A few days ago I finished Thomas Hardy's last novel, Jude the Obscure. I was completely overwhelmed and truly needed a few days to reflect upon the experience and collect my thoughts before attempting a review. Bear in mind too, that this is the first time that I have read Jude, and I sincerely believe that this novel may require a lifetime of reading and study in order to fully tease out and understand the import of Hardy's message.First, a little background about the novel. This novel took Hardy sometime to write. He started with an outline in 1890, and did not complete the book until 1894. It was first published serially in Harper's New Monthly Magazine from December 1894 to November 1895, and then it was published in book form. Hardy took a lot of heat for the novel from reviewers and critics, other authors, as well as the general public. It developed a reputation as Jude the Obscene. The relentlessness and vitriol of the negative criticism caused Hardy to forsake ever writing another novel of fiction; and he spent the remaining thirty some odd years of his life concentrating on his poetry.I also want to include, at this point, a strong 'Spoiler Warning.' In crafting this review, and discussing Hardy's authorial intent, I am finding it quite impossible not to discuss some relatively important plot points and elements. Therefore, continue reading at your own peril. All I can observe is that regardless of what I can say, or what you may have heard about this novel, it is a monumentally huge novel that simply must be read by any and all students of great literature. Okay, consider yourself forewarned.In some respects, Jude the Obscure can be looked upon as the coming-of-age story of Jude Fawley. Others have postulated that it is also an anti-bildungsroman as it documents, as we shall see, the slow and torturous destruction of Jude and his ideals. Interestingly, this is the only Hardy novel, that I am aware of, that starts with the protagonist as a child and follows him through his life.In Jude the Obscure, Hardy addresses the prevailing Victorian attitudes associated with social class and standing, educational opportunities, religion, the institution of marriage, and the influence of Darwinism on modern thought. Throughout the novel, Jude, Sue Bridehead, and Arabella Donn are used by Hardy to explore and develop the all-encompassing portrait; and to some degree, indictment; of the society and time that Jude and Hardy reside in. It seems that the novel sets up an examination of the contrasts between the idealistic romanticism of the second generation poets, John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley (Hardy truly admired Shelley!), and the more modern cultural movement of social Darwinism.First and foremost, this is a novel of ideas and ideals. Jude is a sensitive young fellow, always concerned with the lot of the animals and people around him. As a child he is even dismayed at seeing trees cut down, and can't bring himself to scare away the 'rooks' (crows) that are eating the seed from a newly planted field that he's been paid to protect. Later, as an adult he is compelled to leave his bed late at night and find the rabbit, screaming with pain, that has been caught in a trap and dispatch it as an act of mercy. These are some of the first signs of Jude-the-romantic, and Jude-the-dreamer. The ideals he has formed are something really quite different from that of the world around him, and this can't bode well for him.The first third of the novel focuses on Jude's desire to become an educated man and become admitted to the great colleges of 'Christminster' (loosely modeled on Oxford) in Hardy's 'Wessex' countryside. Jude, like Hardy, is an autodidact and teaches himself Greek and Latin, and views Christminster as the "city of lights" and "where the tree of knowledge grows." Jude's romantic visions and ideals suffer a terrible blow when he is denied admittance to the colleges and is advised that "remaining in your own sphere and sticking to your trade..." is his best course of action. Idealism aside, Jude now begins to understand that his social class and standing will continue to strongly influence his future.Issues associated with Love and Marriage also dominate much of the novel's landscape, and can be quite painful to read and consider. Early on, Jude is essentially trapped into a truly disastrous marriage with the attractive, but coarse young woman, Arabella Donn, the daughter of a pig-farmer. Trust me, she can slaughter the animals that Jude cannot. Arabella's 'unique' method of introducing herself to Jude is to throw a bloody pig's penis at him as he walks by while she is cleaning and sorting the offal of a slaughtered hog! Simply put, Arabella is the 'Delilah' to Jude's 'Samson.'Jude's young cousin, Sue Bridehead, on the other hand, is at times, one of the most erudite and intellectual women of the fiction of the late-Victorian. Ethereal and fairy-like, Sue is an idealist too, but her idealism tends towards a more modern view; even though some its roots reflect that of the second generation Romantics too. For example, Sue quotes to Jude, several lines from Shelley's great poem, Epipsychidion (Three Sermons on Free Love). At first blush, it seems easy to assume that Sue endorses the Shelleyan view of 'Free Love' and not binding oneself contractually and exclusively to only one other. While Shelley meant this from the perspective of sexual gratification, Sue has developed her own brand of romantic idealism that leads her to believe that it is only the iron-clad contract (marriage) that dooms the relationship.I had to spend some time thinking about Sue and her beliefs, but I have come to the preliminary conclusion that neither she, nor Hardy, are anti-marriage, but that it is the nature of the contract of marriage in the Victorian age (i.e., with all of its trappings of submission, subjugation, and so forth) that doom its likelihood of long-term success in her view. In fact, in support of this notion, Hardy made a notebook entry in 1889, in which he writes, "Love lives on propinquity, but dies of contact."It seems that Hardy's development of the character of Sue Bridehead and the novel's storyline may reflect a portion of his own troubled relationship with his wife Emma and her increasing religious beliefs through the years of their own marriage. Also, it may well be that Sue's character reflects a bit of Hardy's cousin, Tryphena Sparks, a woman that he is rumored to have had an affair with in 1868, and who later died in 1890. Hardy, in the Preface to the 1895 edition of Jude, stated that the novel was partly inspired "by the death of a woman" in 1890.Even though Sue Bridehead bears children with Jude, sexual relations and intimacy remains a very difficult proposition for her. For example, when married to her first husband, Richard Phillotson, she is startled awake by him entering her bedroom absentmindedly (they slept in separate rooms), and she leaps from a second story window into the night rather than sleep with him! Again, much of the time she is with Jude, they also sleep in separate bedrooms, which has the effect of keeping Jude's passions for her quite 'hot'. This is not, however, the romantic ideal of the loving wife and life-mate that Jude has envisioned for his dear Sue though. It is also not the picture of romantic idealism for Sue either, as she is truly looking for a partner through which she can fully experience Love's spiritual and intellectual bonds, and not just the contractual or the sexual.Toward the end of the novel there occurs such a shocking event that finally and irrevocably alters the lives of Jude and Sue, and largely severs their tenuous emotional and spiritual bonds to one another. The romantic ideals of both are smashed hopelessly and simply cannot be reassembled. Modernization has come and displaced the old world romanticism of Jude Fawley and Thomas Hardy. Jude-the-Dreamer and Jude-the-Idealist have no place in this new order, because to transcend to his ideals means that he must die as Keats and Shelley so eloquently discovered. Unfortunately for Jude, even Arabella is present to witness his final suffering and agony. Jude's story has become, in a very real sense Hardy's modern retelling of the 'Book of Job.' [Note the word play too -- the "J" from 'Jude' and the "Ob" from 'Obscure':]As I said above, I have a sense that I have probably only just scratched the surface of this titanic novel, and that there is much, much more to glean. It is full of allusion and metaphor, and rife with biblical references and nods to Hardy's literary ancestors, Milton, Wordsworth, and Shelley. Before I tackle Jude again, or re-read any of his other novels for that matter, I want to first read Claire Tomalin's recent biography, Thomas Hardy (2006); Rosemarie Morgan's Women and Sexuality in the Novels of Thomas Hardy (1988); and also delve into Thomas Hardy: The Complete Poems (1981), edited by James Gibson.Read this novel! When you are through, let me know; for I'd love to discuss it with you and see what you think too. Five out of five stars for me.
2.5/5 I am not a man who wants to save himself at the expense of the weaker among us!A word of advice to wannabe novelists: don't build a sob story character on the backs of far more desperate plot lines. In the effort of making a single complex portrait that seeks to inspire empathetic commiseration, you run the risk of using tropes as buffering without giving them their due. Now, one can write a work of some quality without deity level insight à la Evans/Eliot and such, but that requires strengths and minimal screwing ups in the other areas of fiction. Saturated melodrama, shoddy dialogue, and a message of main character far more interested in (him/it)self than any of the other cultivated personas makes for a sentimentality that shuns the majority of the audience that would give it humanity's power. Obviously, enough of the audience raises this up, judging from the novel's status as a classic, but it is not likely to survive as long as several of its kin. Still, Sue, it is no worse for the woman than for the man. That's what some women fail to see, and instead of protesting against the conditions they protest against the man, the other victim; just as a woman in a crowd will abuse the man who crushes against her, when he is only the helpless transmitter of the pressure put upon him.The world may one day reach the state described in the quote above, but it was not that way then, and it is not that way now. Where Jude cannot enter the university because of poverty, Sue cannot enter because of her existence. Where Jude cannot find an equal out of misguided ideals, she cannot find one because of socialized expectations of selling her body for every survival in life. Whereas Jude has problems of inconclusive education and a poorly paid career, Sue has a complete cutting off from patriarchal support, a world that does not want what she, as a she, has to give, and an inherent lack of infrastructure when it comes to picturing her self outside the boundaries of domesticity, religion, and sexual assault. Couple this with Jude's constant adherence to double standards in their conversation and you get what is to be expected: permanent anxiety, defense mechanisms that pay no heed to the laws of man, and a final breakdown that cannot be understood by any who are accustomed to seeing themselves in the annals of history and the halls of excellence. Hardy portrayed enough for conjecture's sake, but he was not interested in the reality of the situation beyond what it offered for dramatic effect. Sue was two steps away from being a madwoman in the attic, and her Wide Sargasso Sea was not Hardy's to tell. Don't abandon me to them, Sue, to save your own soul only!I will admit to searching here for a variation on the theme of Stoner; not out of hope of finding another favorite, for my tastes have changed enough in the last year and a half that a second reading of Williams would result in a less enamored me, but of critiquing a familiarity. Both works focus on a single white male (academic) soul playing on a backdrop of father figures, love interests, and progeny, but only one pays a serious measure of attention to these background souls beyond the strengths they offer as emotive filler. In addition, when Stoner indulges in philosophical contemplation, it does not parody itself, nor does it lazily balance with Madonna/Whore complexes and extraneous prophesies more fit for penny dreadfuls than calamitous relationships. A certain type may find refuge in Jude, as it seems many have done; but not all are of that type.I still have Far from the Madding Crowd on hand. It shall be saved for a few decades farther into the future, when I will be able to view it from a different generational perspective.
What do You think about Jude The Obscure (2006)?
به نظرم تامس هاردی حقشه بیشتر از اینها بهش پرداخته بشه. روانشناس خوبیه و تراژدی رو خوب میشناسه. هرچند شخصیتهای اصلی کتابهاش (قهرمانها، آدم خوبهها) معمولا بلاهت عجیبی دارند و در مواقع بحرانی تصمیمات خیلی اشتباهی میگیرند. ولی خوب وقتی قراره یه فاجعه به بار بیاد چاره چیه؟
—narges hasanli
So if you are a literary person and have read Thomas Hardy before, then go ahead and read this one. If you haven’t read any other Thomas Hardy works, PLEASE don’t start with this one. I took a class on Thomas Hardy literature because it was taught by one of my favorite professors. I visited “Thomas Hardy” country in the southern westerly region of England because it was an opportunity to travel abroad. I’ve read several of Hardy’s novels – but none were quite as depressing and dark as this one. Hardy was on to something with his progressive ideas. Sue Bridehead is supposedly one of the “new women” of the "New Woman" novels, but I still think she was weak-willed and wishy-washy and I had hardly no compassion for her because while she thought she knew her own mind, she did not. Of course, I write this in the 21st century where the ideas of Jude and Sue are commonplace and no one bats an eye to such behavior. I think that Hardy’s progressive ideas about love and women really served more of his own promiscuous and womanizing ways. His ideas served his passions for more than just one woman. Without giving away some of the suprises in the plot, I feel that Hardy was a bit too rash with one event in the book and I can see why the reading public cried out against it. He succeeded in making this a dark book but one particular incident was just too stark. There can be many interesting debates as to the behaviors of the characters but Jude is the saddest of them all. In the end, I think the question would be this: Which is the stronger sex and what are the consequences of a dream unfulfilled?
—Crystal
This is a review shrouded in misery and gloom, a meditation on life’s sadness and bleakness. Let those who read this derive their little satisfaction from the beauty that we sometimes discern springing from the melancholy, otherwise one should not partake this endeavor at all. Happy Halloween? Sometimes in the morning, I wake up and ask myself “why carry on?” Sometimes you’re filled with this immense pressure and wish to just stay lying in bed forever. Sometimes people tell themselves that they’re tired of everything. Sometimes we just give up. Jude the Obscure is a book for those some. Thomas Hardy’s final masterpiece is a beautiful and tragic tale of what reality is and what it means to love and to dream. Our hero or victim, whichever light you choose to see him, Jude, finds misfortune in Hardy’s Wessex due to a love that does not adhere to society, and a dream that is crushed by it. Jude is a dreamer, an orphan, and a pauper, the worst combination in a man. It is as if, from the very beginning, his life was meant for sadness. He does suffer, and he endures much. “Somebody might have come along that way who would have asked him his trouble, and might have cheered him by saying that his notions were further advanced than those of his grammarian. But nobody did come, because nobody does; and under the crushing recognition of his gigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world.”It is irresponsible to talk about Jude and ignore one of its central themes, marriage and divorce. “People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort.” Personally, I have always taken a pro-choice stance in this matter. Coming from a Christian country where divorce is not legalized, I am aware that people refer to the option of divorce as a smear to the sanctity of marriage. However, I’m inclined to believe that people are not all Christians and that whatever people choose to practice and believe should be respected. Let love shared be through and torn upon the whims of the two involved and no one else. Jude and Sue, visionaries ahead of their generation, were meant to suffer for a belief that reflected the encroachment of the modern, developing world on the traditions of rural England. Like Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton before them harbingers of change are always burdened with the wrath of the world. They are sacrificial lambs to mark the dawn of a better era, doomed pigs slowly bled to death at the cruel hands of the unmerciful world. “But his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small.” Jude’s unrealized dream of going to the university and being a scholar or vicar through the great halls of the Christminster colleges reflects Hardy’s critique of the institutions of higher learning and his compassion for rural England’s underprivileged. A view inspired by real life events in Hardy's life that reflects this world’s defectiveness. Let me now talk about the relationship between Sue, Jude and Phillotson. I have always discerned that there is much allegory in Thomas Hardy’s writing and here I see one as well. A lot of readers do not understand why Sue, one of literature’s greatest female figures, one of such intellect would be able to abandon Jude and succumb to society’s creed and return to Phillotson. I see it as thus, Sue is Hardy’s representation of the intellectuals. She is smart, young, beautiful, unaffected by creed. Sue must choose between Jude and Phillotson. This represents an intellectual’s choice between dreams and reality. Jude represents the intellectual’s noble dreams. A man who dreams of learning, of mastery, of changing the world, of sacrificing one’s self for the good of all. While Phillotson represents reality, he who has given up on his dreams and has settled himself into a conceded position. Sue at first chooses Jude, for like young scholars, we all in our youth pursue noble ambitions and dreams of grandeur. But social order affects and time flies, people are forced to turn to reality, and thus Sue leaves Jude for Phillotson no matter how she detests it. In the end, we all leave our dreams and settle into this reality we face.“I am in a chaos of principles—groping in the dark—acting by instinct and not after example. When I came here first, I had a neat stock of fixed opinions, but they dropped away one by one; and the further I get the less sure I am. I doubt if I have anything more for my present rule of life than following inclinations which do me and nobody else any harm, and actually give pleasure to those I love best. There, gentlemen, since you wanted to know how I was getting on, I have told you. Much good may it do you! I cannot explain further here. I perceive there is something wrong somewhere in our social formulas: what it is can only be discovered by men or women with greater insight than mine--if, indeed, they ever discover it-- at least in our time. 'For who knoweth what is good for man in this life?--and who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?”Somehow I find myself agreeing to this particular nugget from the novel. As I age, I realize that I believe less and less in worldviews and ideas which when I was younger, I was quite passionate about. Now I would not bother much with noble things like religion, social democracy, world peace, nationalism, and even justice. Do not get me wrong, I admire these social constructs but I do not consider them as a something I can devote my life to. I am of their cause, but now I am a pragmatic. I am a selfish cynic with nothing but my own satisfaction in mind. Let the innocent devote their lives to their grand causes, let me not suffer. For my field of vision is getting narrower as time passes and darkness consumes. For like Sue, I have abandoned Jude and have commingled with Phillotson. “Jude continued his walk homeward alone, pondering so deeply that he forgot to feel timid. He suddenly grew older. It had been the yearning of his heart to find something to anchor on, to cling to—for some place which he could call admirable. Should he find that place in this city if he could get there? Would it be a spot in which, without fear of farmers, or hindrance, or ridicule, he could watch and wait, and set himself to some mighty undertaking like the men of old of whom he had heard? As the halo had been to his eyes when gazing at it a quarter of an hour earlier, so was the spot mentally to him as he pursued his dark way.”“As you got older, and felt yourself to be at the center of your time, and not at a point in its circumference, as you had felt when you were little, you were seized with a sort of shuddering, he perceived. All around you there seemed to be something glaring, garish, rattling, and the noises and glares hit upon the little cell called your life, and shook it, and warped it.”In the end we all stop dreaming and we face this reality. But let us not give up no matter how dreary things may seem. For every failure is a victory against hopelessness, every slip-up a success against utter defeat, every mistake a light unto the inevitable darkness, and every fall a cry of rebellion against this life that only brings disappointments saying “you will not tear me down, not yet.” We try, and we try again for it is the only thing we can do. For to hope is human, and to suffer more so. And though in the end we are all defeated by ‘that final dreamless sleep’ called death, we can at least cling to those little triumphs of fortitude along the way.
—Jr Bacdayan
