"Jude the Obscure" by Thomas Hardy (the longer entry)

WARNING: THIS POST IS FULL OF SPOILERS, SO DO NOT READ IT UNLESS YOU HAVE READ THE NOVEL.

CHARACTERS:
Jude Fawley – The protagonist
Arabella Donn – Jude's first and last wife
Susanna “Sue” Bridehead – Jude's second wife
Richard Phillotson – Jude's schoolmaster; Sue's first husband
Aunt Drusilla – Jude's aunt
Jude “Father Time” Fawley – Jude's first son with Arabella


I had wanted to write a more thorough discussion of “Jude the Obscure,” because I love Hardy and am pretty certain that I will eventually do some sort of academic project based on his work. These blog entries are the only kind of note I am taking on the works I have been studying, so, for my future self's sake, I need to write a good one.

The reason I love Hardy is because, as I have said before, I believe a novelist is rare who is equally brilliant at plotting and characterizing, especially ones who deal with very serious themes. “Jude” is a great novel because it is well structured, filled with multi-dimensional characters, and together they explore the themes in an intelligent, insightful way. It is the themes and characters that I want to discuss in this entry.

Some of the obvious themes are education, poverty, and norms & deviance. These themes derive from the politics of the time in which the novel was written (late 19th-century). But things weren't much different prior to that time, and certainly they are not so different now; to many, education is still a luxury. People still have to pay an incredible amount of money to go to college, and while there are scholarships and financial aids, a lot of people are still denied a chance to pursue higher education for lacks of funds.

To Jude, education was his means to become somebody better than what he is―to escape, perhaps, the poor condition of his life and make something of himself. He sees education as valuable, and as something that will improve his class status. But it is not to be misunderstood that he only sees education as the means; education is, within itself, valuable to him. Jude expresses on several occasions his resentment toward Christminster and their incompetent scholars (1), but never once does he show any sign of having any regret toward being a learned man. When he realizes that he is too old to pursue his dream, he tries to pass it on to Father Time. This shows that he still believes in the scholarly life―if he can't have it, at least he wants his son to have it.

I have discussed education and poverty; let us now turn our attention to norms & deviance. This theme is explored through Sue, a woman ahead of her time. Like Austen's heroines, Sue refuses to let the rules of society constrain her. In fact, she is much more defiant of her place and time than any of Austen's characters. While Austen characters may appear headstrong and defiant, none of them actually succeeds in going to the extent that Sue has gone. Elizabeth in “Pride & Prejudice” may have been daring when she turns down the marriage proposal of her rich cousin Mr. Collins, a match which would have saved the status of the family, but she does eventually end up marrying the richest man in the novel, Mr. Darcy. While she chooses to marry him for his virtues as opposed to his wealth―she had turned down his proposal before she had gotten to know him―to the outside world she may appear merely as a woman who behaves properly following her conventions. In fact it is he who defied his conventions, for he had turned down at least two women, Lady Catherine's daughter and Caroline Bingley, whose social positions are more suitable to him than Elizabeth's.

Sue, however, is so headstrong that she refuses, time and time again, to marry the man she loves because she doesn't believe in marriage. As a learned woman, she possesses unorthodox insights that give her a rather pessimistic view of marriage. This is combined with growing up with an aunt who poisons her ear against marriage, making her believe that people of her family do not do well in matrimony. Unfortunately this brings about a series of tragedies, the greatest one being the deaths of her children. The town refuses to accept the “abnormal” and “amoral” status of Sue and Jude's relationship, causing them to have to move around. Father Time, seeing the family being turned away from many inns, thinking that it is their (the children's) fault that life is so difficult for them, which subsequently leads to his murdering his siblings and hanging himself.

It would be unfair to blame this misfortune on Sue's desire to fight for what she believes in; a more modern take on it would be to blame society for constraining her. It is, however, rather disappointing that she turns to God after the great disaster strikes. I do not believe that Hardy intends to make it the moral of the story that Sue should not have defied God and her norms to begin with, and that it is right for her to turn to religion. It is hard to imagine that Hardy would spend most of the novel developing idiosyncratic ideas just to reject them. Perhaps it is to lessen the controversial effects of the novel that Sue turns to God. I can merely speculate, and it is pointless to guess Hardy's or any author's intention. Perhaps we are meant to take Sue as a hysterical woman, whose actions do not necessarily reflect the morals of the novel.

I do not like Sue. Throughout the novel she is rash, childish, jealous, unreasonable, and somewhat bipolar. She agrees to marry Phillotson despite not loving him, but refuses to marry Jude (2). She jumps out of the window, afraid that Phillotson is trying to rape her when he had merely entered her room accidentally. She expresses her intense jealousy toward Arabella despite knowing Jude's history with her. Before they live together, she is unable to control her conflicting feelings for Jude, causing her to treat him one way and write to him in another. While I particularly agree with her view of marriage, I find her very much an unlikable character. Her only redeemable act is probably her going back to Phillotson who is so good to her and whose situation in life had suffered because he had willingly let her go to Jude. By doing so she eventually subjects Jude to a lonely death, and herself to an eternal unhappiness. As Arabella puts it: “[Sue]'s never found peace since she left [Jude's] arms, and never will again till she's as he is now!”

Arabella, on the other hand, is quite a fascinating character. She is a villain, yet I find her more likeable that Sue. Perhaps Hardy intends her to be an ambiguous character, as he gives her the last sentence of the novel, and offers her several moments to do the right thing, such as telling Sue to marry Jude fast. She has made many mischiefs, it is true, but she can often be read as comical, making it doubtful whether the mischiefs should be taken too seriously. Her greatest crime, perhaps, is when she tricks Jude into believing she is pregnant so that he marries her the first time. But as a young woman of her class, her desperation to get married is reasonable, and her action can be attributed to her youthful naivety. The second time Arabella tricks Jude into marrying her, he seems to submit almost willingly. At that point it no longer matters whether he falls for her trick or not; he had simply given up caring what is to be done with him. And despite having lost her interest in him, she still stays behind to take care of him, unlike Sue who deserts him.

Regardless of which is the better woman, the main part of the plot, which is summed up by the quote of Esdras that begins the first part of the novel, is about how Jude's life, full of promises, is ruined by women: “Yea, many there be that have run out of their wits for women, and become servants for their sakes. Many also have perished, have erred, and sinned, for women...O ye men, how can it be but women should be strong, seeing they do thus?” The quote also suggests that women have more power than men, and perhaps are even more powerful because of men's ignorance of their power. The novel can be read as anti-women; while Jude begins and consistently remains a likeable character, his wives do not. It is no surprise that a “bad” woman like Arabella would cause his downfall, but it is perhaps shocking that he is given the opportunity to start over just to have it destroyed again, this time by a seemingly “good” woman. According to the novel, then, women are disastrous, and loving them will only ruin men.

The most tragic aspect of this novel is the many glimpses of hope that occur sporadically throughout the novel, glimpses that are soon destroyed by subsequent actions. Is it the masochistic pleasure that I gain from reading Hardy's novel? Or is it simply because of its gripping plot and intense orchestration? Perhaps both. Most people will probably remember this novel for its shocking scene of the deaths of three children, but it also possesses many other aspects―the extraordinary characters, the universal and timeless themes―that beg to be studied in years to come.

Word Count: 1624


1. After mastering Greek and Latin texts, Jude later finds out that the scholars at Christminster lack the very knowledge he had worked tirelessly trying to acquire.
2. Unable to bear the difficulty caused by their being unmarried any longer, Jude and Sue finally get married after having attempted to do so many times. The wedding, however, does not appear in the novel, and is only referred to, making it an unimportant event despite the build-up.

"Jude the Obscure" by Thomas Hardy

The first novel of Thomas Hardy that I read was "The Mayor of Casterbridge," an intense psychological drama that requires a much higher level of literary ability than what I had acquired at the time. Still I found the novel very much fascinating, and Hardy's plotting skill quite impressive. Years later, not so long ago, I read "Far From the Madding Crowd," which became one of my most favorite novels of all time. My impression of Hardy is that he is one of the best novelists in all the worlds. His story is so well structured, and the pacing impeccable. He has the ability to write really good plots, keeping your eyes on the page, while sacrificing nothing when it comes to character development. This is also apparent in "Jude the Obscure."

In "Jude the Obscure," what Shakespeare does in his tragedies, Hardy does in the novel form. It is neatly structured, and the development of Jude from the hero to a tragic hero well orchestrated. Jude starts off as a young boy, orphaned and poor. As the schoolmaster Mr. Phillotson is about to leave the town to continue his schooling, he inspires Jude to believe in books and education. The dream that one day he would go to Christminster to get a college education never leaves Jude; it continues to haunt him and remind him of his failure.

The novel criticizes the politics of the time period regarding education--that it is reserved for the rich and not the intelligence. The main obstacle that stands between Jude and his dream is the lack of money; while he knows the classical texts better than the college students, he is disallowed and discouraged from pursuing his education by those around him. The people in his class also mock him for aspiring to what is beyond his means, as they consider it stupid for a man of his class to want to study books.

Another obstacle is Arabela, a girl who catches Jude's affection as a young man, causing him to neglect his studies. She subsequently tricks him into entering a disastrous and short-lived marriage. After she leaves him, Jude falls in love with his cousin Sue, a young woman who is equally well-read and aspires to be a schoolteacher. As Sue is a woman ahead of her time, she changes Jude's traditional beliefs about religion and marriage. In a time where new ideas had yet to achieve any level of tolerance, their love is tested by discrimination and a series of tragic events.


The novel stirred much controversy at the time of its publication. The magazine that first published it insisted on altering the plot. When the book edition first came out, it was publicly burned. The main source of controversy is probably Sue's overt resistance to religion and unorthodox view of marriage. Despite the troubles that they have to endure, the novel still seems to endorse her idiosyncrasies.

I find the novel very depressing yet so well written it is hard to put down. Jude appears from the beginning a sympathetic character. What is so tragic about the novel is that there appear many hints of possibility for Jude's life to turn around for the better, all of which turn out false. The novel is so carefully planned that it kept me entertained throughout. When it comes to plot and characters, a lot of modern writers are noticeably stronger at one or another. Hardy, who is very skilled at both, has a lot to offer them.

I'm planning to write another extensive entry that explores further the characters; they are complex and intriguing, and offer many topics of discussion. It will contain a lot of spoilers, so don't read it until you have read the novel. Do I recommend this novel? Have a really strong heart, or a firm indifference, is all I can say.