Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure

The novel Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy, was outgrowth published unabridged in 1896. It narrates the ill-fated existence of the protagonist, Jude, from the moment he is save a male child at Marygreen and is inspired by a rural schoolmaster to think of a university schooling, to the moment in which he dies, alone and unattended. It tells the story of a humanness whose dreams and ambitions are gradually destroyed, and end up world shattered. Jude lives an enternal cyclical movement, in which he never gets any closer to whaever he is looking for, due to forces which search to be operating once against him all the time.In this essay, I will conduct an analysis of these social forces, in parade to show that Hardy did create a graphic depiction of ninteenth century British society. According to digest 1, a realistic depiction is similar to the vision we give birth if go up a highschool tower and remove the housetops of the houses, to show what is really happening in the ro oms exposed. It is a duty of the realistic writer, to dismantle appearances and non to reproduce the facade, and to give us not further the world viewed, as closely as the world comprehended . Hardy shows us that Jude is making choices at a certain level, referring to his personal vitality, just there are social and economic forces which operate on him so he does not take decisions, once these serving limit his choices. Early on in the novel, we see Jude struggling against the circumstances. The resolution of Marygreen is set in opposition to the university t take in of Christminster. The young Jude sees Christminster as an enlightened place of learning, relating it to his dreams of higher education and his vague notions of academic success.Yet while Jude lives quite close to Christminster and knows a man who is discharge to live there, the urban center is al right smarts only a distant vision in his mind. It is nearly within his reach but at the same time un attainable. Th is physical distance is a metaphor for the abstract distance amongst the impoverished Jude and the privileged Christminster students. For the first time in the novel we see Jude heading towards a destination, and being unable to reach it. At the start of the novel, Jude is portrayed as a determined and innocent young man who aspires to things greater than his gageground allows.He resists succumbing to the discouragement of those around him and does not fear the gap he is creating mingled with himself and the other people of his village. He is seen as eccentric and perhaps impertinent, and his aspirations are dismissed as unrealistic. These circumstances might set out led him to marry Arabella. All through his young adult life, he avoids going to Christminster. He appears to be afraid of the failure he might encounter there. In Arabella, he sees something attainable and instantly gratifying, as opposed to the university life, of which he fears he may never become a part.In this way Jude tries to avoid disap meridianment, but finds that he cannot live within the confines of an unhappy marriage. The freedom he receives later on Arabella leaves is only partially liberating It lets him be independent in a physical sense, but because he is still married, it forbids him to achieve legitimate romantic happiness with someone else. Jude is attracted to Christminster because of march, who he seeks with a strange devotion, despite his aunts word of advice that he should stay away from he.Taken together with her warning that marriages in their family never end well and with the position that they are cousins, Judes haste to find and fall in savor with carry out creates a sense of forewarning well-nigh his fate. He finds that the Christminster colleges are not welcoming toward self-educated men, and when he accepts that he may not be able to study at the university after all, he starts drinking. He began to see that the town life was a book of humanity infinitely more palpitating, varied, and compendious than the gown life.These struggling men and women onward him were the reality of Christminster, though they knew little of Christ or Minster. That was one of the humours of things. The floating population of students and teachers, who did know two in a way, were not Christminster in a local sense at all. The narrator tells us how big the distance between his aspirations and his relaity is, since Jude works so hard that he can no endless dedicate himself to his studies at night So fatigued was he sometimes after his days work that he could not aintain the critical attention necessary for thorough application. He felt that he wanted a coach a friend at his elbow to tell him in a moment what sometimes would occupy him a weary month in extracting from unanticipative, clumsy books. The episode in the pub, in which he recites Latin to a group of workmen and undergraduates, shows the contrast between Judes intellect and his appearance. Chris tminster will not accept him because he belongs to the working class, yet he is intelligent and well-read through independent study, he is advised to prevail in his own sphere.The realization that his learning will help him only to perform in pubs sits heavily with Jude, as we can tell from his reaction at the pub You pack of fools he cried. Which one of you knows whether I have said it or no? It might have been the Ratcatchers Daughter in double Dutch for all that your besotted heads can tell See what I have brought myself to the crew I have come among He looks for consolation with Sue and shows her what he considers to be his worst side I am so wicked, Sue my heart is nearly broken, and I could not bear my life as it wasSo I have been drinking, and blaspheming, or next door to it, and saying holy things in disreputable quarters repetition in idle bravado words which ought never to be uttered but reverently Oh, do anything with me, Sue kill me I dont care Only dont hate me and despise me like all the tranquility of the world Jude is comforted only by the idea of becoming a clergyman. Once again, he does have the ability to make a decision, but he only chooses to become a clergyman because his choices were confine by the conventions and prejudices of society.The moral implications of the friendship and romance between Jude and Sue emerge as an important issue. Judes doomed existence is also shaped by other peoples indecision. Sue shows herself to be both radical in her intellectual views and conservative in her social practices. She leaves the Training College because she discovers that its rules are intolerably strict, and she cannot conform to the rules of her establishment in Melchester either. She comes to see Jude as a protector, and reveals to be quite an impulsive character, and not to care much about Judes intense feelings for her and the implications of her actions Suddenly, however, quite a passionate letter arrived from Sue. She was qu ite nonsocial and miserable, she told him. She hated the place she was in it was worse than the ecclesiastical designers worse than anywhere. She felt utterly friendless could he come immediately? though when he did come she would only be able to see him at limited times, the rules of the establishment she prove herself in being strict to a degree. It was Mr. Phillotson who had advised her to come there, and she wished she had never listened to him. Phillotsons suit was not scarcely prospering, evidently and Jude felt unreasonably glad. He packed up his things and went to Melchester with a lighter heart than he had known for months. When they meet, the narrator describes her as unhappy and changed, but not anxious and desperate as she was when she wrote the letter, since Jude is the only one overcome by emotion Though she had been here such a short while, she was not as he had seen her choke. All her bounding manner was gone her curves of motion had become subdued lines. The screens and subtleties of convention had in appendition disappeared.Yet neither was she quite the cleaning lady who had written the letter that summoned him. That had plainly been dashed off in an relish which second thoughts had somewhat regretted thoughts that were possibly of his recent self-disgrace. Jude was quite overcome with emotion. she had altogether the air of a woman clipped and pruned by severe discipline, an under-brightness shining through from the depths which that discipline had not yet been able to reach. Sue makes it clear that she doesnt see Jude as a cheatr, and is annoyed by the fact that he is love with her.She goes thorn and forth in her protests, sometimes wanting to enter into a romantic relationship with Jude and sometimes believe it to be misguided. When he confesses that he is married, she accuses him of dishonesty, but there is a hint of disappointment in her woodland because his marriage only adds a further obstruction to their attainable ro mance. She marries Phillotson in this state of anger and frustration, and Jude feels that he cannot and should not dissuade her. By doing so, Sue hopes to protect her reputation and achieve the traditional lifestyle of a married woman.After Jude spends the night with Arabella, Sue tries to push him away again, then invites him to her home soon after. Sue does not know what she wants, but is slowly realizing that she finds Phillotson repulsive. She does not admit to loving Jude, but still turns to him to be her protector. She recognizes her own intellect and her potential for a satisfying career in teaching, and marries Phillotson partly out of a require for a pleasant work environment. She resists a romantic relationship with Jude, but falls in love with him despite her misgivings.However, when it comes time to marry, she does not wish to enter into a legal contract in which she would again be confined and their financial difficulties push them into a wandering life. The uncertaint y surrounding their status foreshadows difficulties to come, as there is a sense of illegitimacy lingering in their relationship. Society dispproves of it, and the children and Sues pregnancy only add to that. The tragic conclusion of the novel arises as the inevitable result of the difficulties faced by the two cousins.When father Time kills himself and the other children, Sue is the one who cannot handle it and start regarding their relationship as sinful and the expiry of the children as punishment. She thinks the child of a legitimate union had punished the ones of an illegitimate one, as the result of her transgressions against the installation of marriage. She marries Philoston again in an act of hopelessness, almost masochistic behaviour, once she feels repulse for him and knows she will never love him. This action may be seen as an attempt to conform, but it is also a selfish act. Sue could have left Jude and lived on er own, kept struggling against conventions as a divorc ed woman.She finds a solution which is, at the same time emotionally torturing and financially comortable for her, while Jude remains lonely and poor, having had both his academic and his romantic aspirations destroyed. Jude then enters a state of self mutilation and acceptance of the suffering. He goes back to Arabella, who once again represents the last and worse of his options, and an act of desistance. After Jude gets sick she imediatelly starts looking for another possible husband, and slowly reveals, throughout the novel, to be quite an animalistic character.She personifies the danger of a bad marriage, and is heartless to the point of being unable to sacrifice a boat race to be with him while he is dying(p) or even to take care of his body after he dies. The Jude we see in the last chapter is a handicapped vesion of the young, ambitious one from the beginning of the novel. He is depicted as a man who is exhausted after having spent his life fighting against a strong opponent , represented by 19th century British society. It ended up mutilating him and left him with nothing, longing for his death.The lack of conflicts resolution and the sense of vagueness in Arabellas suggestion about Sues miserable future reveal the modernity of the novel. Accroding to Schweik, Hardy successfully images life as first impulsive passion and confidence leading to disappointments, collapse of hopes, and death. 2 With its open ending, Jude the Obscure turns out to be a novel in which the relationship between form and content becomes the form itself.Bibliography Brooks, Peter. Realist Vision. naked oasis and London, Yale University Press, 2005. Hardy, Thomas. Jude The Obscure. Penguin Popular Classics, England,1994. Schweik, Robert C. The Modernity of Hardy in Jude the Obscure. In A Spacious Vision Essays on Hardy. Newmill, The Patten Press, 1994, p. 49-64. Stern, J. P. On Realism. In Concepts of Literature. Routledge Kegan Paul, 1973. Watt, Ian. Realism and the Novel. I n Essays in Criticism II, p. 376-396, 1952. 1 Brooks, Peter. Realist Vision. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2005. 2 Schweik, Robert C. The Modernity of Hardy in Jude the Obscure. In A Spacious Vision Essays on Hardy. Newmill, The Patten Press, 1994, p. 49-64.