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beritt 's review for:
Jude the Obscure
by Thomas Hardy
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.