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3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Couldn't he have gotten the main point across in 100 pages or so? Or in a pamphlet? Read a summary and you're good to go.
I listened to the audiobook and so glad I did because at least I could do something useful (gardening, cleaning, walking) while I suffered through it. I really like so much of Hardy's writing. It can be clever and incisive. But it can also be manipulative and annoying. Jude's true love Sue is the most annoying character ever written. I am a mom and usually child death in a book tears me apart, but when Sue's kids died I thought, "well, she deserved that." (Sue herself says "it's better that they're dead" and Jude just answers "yes" -- they DESERVE each other!) The death scene didn't even feel real it was such a manipulative trick of Hardy's. Ugh. I hated every character *except* Arabella -- the only one you're supposed to hate. As an amply-sized brown haired woman, I was continually annoyed by descriptions of Sue's spirit-like paleness, her angelic wasting away, her tiny little girl act. Arabella was described as earthy, coarse, and plump. They were not compliments. Yet Arabella wants to have sex with Jude and Sue doesn't, so he falls in love with unattainable perfection (she's also his first cousin) and feels guilty for sullying Sue's purity with his lust. Oh. My. God. I hated these people. Sue doesn't just have one man she won't sleep with in love with her -- she has three! When she finally does succumb to Jude's charms... well, eventually her babies all die in a horrific murder-suicide (one kid kills himself and sibs) that is entirely HER FAULT, and she decides it's because God's mad she had sex.
Blah blah blah on and on Sue whines even when she's young and no one has died. Jude is such a sad sack. I was on his side for the first 2/3 of the book, as he tried to educate himself and rise above his social status, but once he gave that up to woo Sue away from her husband (the marriage hadn't been consummated, insert *eyeroll* here), he becomes as insufferable as his manic pixie nightmare girl.
I did appreciate when one coarse working man describes Arabella thus: "Aye, she's pretty in her way, and I likes a girl that a strong wind can't blow over." (My husband does, too.)
It gets 2 stars for the narrator, the great descriptions of Wessex, and the side characters like the snake oil salesman, barmaids, spinster aunts, widows, and stonemasons who gave it such a sense of time and place.
Blah blah blah on and on Sue whines even when she's young and no one has died. Jude is such a sad sack. I was on his side for the first 2/3 of the book, as he tried to educate himself and rise above his social status, but once he gave that up to woo Sue away from her husband (the marriage hadn't been consummated, insert *eyeroll* here), he becomes as insufferable as his manic pixie nightmare girl.
I did appreciate when one coarse working man describes Arabella thus: "Aye, she's pretty in her way, and I likes a girl that a strong wind can't blow over." (My husband does, too.)
It gets 2 stars for the narrator, the great descriptions of Wessex, and the side characters like the snake oil salesman, barmaids, spinster aunts, widows, and stonemasons who gave it such a sense of time and place.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
dark
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
With as harsh of a light as Jude the Obscure shone upon the cruelty of Victorian society, from the lofty towers of its exclusionary institutions to the enforced ignorance of its working class foundation, it is little surprise that the novel was met with such vitriol upon its publication; but like the proverb says: a hit dog will holler.
However scathing as Hardy’s critique might have been, history has vindicated not just its veracity but its prescience. In the 21st century we might think ourselves evolved beyond the intolerance, greed, and apathy that precipitate the central characters’ downfall, but one need look no further than any given comments section on social media to dispel such a foolish notion.
Like so much suffering today, the tragedies that befall Jude and Sue might have been avoided through a single act of kindness; it is a virtue in Hardy’s world (and in our own) that is extolled in theory, but despised in practice. Jude learns from an early age the pitfalls of radical compassion in a society that places a much higher premium on profit and conformity; he tests his luck further by hoping for a career in academia, a life path obstructed to him by mere virtue of his economic class.
Jude’s lack of adherence to societal norms, with all the peril this entails, becomes further manifest in his unconventional relationship with his cousin Sue. In this fragile, ethereal woman he finds a partner equal to him in sensitivity and intellect, and perhaps even a chance at happiness. They are two sides of the same coin, “one person split in two,” each reflective of and contrasting the other. Their dialogue sparkles with vitality and pathos, constituting some of the most gripping passages in the novel. It is a match made in heaven, but scorned by humanity; their audacity to hope for their own version of happiness cannot go unpunished in a society that enforces conformity at the threat of social and economic ostracism.
Jude the Obscure has rightly earned its reputation as Thomas Hardy’s bleakest novel. It is a beautiful and uncompromising portrait of broken lives and shattered dreams, literally burned in its time for the light that it shone on the darker aspects of society. Hardy forces his reader to reconsider the essential arrangements of human relations, begs us to ask whether a world that can snuff out two flames as bright as Jude and Sue is one that is worth living in.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child death
Minor: Sexual content
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
sad
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Oh my dear, poor Jude. I went into this book knowing that it was depressing but oh my. In my mind there is no part 6th, the book ends with part 5th. Yes that is better
Content Warnings
Moderate: Alcoholism, Animal death, Bullying, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Incest, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic relationship, Grief, Religious bigotry, Stalking, Suicide attempt, Murder, Pregnancy, Abandonment, Classism