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3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
Although I read this years ago (not saying how many), I know I need to come back to it because I absolutely loved its raw bleakness, its compelling characters, its sheer realism of the time. Of course, travelling through the English countryside while reading Jude didn't hurt, either. The movie version with Christopher Eccleston
I will never forgive having to read this. Also, I didn't even take the AP exam so it wasn't useful :)
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
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
As he, himself, recognized, Hardy was certainly a man ahead of his time earning him such censure that he never wrote another novel after this one. His thorough and comprehensive challenges to the institution of marriage of the period are hard hitting. The institutions of the church and university hardly fair better to his narrative fusillade of ignominy.
Crushed by these institutions are the two beautiful protagonists who strive to do everything with kindness, uncharacteristic wisdom and love. Yet they are the victims of not only the souls crushing institutions of the time, but also of their self-destructive, uncontrollable urges.
Unfortunately, Hardy was also ahead of his time in writing victim porn. The unrelenting sadness and hopelessness of the book made it ultimately unreadable for me, and I gave up 3/4 of the way in and according to Wikipedia’s summary missed the most horrific parts.
\Hardy certainly gets credit for taking on the establishment in this archetype of naturalism, and he does include some humor, but oh the horror.
Crushed by these institutions are the two beautiful protagonists who strive to do everything with kindness, uncharacteristic wisdom and love. Yet they are the victims of not only the souls crushing institutions of the time, but also of their self-destructive, uncontrollable urges.
Unfortunately, Hardy was also ahead of his time in writing victim porn. The unrelenting sadness and hopelessness of the book made it ultimately unreadable for me, and I gave up 3/4 of the way in and according to Wikipedia’s summary missed the most horrific parts.
\Hardy certainly gets credit for taking on the establishment in this archetype of naturalism, and he does include some humor, but oh the horror.
So much to chew on here. For its time, this was a pretty controversial novel and its characters illustrated the difficulties of the working poor in terms of trying to get an education, trying to be gainfully employed and trying to be true to oneself in navigating the social expectations of that society. Marrying for love was not always an option, and women were at times forced to make choices that went completely against their own preferences or feelings. While there is much to applaud here (the endeavor to illustrate the benefits of a pro-divorce stance in a decidedly anti-divorce time, for one example), there is also much to mock. The women are nearly caricatures of type; one is the conniving and coarse woman whose schemes to "catch her man" include wearing a hairpiece, faking dimples, getting him drunk and pretending to be pregnant. As contrast to Arabella's vulgar, earthly "pig" of woman (and trust me when I say that Hardy gets much mileage from the pig references throughout), Sue is the unearthly intellectual woman whose frigidity is seen as nearly a virtue (later in the story she consents to sex with someone she is repulsed by as a sort of self-inflicted penance to herself). Throughout the story Sue's behavior indicates the struggle of a woman who does not want to conform to society's norms, but sees no other viable alternative; living in sin with her man essentially ruins both her career and his as well as their ability to live in peace in any town they attempt to settle. I found myself completely irritated with Sue throughout this novel, as her ambivalence was absolutely torturous to those she interacted with and she was unable to make peace with any action except that which benefitted herself (not for comfort or financial gain, mind you, but to maintain her moral purity). The final straw for me was the scene with Little Father, with Sue illustrating precisely "what NOT to do or say when your child is feeling suicidal." Although I'm sure it doesn't sound like it from this review, I thoroughly enjoyed reading and bitching about this novel as a buddy read with a few of my Popsugar 2019 book club friends. I'm crossing Jude off of my BBC Top 200 list and, perversely, I'm counting it for the "book that includes a wedding" prompt for the Popsugar 2019 reading challenge.
Well written and easy to follow even for being over a century since published. Interesting how even with so many social changes along the lines of this book, many of the themes are still present today.
Late in Thomas Hardy’s classic Jude the Obscure, Jude laments: “Our ideas were fifty years too soon to be any good to us” (400). And that, in a nutshell, tells you exactly what this novel is about.
It would be a grave injustice to Hardy, however, to condense his entire narrative to a mere moral message. Because while this is definitely a story that tries to get a certain idea across, it does neither moralize nor proselytize. It simply lets the events speak for themselves.
And just as with Tess of the D’Urbervilles, I was struck by Hardy’s progressivism and critical assessment of Victorian society, especially where it concerns position of women.
Jude the Obscure (1895) tells the story of Jude Fawley, who is a mere boy when the book opens. He is born in poverty, in the small town of Marygreen (Wessex), but dreams of studying and becoming a scholar in Christminster (a stand-in for Oxford). Yet, while this starts out as a narrative centred on Jude’s quest for knowledge, it soon turns into something else.
While at Christminster, Jude seeks out his estranged cousin Sue and falls madly in love with her. What follows is the incredibly complex cat-and-mouse game that unfolds between the two of them. The plot is super fast-paced. How fantastic to be able to write a novel that is just as thrilling in 2021 as it was 126 years earlier!
Although I’m sure the book was more than just thrilling in 1895.
I have not read any scholarship regarding this work, but I’d imagine that Jude the Obscure shocked quite a few people when it first came out. Thomas Hardy has incredibly progressive ideas:
the entire plot is basically a condemnation of the institute of marriage! More specifically, Hardy seems to be acutely aware of the way in which marriage used to entrap women, and he absolutely abhors it. For the record: divorce law wasn’t changed until 1937, when women in the UK could finally file for divorce from their husband (before, that was the man’s prerogative), so “entrapment” is not too strong a word here.
Spoiler
Of course, Hardy needs to bring the novel to an end that was (presumably) morally satisfactory in 1895, but considering the ways in which both Jude and Sue end up, his condemnation of society’s strict views on romantic relationships could not be more explicit.What’s more, he continually highlights the way in which Sue has much more to offer than she is allowed to show. In fact, it’s Sue’s intellect that is part of what attracts Jude to her. She has read more widely than he has (he admits as much) and she is deeply critical of religion. One day, Sue confesses that she has literally removed the pages of her Bible and has had them rebound in a different order so they make more sense to her. Jude finds this a little sacrilegious, but he is also intrigued, and they start discussing a specific section of the holy book:
“‘And what a literary enormity this is,’ she said, as she glanced into the pages of Solomon’s song. ‘I mean the synopsis at the head of each chapter, explaining away the real nature of that rhapsody.”
A few moments later, she adds: “I hate such humbug as could attempt to plaster over with ecclesiastical abstractions such ecstatic, natural, human love as lies in that great and passionate song!” (152).
Jude admires her, even calls her a “woman-poet” and a “woman-seer” at some point, and reflects on her thusly:
“[Her] intellect was to mine like a star to a benzoline lamp: who saw all my superstitions as cobwebs that she could brush away with a word” (400).
More than once, too, Sue tells people “you can’t change who I am.”
Her progressive outlook rubs off on Jude, who (much later) has this to say about family life:
“The beggarly question of parentage - what is it, after all? What does it matter, when you come to think of it, whether a child is yours by blood, or not? All the little ones of our time are collectively the children of us adults of the time, and entitled to our general care. That excessive regard of parents for their own children, and their dislike of other people’s, is, like class-feeling, patriotism, save-your-own-soulism, and other virtues, a mean exclusiveness at bottom” (275).
Wow. Just wow. In one and the same paragraph, Hardy (by way of Jude) essentially suggests that adoption is natural, that society has the responsibility to help the less fortunate, and that inclusivity of all sorts is always the right course of action. Wow, Mr. Hardy, wow. So ahead of your time.
(side note: in a way, one could even argue that he is forecasting communal living!)
A third, important character is Mr. Richard Phillotson. While he’s not necessarily the most likeable character (because he’s quite bland), he has such unwavering moral convictions that I could not help but admire him. I’m sure Hardy put some of himself in Phillotson, too.
Spoiler
The fact that Mr. Phillotson does right by Sue, even though it costs him his reputation and livelihood, is incredible. The way in which Hardy describes Phillotson’s conscientious struggle was one of my favorite parts of the novel. He knows what’s expected of him by society, but he cannot justify it to himself. Everyone tells him what he should do, and yet none of that feels right. And so he willingly flies in the face of convention, and sets Sue free.Every now and then, Sue got on my nerves because she is so incredibly mercurial. Still, I could forgive her that, considering the society in which she was raised.
In fact, Sue’s volatility could (and should) even be read as part of Hardy’s critique of marriage: after all, her capriciousness stems mostly from a constant battle between her own desires, and society’s expectations, which are polar opposite. If Sue and Jude had indeed lived fifty years later, as Jude suggests later on, there would have been less need for her to constantly take into account what might have been the “right” thing to do. She could’ve lived her life, without worrying about repercussions.
While the novel as a whole may have a pessimistic (though not a depressing) feel, there is hope, too. And that hope takes the shape of the Widow Edlin.
The Widow Edlin is an old acquaintance from Marygreen who is arguably Sue and Jude’s closest friend. She is quite old, and two or three times throughout the narrative she reflects on her own marriage (notably, she does so when she’s by herself - thus, essentially talking to the reader and prodding him or her to think about the topic). In one of the last chapters, she calls out: “Fifty-five years ago, come Fall, since my man and I married! Times have changed since then!”
By drawing explicit attention to the way social mores are ever-changing, Hardy hints at what is to come.
Much has changed, indeed. But even though this change has come too late for Jude and Sue, Hardy knew it was coming, nonetheless.
