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3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It seems to me that Thomas Hardy was trying to say that Jude would have achieved his goal of entering University and becoming a clergyman if it just hadn't been for those darn pesky women. Usually this would annoy me because men are supposed to be strong and not let women lure them away from their ambitions. However, in this case I do believe he should have stayed away from all women, especially the crazy Sue. One of the saddest books I've ever read.
This book was incredibly dark and depressing but it was quite an engaging read. This was my first time reading Hardy and I enjoyed it despite the plot.
I don't have much to say, so I'll keep it short. I didn't like Jude or Sue; I found both of them to be insufferable. I did appreciate how the tragedy built up slowly over the course of the book then exploded with.
Would I read it again? Maybe sometime in the very distant future when I'm less depressed.
I don't have much to say, so I'll keep it short. I didn't like Jude or Sue; I found both of them to be insufferable. I did appreciate how the tragedy built up slowly over the course of the book then exploded with
Spoiler
the child+closet incidentWould I read it again? Maybe sometime in the very distant future when I'm less depressed.
Contemporary Americans who see Jude as weak and Sue as neurotic are missing the point: that the constraints of Victorian society misshaped people, driving them to their tragic ends. If you found Arabella, the villain, to be the most admirable character then you've demonstrated the brilliance of Hardy.
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
My previous experiences with [a:Thomas Hardy|15905|Thomas Hardy|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1189902685p2/15905.jpg] left me with little confidence of liking any other of his novels; I found [b:The Mayor of Casterbridge|31463|Far from the Madding Crowd (Penguin Classics)|Thomas Hardy|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1168276701s/31463.jpg|914540] and [b:Tess of the D'Urbervilles|32261|Tess of the D'Urbervilles |Thomas Hardy|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255746904s/32261.jpg|3331021] to be disappointing reads, and I have to admit, when I started reading Jude I fully expected the same to occur.
I love it when I'm wrong.
[b:Jude the Obscure|50798|Jude the Obscure (Thrift Edition)|Thomas Hardy|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170371747s/50798.jpg|2011241] is a fantastic novel, however gloomy and depressing it may be. For me, a working class girl who has been fortunate enough to receive funding to gain a university education, I can feel sympathy for the plight of Jude, as I myself would have been in a similar situation had I been born in that time-period.
The character of Jude, I found to be likeable - a man with ambitions, with plans, a man with flaws, a man in love. I found Jude to be a believable character, as I did also with Sue Bridehead. Hardy, in this book, should be praised for creating such life-like, realistic personas.
I love it when I'm wrong.
[b:Jude the Obscure|50798|Jude the Obscure (Thrift Edition)|Thomas Hardy|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170371747s/50798.jpg|2011241] is a fantastic novel, however gloomy and depressing it may be. For me, a working class girl who has been fortunate enough to receive funding to gain a university education, I can feel sympathy for the plight of Jude, as I myself would have been in a similar situation had I been born in that time-period.
The character of Jude, I found to be likeable - a man with ambitions, with plans, a man with flaws, a man in love. I found Jude to be a believable character, as I did also with Sue Bridehead. Hardy, in this book, should be praised for creating such life-like, realistic personas.
Who would have thought that a book talking about wasted lives, missed opportunities, failed marriages and social oppression would be depressing? Certainly, not me from two days ago when I foolishly decided that it is an ideal time to read Hardy at his worst, apparently. Review to come.
THE OBSCURITY OF JUDE
As a Hardy admirer, this novel deeply annoyed me.
Jude the Obscure was the last finished novel Hardy wrote, first serialized in a magazine with some censure and alterations to the original text which was published in 1895. The novel documents the unhappy wasted life of the aspiring protagonist Jude Fawley, who gets denied access to education, whose human nature binds him into two doomed marriages, and who lives a life devoid of dignity, love, status, or respect leading him to death without fulfillment.
The novel is a bleak, hopeless critique of society. In particular, a critique of:
1. Limited and denied educational opportunities for the working class
2. The high church dogmatism that forces people to stay in loveless marriages despite personal despair
3. The position of women and systematic oppression that forces social judgment upon any unconventional lifestyle
Jude (who shares the name with the patron saint of hopeless causes) is Obscure because he does not belong in the society he lives in. He might belong if he had been granted entrance into the College of Christminster or if he hadn’t met Sue. He could have lived an average, uneventful life of a church parson or married somewhere in England with a woman unlike both Sue and Arabella except Hardy devoids him of any social benefit and personal fulfillment and any probability for content.
Instead, he gives him a character of an undestined intellectual, an idealist who is overruled by „..the human (that was) more powerful in him than the Divine“, surrounds him with judgemental narrowminded people(typical of the time) who either take advantage of his character (Arabella), pity him (most of his acquaintances from Christminster), or avoid him altogether and tops it off by writing one of the most conflicting female characters of the late 19th century that I have read of: Sue Bridehead the female asexual intellectual who happens to be his cousin.
By accumulating a huge amount of anguish on not just Jude, but other characters as well(Sue, their children, Father Time, Phillotson) coupled with excessive allusiveness (frequent quotations from the Bible and Greek tragedies, among other works), a stark contrast of characters (Religion vs skepticism: Jude vs Sue) which is emphasized even more by their later role reversal Hardy creates a very unpleasant reading experience. A reading experience which, unlike the mastery of The Mayor of Casterbridge, where every chapter is crafted with great care; feels inept, lifeless, and strenuous.
Nevertheless, Jude the Obscure holds its ground in portraying the passage of time and how in tune with it is the change of social values, a new age where past wisdom is inadequate and where selfishness and primal instinct survives and dictates our everyday lives, as seen in the character of Arabella and Vilbert, who are perhaps the only satisfied characters in the novel. In that sense, we return to one of Hardy’s recurring themes which made his readers fall in love with his work: the eternal conflict between the Natural, primal state of a man and the repressive unnatural social and cultural norms that limit his freedom.
THE OBSCURITY OF JUDE
As a Hardy admirer, this novel deeply annoyed me.
Jude the Obscure was the last finished novel Hardy wrote, first serialized in a magazine with some censure and alterations to the original text which was published in 1895. The novel documents the unhappy wasted life of the aspiring protagonist Jude Fawley, who gets denied access to education, whose human nature binds him into two doomed marriages, and who lives a life devoid of dignity, love, status, or respect leading him to death without fulfillment.
The novel is a bleak, hopeless critique of society. In particular, a critique of:
1. Limited and denied educational opportunities for the working class
2. The high church dogmatism that forces people to stay in loveless marriages despite personal despair
3. The position of women and systematic oppression that forces social judgment upon any unconventional lifestyle
Jude (who shares the name with the patron saint of hopeless causes) is Obscure because he does not belong in the society he lives in. He might belong if he had been granted entrance into the College of Christminster or if he hadn’t met Sue. He could have lived an average, uneventful life of a church parson or married somewhere in England with a woman unlike both Sue and Arabella except Hardy devoids him of any social benefit and personal fulfillment and any probability for content.
Instead, he gives him a character of an undestined intellectual, an idealist who is overruled by „..the human (that was) more powerful in him than the Divine“, surrounds him with judgemental narrowminded people(typical of the time) who either take advantage of his character (Arabella), pity him (most of his acquaintances from Christminster), or avoid him altogether and tops it off by writing one of the most conflicting female characters of the late 19th century that I have read of: Sue Bridehead the female asexual intellectual who happens to be his cousin.
By accumulating a huge amount of anguish on not just Jude, but other characters as well(Sue, their children, Father Time, Phillotson) coupled with excessive allusiveness (frequent quotations from the Bible and Greek tragedies, among other works), a stark contrast of characters (Religion vs skepticism: Jude vs Sue) which is emphasized even more by their later role reversal Hardy creates a very unpleasant reading experience. A reading experience which, unlike the mastery of The Mayor of Casterbridge, where every chapter is crafted with great care; feels inept, lifeless, and strenuous.
Nevertheless, Jude the Obscure holds its ground in portraying the passage of time and how in tune with it is the change of social values, a new age where past wisdom is inadequate and where selfishness and primal instinct survives and dictates our everyday lives, as seen in the character of Arabella and Vilbert, who are perhaps the only satisfied characters in the novel. In that sense, we return to one of Hardy’s recurring themes which made his readers fall in love with his work: the eternal conflict between the Natural, primal state of a man and the repressive unnatural social and cultural norms that limit his freedom.
„ ‘I have been thinking,’ she continued, still in the tone of one brimful of feeling, that the social moulds civilization fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to the real star-patterns. I am called Mrs. Richard Phillotson, living a calm wedded life with my counterpart of that name. But I am not really Mrs. Richard Phillotson, but a woman tossed about, all alone, with aberrant passions, and unaccountable antipathies….“
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
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
You can read a book from even ten years ago and think, "Wow, how the times have changed!" Going back over a hundred years for Jude the Obscure, I don't think I've ever felt a stronger sense from a book that we live in a different emotional world. Every cause of tragedy in this book is something Western readers really don't have to worry about anymore.
My chaos-brain rooted for whom was essentially the story's villain, since I did grow tired of the endless loops of arguments our heroes found themselves in about the nature of love and commitment. Those moments would have been intolerable had Hardy's writing not been explosively beautiful. There is no page, or really any line, that's devoid of craft. Hardy worshipped language, and every thought and even the harrowing moments are painted delicately.
My chaos-brain rooted for whom was essentially the story's villain, since I did grow tired of the endless loops of arguments our heroes found themselves in about the nature of love and commitment. Those moments would have been intolerable had Hardy's writing not been explosively beautiful. There is no page, or really any line, that's devoid of craft. Hardy worshipped language, and every thought and even the harrowing moments are painted delicately.
Tragic tale of of a man’s life filled with disillusionment and disappointment.