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3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
dark
sad
medium-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
dark
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
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
emotional
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
sad
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
FIRST LINE REVIEW: "The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry." And as I finish this book, no one is sorry! What a depressing and frustrating novel. I struggled to care about any of the characters, but plodded on nonetheless, ever hoping that I would come to care for them. Alas, twas not to be. So long Jude and Sue...enjoy the endless misery.
In Thomas Hardy’s 1895 novel Jude the Obscure, the English author rails against three restrictive aspects of Victorian society that especially angered him: the denial of university education to intelligent young men from working class backgrounds, the domination of Christianity (mainly in its Anglican form) in all spheres of life, and most prominently, the very institution of marriage.
Jude Fawley is an orphan in southwest England, but gifted with a remarkable intelligence. Take in by his great aunt and forced to help her with her bakery business, he nonetheless acquires a command of Greek and Latin, which he thinks will take he on to great things. All this is undone by a single mistaken: falling for (and sleeping with) a local pig farmer’s daughter who is not especially bright. When she reports falling pregnant and they are forced to arrange a shotgun wedding, all of Jude’s dreams of academic erudition go up in smoke.
That could already been a whole poignant story in itself, but in fact it’s merely a preface to the main plot. Once the unsatisfied newlyweds separate and Jude leaves to the nearby city of Christminster (modeled on Oxford), the young man meets his long-lost cousin Susanna Brideshead, who has shocking views for her time. For Sue, ancient paganism is preferable to Judeo-Christian values, and marriage is but a prison that can saps the love that more informally bound lovers might feel. Needless to say, the two fall for each other and the continually tragic consequences drive the novel.
For the first half of Jude the Obscure, I was rather amazed by how realistic and modern the dialogue Hardy writes for his characters sounds. As they try to reconcile their deepest feelings with the expectations of the society around him, Jude and Susanna sound every different from conventional Victorian literature. Even though the premarital sex and marital discord within will not at all shock contemporary readers, it’s easy to understand how the book outraged many prominent figures in Victorian society.
However, the book suffers from many of the same flaws as other Victorian literature. As it was serialized in a magazine before being compiled into a single publication, the length of the text seems bloated when contemporary readers will want something more deftly honed. At one point a child comes into the picture, and while adults in this era’s fiction might get distinct personalities, the child is not a living, breathing person as much as a plot device. He doesn’t even get a name! Then, in the second half of the book the dialogue turns from deeply touching to overly longwinded, preachy and wholly unbelievable; instead of making his point subtly, Hardy just beats us over the head with it.
Consequently, my enthusiasm waned significantly as I made my way to the end of Jude the Obscure. I might recommend it as an important classic, but if you’ve never been able to fully enjoy English fiction from the Victorian era, you’ll find the same frustrations in this too.
Jude Fawley is an orphan in southwest England, but gifted with a remarkable intelligence. Take in by his great aunt and forced to help her with her bakery business, he nonetheless acquires a command of Greek and Latin, which he thinks will take he on to great things. All this is undone by a single mistaken: falling for (and sleeping with) a local pig farmer’s daughter who is not especially bright. When she reports falling pregnant and they are forced to arrange a shotgun wedding, all of Jude’s dreams of academic erudition go up in smoke.
That could already been a whole poignant story in itself, but in fact it’s merely a preface to the main plot. Once the unsatisfied newlyweds separate and Jude leaves to the nearby city of Christminster (modeled on Oxford), the young man meets his long-lost cousin Susanna Brideshead, who has shocking views for her time. For Sue, ancient paganism is preferable to Judeo-Christian values, and marriage is but a prison that can saps the love that more informally bound lovers might feel. Needless to say, the two fall for each other and the continually tragic consequences drive the novel.
For the first half of Jude the Obscure, I was rather amazed by how realistic and modern the dialogue Hardy writes for his characters sounds. As they try to reconcile their deepest feelings with the expectations of the society around him, Jude and Susanna sound every different from conventional Victorian literature. Even though the premarital sex and marital discord within will not at all shock contemporary readers, it’s easy to understand how the book outraged many prominent figures in Victorian society.
However, the book suffers from many of the same flaws as other Victorian literature. As it was serialized in a magazine before being compiled into a single publication, the length of the text seems bloated when contemporary readers will want something more deftly honed. At one point a child comes into the picture, and while adults in this era’s fiction might get distinct personalities, the child is not a living, breathing person as much as a plot device. He doesn’t even get a name! Then, in the second half of the book the dialogue turns from deeply touching to overly longwinded, preachy and wholly unbelievable; instead of making his point subtly, Hardy just beats us over the head with it.
Consequently, my enthusiasm waned significantly as I made my way to the end of Jude the Obscure. I might recommend it as an important classic, but if you’ve never been able to fully enjoy English fiction from the Victorian era, you’ll find the same frustrations in this too.
I found it interesting and intriguing... but I found the two main characters a bit of a wash out and just dreary but then again you can feel his almost hatred and contempt for his own dramas in his life being portrayed in this novel.