: a herd of cows has gone mad and must be put down; a depressive sow crushes her piglets to death, a ewe dies while giving birth.

The community spurns her, believing “whatever contagion they associated with me would attach itself to them.” Her attempts to ingratiate herself, by being modest, pliable and inoffensive, have the opposite effect of “inflaming their superstitions (and) bringing out their fears”. 

Bernstein’s novel is not just about the exclusion of the “other”, the stranger, “to enable the cohesion of the whole”, it is very specifically an allegory of antisemitism, though the word Jewish is never used. Instead, scattered throughout, there are small references to such things as chopped herring, gefilte fish, and the Sabbath table.

And there are less benign references: “One always seemed to fall into the hands of a judge who was also one’s enemy. No plunder too low, no picking too slim. One’s very ashes would be sifted for the gold tooth, the wedding ring.” 

This book was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 2023 and Bernstein has been named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. Born in Montreal she now lives in Scotland where she teaches literature and creative writing.