Rating: 
Summary: almost perfect
Review: This novel is just one step shy of being a true and great masterpiece. But it's still excellent and its near perfection makes it a compelling read. It's also a deeply moral work, although attacked upon publication as an insult to marriage and religion. No, it isn't. It's the story of a decent Christian guy named Jude who has dreams of getting educated and becoming something in life, so he teaches himself Latin. He meets and falls for a pagan girl named Sue, with whom he has nothing in common. Love works in mysterious ways. Although Thomas Hardy's writing is powerful and gripping with great storylines, his stories are ultimately tragic and convey his pessimistic view on life. But I prefer unhappy endings anyway. He's my favorite Victorian novelist. David Rehak
author of "Love and Madness"
Rating: 
Summary: This book ruined your life? Get serious...
Review: Someone has posted that this book ruined their life. How pathetic. Did Hardy leave you so sad and apathetic that you were incapcitated to live a normal life or are you looking for someone to blame your miserable life on? Either way, it seems that this book has made a lasting impression, which any great book should do. I guess it should have a warning- WARNING TO READER: ONLY FOR THOSE WHO TAKE RESPONSIBILTY FOR THEIR OWN ACTIONS. That said, this is a book that people will be reading years and years from now. Hardy was one of those Modernists writers that was on the cusp; hard to label and not easliy confined into a period. Low Modernism? Late Victorianism? Forget the easilt attched titles and labels and enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Almost his last book, and very important
Review: "Jude, the obscure" was almost Thomas Hardy last book. When it was published in 1895, the novel received reviews that were so negative that the writer resolved never to writer another novel. But there is a reason for such a negative reception of the novel. This book attacks some of the most important institutions for the British: education, social class and marriage. His narratives are known for the tragic heroes and heroines who are in the service of his critical tone. In this book it is not different. The title's Jude isn't the only one used for this purpose. Hardy creates one of his best characters in the book: the free-spirited Sue Bridehead.
Love and tragedy walks hand in hand in "Jude, the obscure". Jude Fawley dreams of going to a university. But he is an orphan raised by his working-class aunt, who can't afford. He is lead to a career as a stonemason. Although inspired by the ambition of town schoolmaster, Jude can't leave the village after marrying a young woman named Arabella. But their marriage didn't work, she moves to Australia.
But another woman will touch his heart. He meets his cousin Sue, and tries no to fall in love with her. She is going to marry shortly. But she is not happy with her husband, and leaves him to live with Jude. But the problems are just begining in Jude's life.
Hardy's narrative deals with characters living in a circle of self-erected oppression that they cannot break free. The society, that cannot accept their rejection of convention, is the main cause of this oppression. As people who chose their will, Jude and Sue are ostracized. The fact of the society doesn't accept their marriage is one of the main causes of their tragedies.
Jude's obsession with education, going to Christminster University becomes more and more important toward the end of the book. Alongside with Sue, college represents the thing Jude aspires but can't have.
With "Jude, the Obscure", Thomas Hardy created an allegory of the ties that society uses to keep people in the place it wants us to be. His writing is evocative and his characters very human, aspiring common things that fall short when a repressive society is ruling.
Rating:
Summary: Ahead of its time.
Review: One of my favorites - even by today's standards, Hardy's novel is wildly forward-thinking and shockingly real. The character of Sue Bridehead is one of the most complex and intriguing characters in Victorian literature. Torn between tradition and modernity, she cannot reconcile the world she lives in with the one she envisions. She and Jude are alike in that way, and it binds them to each other in a way that is inevitably tragic.
JUDE THE OBSCURE examines what few novels dare to explore, and none as eloquently: the undeniable link between superstition and religion; the absurdity of entering into a marital contract; and the cruely of a society that breaks those that do not fit within its mold. Heart-breaking and narratively unmatched, Hardy's novel is a cautionary tale that, more than 100 years later, shows us how much as a society we have yet to overcome.
Rating:
Summary: Yes!
Review: Simply awesome. Had me pumping my fist in the air and yelling, "Yes!" over and over again. I read this in one marthon session of fist-pumping and yelling.
Rating:
Summary: Jude the Obscure reads like a 21st century soap opera.
Review: In my personal opinion, Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, is the most enjoyable, fascinating and memorable book I have ever read. The characters could easily step into the 21st century. The saga of Jude reads like a modern day soap opera but with much more heart. I highly recommend readers to experience this monumental piece of literature by Thomas Hardy. Definitely one of his finest.
Rating:
Summary: Mason, Maid Moot Marriage, Miss Mark
Review: More than most novels I have read, JUDE THE OBSCURE consists of an extraordinary number of reverses of position, changes in thought, and zigzags of principle. With a background of rural England or smaller towns such as Oxford, (called Christchurch here) this dark story describes the tragic lives of two people who dare---far before our time---to consider love and marriage in a different way. Jude Fawley aspires to be a scholar or even a minister of God, but wanders into an unfortunate conventional marriage with Arabella, a barmaid with an eye for the main chance. He becomes a stone mason, but pores over Latin and Greek texts by night. Despite forewarnings of the unhappiness in marriage which runs in his family, he falls for a cousin, Sue Bridehead, an ethereal, philosophically-inclined woman, who loves Jude in return but marries a dry schoolteacher despite that. Later, as Jude's wife has run off to Australia and as Sue regrets her decision, they come together at last, only to go through a series of extraordinary vicissitudes. One cannot help but wonder if Sue is not more than a little mad. Rain, wind, dark church towers, and damp stones fill this story with atmosphere, but the constant changes in direction and convenient appearances of previous characters at propitious moments may prove a little aggravating. Though these can be taken as criticisms on my part, I admired Hardy's last novel as an attempt to do a very difficult thing---to show the lives of two ordinary people who at some moments transcend their ordinariness with sublime courage, only to lose their way and sink back into the sordid murk of daily existence and terrible tragedy. The characters, in the end, achieve nothing, yet they lived, they too reflect the extraordinary variety of the human condition. Jude, the character, reflects on his life, saying, "...it was my poverty and not my will that consented to be beaten. It takes two or three generations to do what I tried to do in one; and my impulses-affections-vices perhaps they should be called-were too strong not to hamper a man without advantages, who should be as cold-blooded as a fish and as selfish as a pig to have a really good chance of being one of this country's worthies." Hardy's condemnation of middle class hypocrisy and the narrowness of "scholars" comes through constantly. Set against the entire array of world literature available, perhaps JUDE THE OBSCURE is not at the top of the scale----Hardy's indecision as to the direction of his plot prevents that---- but it is still a good novel.
Rating:
Summary: This book ruined your life? Get serious...
Review: Someone has posted that this book ruined their life. How pathetic. Did Hardy leave you so sad and apathetic that you were incapcitated to live a normal life or are you looking for someone to blame your miserable life on? Either way, it seems that this book has made a lasting impression, which any great book should do. I guess it should have a warning- WARNING TO READER: ONLY FOR THOSE WHO TAKE RESPONSIBILTY FOR THEIR OWN ACTIONS. That said, this is a book that people will be reading years and years from now. Hardy was one of those Modernists writers that was on the cusp; hard to label and not easliy confined into a period. Low Modernism? Late Victorianism? Forget the easilt attched titles and labels and enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Hardy's best novel
Review: In my own personal quest to read as many of the "classics" as possible I picked this one up some years ago after seeing it referred to by many critics and writers as a beacon of excellent prose. I was pulled into Jude's world almost immediately and it took a while to escape it completely when I had finished the book. It's not pessimistic, it's just that Jude lives a tragic life and Hardy expresses it to the fullest. This book started me on a quest that didn't end until I had devoured each of his other novels and a biography of his life. As good as the others were, this one tops them all.
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