His love life is no more successful, as he seems to choose unsuitable women. From the title we understand that he is an obscure man for his choices make no sense. If I remember correctly, all along we are reminded of what could have been. Nothing could be more melancholic. Despite my lack of maturity at the time I read it and the gloom that involves the novel, a feeling of amazement still rises in me when I think of it.
Thomas Hardy must have been a master to inspire me so at my youth. But nobody did come, because nobody does; and under the crushing recognition of his gigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world. View all 24 comments. I was completely undecided, so took the action of a coin toss to decide for me. Problem, had not a penny in my pocket, so whisked out a visa card and launched it across the room.
Frontside up - Tess Backside up - Jude Jude it was then Don't worry Tess, you will have your day! He might have won my card toss but there is no winning in Hardy's final novel. A novel of such bleak and devastating intensity it's little wonder he finally called it a day. Stirring up a feel 3. Stirring up a feeling of failure and disappointment in life, the protagonist Jude Fawley is a scholarly chap who aspires from an early age to study in the university town of Christminster, situated in Hardy's fictional county of Wessex, become a clergyman, and distinguish himself in the world.
But two women would enter his life, Arabella and cousin Sue, to ruin everything His tragic story moved me in such a way that was almost unbearable, too painful to comprehend, the light at the end of the tunnel didn't even exist. Jude is brought up by his old Aunt and is devoted to a local schoolmaster, Phillotson, and dreams of following in his footsteps after he moves to the Oxford-like town of Christminster. He builds a fantasy life for himself, and believes this is based on his entire destiny, well, that is until the selfish Arabella Donn enters the frame, followed by unhappy Sue Bridehead.
What happens next? Hardy skewers the cruelty and hypocrisy of the way society works. Of the other earthy characters in it, dare I say they actually made me laugh at times, but generally any cheerfulness is on a very small level to say the least. I even felt sorry for the Pig.
View all 17 comments. Shelves: read-before , read-in , dost. One must not approach her without defensive precautions and fear of possible snares. She was, indeed, just like a snare, with her lips open and her arms stretched out to man. What seems evident according to the incriminating behavior of the female characters in the story is that women are not to be trusted for their either manipulative or gullible nature.
A perverse seductress full of inessential stratagems and provocative pouts, whose tribulations ruin the lives of two good-hearted men, tantalizing them with sharp mind and incorporeal beauty. One can throw stones at this treacherous creature based on false social embodiments of love and despise her impetuous rebellion or choose to dig deeper and endure acute spiritual turmoil in an inner battle of wills between abstract ideology and constrained reality.
One can choose to condemn those who attempt to struggle against centuries of subjection or be forgiving for the inconsistencies that define humankind and its perplexing contradictions. Because when human nature is tamed by oppressive convention or shackled by fundamentalist morality, abrupt and almost unpardonable reactions can unchain from the most emancipated and spiritually untainted individuals.
Call me biased but I choose not to condemn Sue Bridehead. I choose to embrace her obscure mystery and all the ambiguity of her complex psyche instead.
Free from his conjugal ties, Jude starts treading the path of his dreams and moves to Christminster, where he finds work as a stonemason refurbishing the phantasmagorical walls of the same elitist Colleges that turn him down because of his humble origins. The sightless or the guileless? The one who clings to ghostly reflection of the idealized mirage or the one who fumbles with faltering candlelight amidst the engulfing darkness of moral hypocrisy? The devotedly religious or the unredeemed pagan?
The ethical collectivist or the self-destructive individualist? Nature is as astonishing a miracle as it is an inescapable curse. Two pure doves are liberated only to be hunted down again to have their hearts ripped out to produce a fake love potion by a perfidious quack, a rabbit caught in a gin bellows in agony bleeding to a slow and agonizing death, a compassionate man dies alone with a feeble blessing on his cracked lips, a heedless woman punishes herself masochistically with a long lasting self-debasement and spiritual corruption.
Nature is the bleak mirror of doomed existence and certain obliteration. A mirror that Hardy turns around to us proving we are all characters of his dire novel and that the world is a too much obscure place for those visionaries whose ephemeral light glows ahead of their time, regardless of hollow social constraints and racking tragedy. The rawness of nature will eventually find all the characters in this novel called life and their only choice will be whether to face her with bitter damnation or with a forgiving blessing on their lips.
I choose not to condemn. I choose to embrace. I choose to absolve. I choose to be merciful. What will your choice be? Because no one ever does. View all 38 comments.
Nov 20, Nate rated it it was ok. Read this if you're looking for that final push towards suicide. View 2 comments. Jul 02, Captain Sir Roddy, R. I was completely overwhelmed and truly needed a few days to reflect upon the experience and collect my thoughts before attempting a review.
Bear in mind too, that this is the first time that I have read Jude , and I sincerely believe that this novel may require a lifetime of reading and study in order to fully tease out and understand the import of Hardy's message. First, a little background about the novel. This novel took Hardy sometime to write.
He started with an outline in , and did not complete the book until It was first published serially in Harper's New Monthly Magazine from December to November , and then it was published in book form.
Hardy took a lot of heat for the novel from reviewers and critics, other authors, as well as the general public. It developed a reputation as Jude the Obscene. The relentlessness and vitriol of the negative criticism caused Hardy to forsake ever writing another novel of fiction; and he spent the remaining thirty some odd years of his life concentrating on his poetry.
I also want to include, at this point, a strong ' Spoiler Warning. Therefore, continue reading at your own peril. All I can observe is that regardless of what I can say, or what you may have heard about this novel, it is a monumentally huge novel that simply must be read by any and all students of great literature.
Okay, consider yourself forewarned. In some respects, Jude the Obscure can be looked upon as the coming-of-age story of Jude Fawley. Others have postulated that it is also an anti- bildungsroman as it documents, as we shall see, the slow and torturous destruction of Jude and his ideals. Interestingly, this is the only Hardy novel, that I am aware of, that starts with the protagonist as a child and follows him through his life. In Jude the Obscure , Hardy addresses the prevailing Victorian attitudes associated with social class and standing, educational opportunities, religion, the institution of marriage, and the influence of Darwinism on modern thought.
Throughout the novel, Jude, Sue Bridehead, and Arabella Donn are used by Hardy to explore and develop the all-encompassing portrait; and to some degree, indictment; of the society and time that Jude and Hardy reside in.
It seems that the novel sets up an examination of the contrasts between the idealistic romanticism of the second generation poets, John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley Hardy truly admired Shelley!
First and foremost, this is a novel of ideas and ideals. Jude is a sensitive young fellow, always concerned with the lot of the animals and people around him. As a child he is even dismayed at seeing trees cut down, and can't bring himself to scare away the 'rooks' crows that are eating the seed from a newly planted field that he's been paid to protect.
Later, as an adult he is compelled to leave his bed late at night and find the rabbit, screaming with pain, that has been caught in a trap and dispatch it as an act of mercy. These are some of the first signs of Jude-the-romantic, and Jude-the-dreamer. The ideals he has formed are something really quite different from that of the world around him, and this can't bode well for him. The first third of the novel focuses on Jude's desire to become an educated man and become admitted to the great colleges of 'Christminster' loosely modeled on Oxford in Hardy's 'Wessex' countryside.
Jude, like Hardy, is an autodidact and teaches himself Greek and Latin, and views Christminster as the "city of lights" and "where the tree of knowledge grows.
Idealism aside, Jude now begins to understand that his social class and standing will continue to strongly influence his future. Issues associated with Love and Marriage also dominate much of the novel's landscape, and can be quite painful to read and consider. Early on, Jude is essentially trapped into a truly disastrous marriage with the attractive, but coarse young woman, Arabella Donn, the daughter of a pig-farmer.
Trust me, she can slaughter the animals that Jude cannot. Arabella's 'unique' method of introducing herself to Jude is to throw a bloody pig's penis at him as he walks by while she is cleaning and sorting the offal of a slaughtered hog! Simply put, Arabella is the 'Delilah' to Jude's 'Samson. Ethereal and fairy-like, Sue is an idealist too, but her idealism tends towards a more modern view; even though some its roots reflect that of the second generation Romantics too.
At first blush, it seems easy to assume that Sue endorses the Shelleyan view of 'Free Love' and not binding oneself contractually and exclusively to only one other.
While Shelley meant this from the perspective of sexual gratification, Sue has developed her own brand of romantic idealism that leads her to believe that it is only the iron-clad contract marriage that dooms the relationship.
I had to spend some time thinking about Sue and her beliefs, but I have come to the preliminary conclusion that neither she, nor Hardy, are anti-marriage, but that it is the nature of the contract of marriage in the Victorian age i. In fact, in support of this notion, Hardy made a notebook entry in , in which he writes, "Love lives on propinquity, but dies of contact. Also, it may well be that Sue's character reflects a bit of Hardy's cousin, Tryphena Sparks, a woman that he is rumored to have had an affair with in , and who later died in Hardy, in the Preface to the edition of Jude , stated that the novel was partly inspired "by the death of a woman" in Even though Sue Bridehead bears children with Jude, sexual relations and intimacy remains a very difficult proposition for her.
For example, when married to her first husband, Richard Phillotson, she is startled awake by him entering her bedroom absentmindedly they slept in separate rooms , and she leaps from a second story window into the night rather than sleep with him!
Again, much of the time she is with Jude, they also sleep in separate bedrooms, which has the effect of keeping Jude's passions for her quite 'hot'. This is not, however, the romantic ideal of the loving wife and life-mate that Jude has envisioned for his dear Sue though. It is also not the picture of romantic idealism for Sue either, as she is truly looking for a partner through which she can fully experience Love's spiritual and intellectual bonds, and not just the contractual or the sexual.
Toward the end of the novel there occurs such a shocking event that finally and irrevocably alters the lives of Jude and Sue, and largely severs their tenuous emotional and spiritual bonds to one another. The romantic ideals of both are smashed hopelessly and simply cannot be reassembled.
Modernization has come and displaced the old world romanticism of Jude Fawley and Thomas Hardy. Jude-the-Dreamer and Jude-the-Idealist have no place in this new order, because to transcend to his ideals means that he must die as Keats and Shelley so eloquently discovered. Unfortunately for Jude, even Arabella is present to witness his final suffering and agony. Jude's story has become, in a very real sense Hardy's modern retelling of the 'Book of Job.
It is full of allusion and metaphor, and rife with biblical references and nods to Hardy's literary ancestors, Milton, Wordsworth, and Shelley. Read this novel! When you are through, let me know; for I'd love to discuss it with you and see what you think too. Five out of five stars for me.
View all 12 comments. Let those who read this derive their little satisfaction from the beauty that we sometimes discern springing from the melancholy, otherwise one should not partake this endeavor at all. Happy Halloween? Sometimes we just give up. Jude the Obscure is a book for those some.
Jude is a dreamer, an orphan, and a pauper, the worst combination in a man. It is as if, from the very beginning, his life was meant for sadness. He does suffer, and he endures much. Coming from a Christian country where divorce is not legalized, I am aware that people refer to the option of divorce as a smear to the sanctity of marriage.
Let love shared be through and torn upon the whims of the two involved and no one else. Jude and Sue, visionaries ahead of their generation, were meant to suffer for a belief that reflected the encroachment of the modern, developing world on the traditions of rural England.
Like Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton before them harbingers of change are always burdened with the wrath of the world. They are sacrificial lambs to mark the dawn of a better era, doomed pigs slowly bled to death at the cruel hands of the unmerciful world. Let me now talk about the relationship between Sue, Jude and Phillotson.
She is smart, young, beautiful, unaffected by creed. Sue must choose between Jude and Phillotson. While Phillotson represents reality, he who has given up on his dreams and has settled himself into a conceded position. Sue at first chooses Jude, for like young scholars, we all in our youth pursue noble ambitions and dreams of grandeur.
But social order affects and time flies, people are forced to turn to reality, and thus Sue leaves Jude for Phillotson no matter how she detests it. In the end, we all leave our dreams and settle into this reality we face. When I came here first, I had a neat stock of fixed opinions, but they dropped away one by one; and the further I get the less sure I am. I doubt if I have anything more for my present rule of life than following inclinations which do me and nobody else any harm, and actually give pleasure to those I love best.
There, gentlemen, since you wanted to know how I was getting on, I have told you. Much good may it do you! I cannot explain further here.
I perceive there is something wrong somewhere in our social formulas: what it is can only be discovered by men or women with greater insight than mine--if, indeed, they ever discover it-- at least in our time. As I age, I realize that I believe less and less in worldviews and ideas which when I was younger, I was quite passionate about.
Now I would not bother much with noble things like religion, social democracy, world peace, nationalism, and even justice. Do not get me wrong, I admire these social constructs but I do not consider them as a something I can devote my life to.
I am of their cause, but now I am a pragmatic. I am a selfish cynic with nothing but my own satisfaction in mind. Let the innocent devote their lives to their grand causes, let me not suffer. For my field of vision is getting narrower as time passes and darkness consumes. For like Sue, I have abandoned Jude and have commingled with Phillotson.
He suddenly grew older. It had been the yearning of his heart to find something to anchor on, to cling to—for some place which he could call admirable. Should he find that place in this city if he could get there? Would it be a spot in which, without fear of farmers, or hindrance, or ridicule, he could watch and wait, and set himself to some mighty undertaking like the men of old of whom he had heard? As the halo had been to his eyes when gazing at it a quarter of an hour earlier, so was the spot mentally to him as he pursued his dark way.
All around you there seemed to be something glaring, garish, rattling, and the noises and glares hit upon the little cell called your life, and shook it, and warped it. But let us not give up no matter how dreary things may seem. For to hope is human, and to suffer more so. Apr 17, Alex rated it it was amazing Shelves: , rth-lifetime , top , parenting. When their marriage goes sour and Arabella moves to Australia, Jude resolves to go to Christminster at last.
However, he finds that his attempts to enroll at the university are met with little enthusiasm. Jude meets his cousin Sue Bridehead and tries not to fall in love with her.
He arranges for her to work with Phillotson in order to keep her in Christminster, but is disappointed when he discovers that the two are engaged to be married. Once they marry, Jude is not surprised to find that Sue is not happy with her situation. She can no longer tolerate the relationship and leaves her husband to live with Jude. Both Jude and Sue get divorced, but Sue does not want to remarry. This version continued the bowdlerising of all references to sex and religion begun at the serial stage.
This first edition would eventually become replaced in by the third, and now definitive, version of the novel, published by his principal publisher, Macmillan. That was not the end of the matter. Hardy continued to tinker with the text for the rest of his life. There's a copy in the Dorset County museum which contains many of Hardy's second and third thoughts about the edition. Plainly the furore aroused by first publication, in which the bishop of Wakefield was said to have burned his copy of the book, affected him deeply.
Morgan, Rosemarie, ed. Student Companion to Thomas Hardy. Morgan, Rosemarie. Women and Sexuality in the Novels of Thomas Hardy. New York: Routledge, Oliphant, Margaret. Page, Norman, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Paterson, John. Pinion, F. Thomas Hardy: His Life and Friends. Houndsmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan, Schwartz, Barry N. Slack, Robert C. Nineteenth-Century Fiction 11 : Schaffer, Talia. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, Tomalin, Claire.
Thomas Hardy; The Time-torn Man. London and New York: Penguin Books, Weber, Carl J. New York: Columbia University Press. Wells, Herbert George.
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