Thomas Hardy and His 'Jude The Obscure'

Biography

Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June 1840 in Higher Bockhampton , a village within the parish of Stinsford to the east of Dorchester in Dorset, Britain. Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet. Hardy was trained as an architect in Dorchester before moving to London in 1862; there he selected as a understudy at King's College London.

In 1910, Hardy had been appointed a Member of the Order of Merit and was too for the first time nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was nominated another time for the prize 11 years afterward. Hardy was stunned by the destruction caused by First World War. He Victorian realist within the convention of George Eliot, he was impacted both in his books and in his verse by Romanticism, including the verse of William Wordsworth. He was exceedingly critical of Victorian society, particularly on the declining status of rural individuals in Britain, like those from his native South West England.

Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, initially, he gained fame as the author of novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Caster bridge, Tess of the d'Urbervilles , and Jude the Obscure. During his lifetime, Hardy's poetry was acclaimed by younger poets who viewed him as a mentor.

Hardy had a vision of a post religious society. He grew up in an era of narrow religious values and certainties. These ideas were beginning to disappear during his mature years as a poet. About his novels he first wrote The Poor Man and the Lady, he failed to find a publisher. He abandoned the novel and wrote two more novels Desperate Remedies and Under the Greenwood Tree .

In Far from the Madding Crowd, the novel is set in Wessex. Then he wrote The Mayor of Caster bridge, The Woodlanders , and Tess of the d'Urbervilles , the last of which attracted criticism for its sympathetic portrayal of a 'fallen woman'. Jude the Obscure, published in 1895, met with an even stronger negative response from the Victorian public because of its controversial treatment of sex, religion and marriage. Its apparent attack on the institution of marriage caused strain on Hardy's already difficult marriage because Emma Hardy was concerned that Jude the Obscure would be read as autobiographical.

Hardy published many volumes of poetry-over 900 poems in all. His poetry is straight to the point [spare and unadorned]. Though some consider his poetry to be unromantic, Hardy was imaginative and explored interesting feelings, just like the Romantic poets did. Hardy’s poetry explores the themes of rural life and nature, love and loss, cosmic indifference, the ravages of time, the inevitability of death and the inhuman ironies of war. Hardy’s poetry and novels contains great moral conviction.

Thomas Hardy is best known for his novels, all of which were published in the 19th century. His last novels, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, are generally considered his masterpiece . Thomas Hardy in both philosophical attitude and artistic technique, firmly belongs in this modern tradition.

About the work - Jude the Obscure

Jude the Obscure is one of Hardy’s masterpieces. During the time of the novel’s composition, Hardy was living between the turn of the 20th century and the end of the 19th century. The Victorian age is an momentous period, amid which great changes have taken place. Jude the foremost vital character in the novel is established within the central sociological typology of Hardy’s Wessex fiction, it may be a vision of the chaotic absurdity of human life outside the matrices of history and culture.

Jude is a consistent completion of Hardy’s sociological fiction. It is clearly a interesting novel embodying exceptionally distinctive social structures from the earlier books and the novel is an expression of Hardy’s dismay and bewilderment at the disturbance of the rustic community. It is an exploration of the chaos that takes after from excessive individualism and rationality. It is without a doubt the story of a difficult and tragic past culture, but inspires an ethical sensibility continuous with the past.

Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure was published in 1895, its critical responses was so negative that Hardy decided never to write another novel. Jude the Obscure attacked the institutions Britain held the foremost : higher education, social class, and marriage. It called, through its story, for a unused openness in marriage laws and commonly held beliefs about marriage and divorce. It introduced one of the first feminist characters in English fiction: the logical, free-spirited Sue Bride head.

Hardy is celebrated for his appalling heroes and courageous women and the grave, socially critical tone of his narratives. His best known works are Tess of the d'Urbervilles, The Return of the Native, Far from the Madding Crowd, and The Mayor of Casterbridge. All his books are set in Wessex, a fictional English district modeled after the Dorset province. They deal with ethical questions, played out through the lives of individuals living within the farmland, and point to the darker truths behind pastoral dreams.

Jude the Obscure centers on the life of a country stonemason, Jude, and his love for his cousin Sue, a teacher. From the starting Jude knows that marriage is an ill-fated venture in his family, and he accepts that his love for Sue curses him doubly, since they are both individuals of a reviled clan. Whereas love can be distinguished as a central topic within the novel, it is the institution of marriage that's the work's central focus. Jude and Sue are miserably hitched to other individuals, and after that drawn by an unavoidable bond that pulls them together. Their relationship is beset by catastrophe, not only because of the family revile but moreover by society's hesitance to acknowledge their marriage as legitimate.

The shocking murder and suicide of Jude's children is the climax of the book , and the other events of the novel rise in a crescendo to meet that act. From there, Jude and Sue feel they have no recourse but to return to their past, troubled marriages and die inside the confinement made by their youthful blunders. They are drawn into an unending cycle of self-erected oppression and cannot break free. In a society unwilling to acknowledge their dismissal of tradition, they are ostracized. Jude's child senses wrong doing in his conception and acts in a way that he considers will offer assistance to his parents and his siblings.

The main victims of the society's unwillingness to acknowledge Jude and Sue as man and spouse are the children , and Sue's own sentiments of shame from her divorce. Jude's initial disappointment to go to the college gets to be less important as the novel advances, but his obsession with Christ minster remains. Christ minster is the location of Jude's first encounter with Sue, the catastrophe that rules the book, and Jude's last minutes and death. It acts upon Jude, Sue, and their family as a representation of the unattainable and danger to which Jude yearns.

In this novel Jude is the main character who comes from uncertain struggles ,unnoticed his aspiration and dies without leaving a mark. He is ambiguous , internal conflicts are taking place from knowledge to sexual desires which are two different views of the world. Therefore he is struggling with himself and with the world. Though he is intelligent and determined for knowledge but not well equipped with what he wants.

Thomas Hardy here points out that he is more human than divine . He is obsessed with ideals and intellectual life and he searches for ideal women who will be both lover and companion. Jude finds two ideal women in this novel Arabella and Sue. At last he reconciled his fate and realizes what it is before he dies. Sue Bridehead is another important character were Jude and Thomas Hardy praises her as charming and intelligent. But also she is self-centered, intelligent but knowledge is fashionable. She is afraid of emotions and desires. She is less than ideal and as 19th century woman gives more freedom than she is able to handle. Jude encounters a different view of life because of Sue. She is also means which makes Jude's hope frustrated and undergo suffering and defeat.

Arabella is a least complex character who is not ambitious. She is in search of man who will satisfy and provide comforts and luxuries in life. Arabella understands a good deal of emotional life of other people, especially women. She never finds what she wants. She is enterprised, and self-interested. Phillston is a man who is neither to like nor to dislike. He is eminently respectable man even though he fails to achieve his dream like Jude. He goes largely unnoticed.

Little Father Time is another minor character in the novel, the boy was never given love and he was matured than his age who is depressed and lacks curiosity and joy in everything. He is portrayed as symbol of Jude's broken marriage, lovelessnesss and bad luck. The novel is composed in the third person point of view. The portrayal remains with Jude all through the novel, but once in a while moves into the minds of one of the other three fundamental characters. However, the point of view needs the omniscient characteristic that most advanced readers are usual to.

Thomas Hardy's style has rather heavy and ponderous with awkward rhythms and tendency towards circumlocution. The language used in some parts of the work seems stilted and pompous. In this work Hardy tries to avoid authorial comment, result is his protagonists tends to have lengthy lectures on the topic marriage, religion and divorce , lack a conversational tone. Hardy's style is quite distinctive, the clumsiness and roughness gives his writing an individuality and charm. For his other novels he offers the readers many descriptions of Wessex. He excels in using landscapes to create atmosphere and to recreate varied pictures of rural life.

Conclusion

Much of the novel serves as a vessel for Hardy’s feedback of English Victorian society. Most of this critique is pointed at the institution of marriage, but Hardy moreover targets education, class, and hypocrisy. The early part of the novel includes Jude’s journey to be acknowledged into a college at Christminster, a college based on Oxford. Jude works for a long time educating himself on classical dialects, but he is never accepted simply because of his social class and poverty. In Jude’s unjustified disappointments Hardy illustrates the shamefulness and classism of the educational framework.

Relating to the marriage subject, Hardy too emphasizes the abusiveness of Victorian society in dealing with any irregular domestic circumstance. Jude and Sue cannot discover a room or a consistent work as long as their marital status is anything but traditional, and Phillston loses his teaching occupations since he permitted Sue to leave him. Hardy was distant ahead of his time in numerous of his views – suggesting that colleges ought to acknowledge individuals of the working class, couples might live together being hitched, and even that the father of a child have to be the woman’s business alone – but Hardy’s society was not arranged for such input. The backfire against Jude the Obscure was so unforgiving that Hardy gave up writing altogether.

For me the novel Jude the Obscure is a novel that gives me a moral that guard your dream that is given by God and make it your life long aim to pursue it , ignore all the momentary failures and obstacles. Always to believe in God and maximum try to come to closer to your goal, knowing you have fought a good fight. This is one of the main interpretation.

The book also gives us reflection of the Victorian era during that period. In the novel Jude the obscure Hardy tries to bring Sue as an independent women , with free will and who is deeply rooted in the concepts of twenty first century. Sue is free spirited and thinker who reconstructs the novel , imposing restrictions and law on her behaviors and body. Hardy contradicts from the Shavian thoughts of Modern Lady, while displaying Sue without being constricted inside the narrow compass of a specific kind of woman. Sue, hence, gets to be a figure that combines a few miniature viewpoints of lady that makes a difference the readers project her effectively within the present day concept of lady in this twenty-first century.

The marriage is based on the intuitive love between two individuals and accepts in free union which isn't dependant on any corrupt contract. But the individuals of 1890 s were not arranged to acknowledge this ‘free love’ or ‘free union’. In spite of the fact that Sue and Jude could be a Victorian couple but they are strikingly like a pair of present day partners. This concept has presently become a require for modern society to avoid the dangers of broken marriage.

The failures in those marriages builds up Hardy’s idea of duality that's an critical perspective of Victorian era but the seed of broken marriage is profoundly established within the context of modern period. Hence, Hardy’s introduction of Jude the Obscure stands independently inside the rush of other books of common thoughts. Jude the Obscure accomplishes the epithet ‘modern’ for its journey for flawlessness of hopeful fulfillment within the form of intolerable impediments.