Jude the Obscure

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Summary: IT'S BEAUTIFUL TO KNOW
Review: Before reading Jude the Obscure I had read Tess of the D'ubervilles. Being pretty young, the writing style of Hardy was a little bit hard to follow and I floundered during so many inferred scenes of the book. i.e.when Tess all of a sudden just has a baby. I think that was freshmen year in High school the first time, but I have since read it again, and along with Jude, I quite enjoyed it. I learned to love the scenes that made you infer, or guess. I love his language and it is beautiful to know that almost every person, every thing and place has significance and has been thought about.
As morbid and sad as Jude may have been, I thought it was an amazing book. Hardy makes you think long and hard after he hits you tragedy and fate. It seems that Tess and Jude could be brother and sister books, there were so many characters and ideas that paralelled, which made Jude so much more interesting to read. I think one of my favorite parts of the books is the fact that although a lot happens from start to finish, it is the simple emotions and lives that make the story. I like thinking about symbols like the pig in Jude and the birds in Tess, it is also amazing to me how Hardy can bring everything back together through these symbols. On page 386 Arabella says, "You couldn't kill the pig, but you could kill me." I like how consistent Hardy is in his meaning behind symbols, and also how reliable it is to know that every cities name and every characters name has been thought over and has meaning to the story.
When I finished Jude, I wasn't quite sure what to think. The results were so extreme and tragic, that it was hard to place the exact meaning. I think though, what I got from it was the difference between true love and lust, also the debate between fate and choice, not to mention, what the book said about education, religion, marriage, and society. For my own sake of sorting things out, I'll go through each of these and what I understood of them. Education; Jude's education and love of knowledge seemed to be a constant thing that he strived for. He dreamt about Christminister, and when he finally got there, he was told he shouldn't be there, yet through his entire life he never gave up on the idea of education and books, he ended up dying in the city he loved, and on his last walk through the town he saw the men he'd always wanted to be, their spirits were laughing at him. Next, religion, there was not nearly as much written about God and religion in Jude as there was in Tess, but there was still many conotations to it. It seems that many of he and Sue's defining moments take place in a chapel. There is also the characters directly related to religion, Mr. Phillotson, and the name Jude is the name of a saint. I've run out of time, but I loved the book, I love to read Thomas Hardy. I cannot even begin to imagine putting together so many characters and situations and ideas into such beautiful words and images.

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Summary: Jude and the Pressures of Society
Review: Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy, shows that to follow the social and religious pressures of the world only brings sorrow and misery. This theme is proven by the misinterpreted religious acts of Sue, the lack of morals in Arabella, and social pressures that keep everyone from happiness. The story focuses on the life of Jude Fawley, a poor dreamer. He is unlucky to find himself, at an early age, in the care of his embittered aunt: who does not encourage or help him to hope for a brighter future. His dream, ever since he was eleven, is to go to the town of Christminster and study among the intelligent and fantastic scholars, however this dream is never found because of the mistakes and obscure actions that Jude, or those around him, take to follow the social norms.
Throughout the book, Jude rarely loses his dream of being educated at Christminster, but because of obstacles along the way he finds himself more unhappy than before, and worse off. His dream is first detoured because of the untimely "courtship" with Arabella. Although Jude had no intention of remaining with Arabella, he would not let his honor, or his social façade, be ruined by not marrying a woman who carried his baby. Since the first day of their marriage, Jude regrets having been succumbed to the pressures of society. The legal action of marriage, which is forced by social pressures, only caused misery in Jude's life. He was unable to go to Christminster, and once he met Sue, the relationship was severely delayed because he felt he must be loyal to Arabella. Arabella, on the other hand, did not live according to social pressures. Although she married Jude, she left him quickly for Australia where she seemed to be content. She had another husband in Australia and no doubt other "one-night stands" with other men that she was able to seduce or get intoxicated. But, because she had the courage (or stupidity) to disregard the society's negative opinion on a woman being disloyal to a husband she was able to live freely. Even in the end of the novel, after she realizes Jude is dead, she goes to the boat races-disregarding what a normal member of society would have done. Although her actions are not moral or virtuous, she is able to live the life of her own choosing because she does not take to the extreme religion, social pressures, or moral obligations that others do.
On the other hand there is Sue. Sue through parts of the book is able to receive full happiness by ignoring social and religious pressures, but still living a virtuous and moral life. In the eyes of society, one must be legally married to engage in intercourse, but because of Sue's fear of marriage her and Jude only take on the appearance of marriage. During this time she had happy times with Jude and the children; but as soon as she would start to think about "right" in the terms of others she would become upset. Whenever Jude and Sue attempted to get married, a socially pressured action, Sue would become upset and emotional. And as soon as her children died she became frenzied and looked to strict religion as the answer to her problem. If anything in her life went "wrong" from there on out it she believed it was her duty to suffer for the cause of religion. After not accepting religion for awhile, she became the complete opposite and punished herself by marrying and having intercourse with Phillotson. Her emotions against herself and her new belief that she needed to live a strict religious life, full of pious actions only cause her sadness. She was held back from love and made miserable by the pressures of society and religion that were around her.
Between these two women, the burdens of society, and the standards of the church-going world Jude was trapped. While he studied and dreamed of going to Christminster he was laughed at by the world around him because they all knew that a poor low-class man would never be allowed or able to attend there. From the beginning there was no hope for him to become an educated man because of his place in the society. The people around him and the rules that created the society kept all the people in the level of society that they already inhabited. Then because of Jude's relations with Arabella, he was forced, by society pressures to marry her-crushing his dream of going to Christminster. Although Arabella eventually leaves, he is still linked to her emotionally (because of his upbringing) and cannot fully enjoy life. Once he meets Sue, he is once again, held back by the pressures of society. Sue is his cousin, and at first, they feel that a relationship together might be wrong; then Sue goes and marries Phillotson creating more social, and now religious, barriers. Throughout the entire story Jude continues to be blocked, broken, and torn apart by social and religious pressures slamming down on him. Whether it was his unfulfilled dream of going to Christminster, his chains of marriage with Arabella, or his heart breaking relationship with Sue, Jude was not able to get past the social and religious barriers to have a happy life.

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Summary: Weakness at its worst
Review: Jude the Obscure centers on the life of a neglected commoner with dreams of breaking the chains of society, which hold him bound, and becoming a more educated and proper man. The only challenge that stands in his way is his poor choice in women. Unfortunately this stumbling block becomes more than enough to hinder the weaker Jude along his way. He is not only held up by the lower class, to which he belongs, but seems to be pushed down from the upper classes, preventing his natural progression from both sides of the social spectrum.
The cunning Arabella Dunn, a poor country, first beguiles him using him as her escape from the very un-civilized life she had been leading. Having never had any real contact from members of the opposite gender, and no one that even pretended to care for him before, he was easily betrayed by his feelings. Thomas Hardy portrays Arabella as very manipulative only using Jude as a means for furthering her own well-being. She fakes a pregnancy to convince Jude to marry her, instantly stopping his education and centering his attention solely on providing for his newly acquired family. Hardly any time had passed and Jude had forgotten what he set out for. This reminds me of a quote I once heard, "Don't let what you want now get in the way of what you want most." Far too often Jude lets his temporary desires distract him from his ultimate goal of gaining an education.
Once Arabella leaves Jude he finally has the opportunity again to pursue his goal of becoming socially advanced. However, once again his pursuit of manipulative women prevents him from success. Jude pursues his cousin, Sue, who represents the women of the upper class. She has some of the education that Jude has sought for, yet this seems to do nothing for her as pertaining to life choices. Her marriage to Phillotson is just one example of how even the learned may not be wise. Her decision to pursue Jude following both their divorces, leads to further misery. Not being accepted by the community and never actually committing to marriage puts quite a strain on their relationship. Sue's indecision only prolongs the suffering of Jude and his poor choices. The punishment seems to transcend generations as Little Father Time decides to save him and the other children from this misery by hanging them in the closet one night.
Not only does Hardy portray marriage as the main stumbling block along Jude's path but also as the constraint that prevents people from truly attaining that which will make them happy. First of all, Jude and Arabella seemingly have a marriage without love. The marriage appears to be only a social commitment to provide security and other comforts regarded by society. Sue is unhappily married to Phillotson even though he provides her with financial stability, an educated partner, and seems to be the ideal husband. Sue and Jude decide not to enter into that covenant sighting their youthful mistakes as precedence. Even without the confinement of marriage their love is unable to flourish with society looking down upon them and no real commitment rendered. Hardy implies that in marriage one must sacrifice of them for another who is looking after his or her own aspirations.

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Summary: Anti-marriage message
Review: Jude the Obscure is a tragic novel that brings forth a very anti-marriage message, which was a shock to the strict Victorian society it was published in. The main character, Jude has relationships with two women that are completely destroyed by the effects or thoughts of marriage. Jude's overall goal from his early childhood is to receive learning at the colleges in Christminster, a privileged world that contrasts with his poverty. But marriage makes these goals disappear into his dreams even until his death. His marriage to Arabella, which is only made because she tells him falsely that she is pregnant, is sealed only because he feels a duty to care for her because of the "child." Arabella manipulates and ridicules him for any dreams or devotions he has, and eventually walks out on him. Jude's marriage to her is a great financial burden because he must buy a house for them and because her material fancies are a large monetary weight. When she leaves, he sends her with even more of his hard-earned money. Before his marriage, his sights were set on earning money to make it to Christminster. His marriage wasted time and money, and further distracted him from his goal, as well as comes back to haunt him many times throughout the novel. The second woman who enters his life, Sue Bridehead, has left a marriage of duty as well. Sue and Jude grow in love together, but every time they approach the thought or subject of marriage, they only consider any the negative aspects. They go to get married several times, but fail each time because they feel that if they do marry, their love will be forced and not true. Marriage is looked upon as a chain which will compel them to live together, instead of a flourishing admiration and respect that they feel when they are freely loving each other. By being with Sue, and not married to her, Jude has happiness in his life. Once again, Jude begins to work towards earning his way to somehow get some respect and higher learning at Christminster. But Sue feels a deep religious commitment to her first marriage, and in a very intense climax of the plot, she turns away from the happiness she has discovered and returns to her first marriage. Although her entire soul quakes at the thought of the man she has married and-in her mind-must return to, her religious desires overcome every other. She is completely miserable, and she enters the bedchamber of her husband only as an act of putting herself through the most intense suffering as a repentance. Jude is tricked in a drunken state to return to his marriage with Arabella. Once again, Arabella manipulates him so she can benefit from him. Arabella has had another unsuccessful marriage, but turns back to Jude because she feels he can support her. Jude falls ill from the suffering of his soul at the loss of true happiness, which was love without marriage, and eventually dies as he hears the sound of the bells at Christminster tolling. The bells, a symbol of everything he aspired to from his childhood, show how the complications of marriage destroyed his every hope and dream of achieving the goal of an education in Christminster.

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Summary: To Make You Think
Review: Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy is an intriguing book. It is the story of a young man named Jude who aspires to be a religious preacher. In Jude's pursuit of this goal, he is faced with opposition.
Jude is a poor orphan boy who lives with this aunt. He works by day and studies by candle light to get into Christminster, a special college for theologians. All seems well until a voluptuous woman distracts one Sunday from his studying. Before he knows it, he is not longer studying and married to a woman he does not love.
Jude falls in love with another young woman. Society frowns on them for she belongs to another.
Through the credible characters of Jude, Arabella, Sue, and Philloston, Hardy shows the effect society has upon the weak individual. Some would have you believe Jude the Obscure is an awful book, but it is not. It is a book that makes you think. When I was done reading it, I though, "Now what has that got to do with anything?" It has a lot to do with everything. It covers the subjects of God, love, fate, and society. What Hardy has to say should be heard. I recommend reading Jude the Obscure.

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Summary: Conventionality Versus Morality
Review: Thomas Hardy's book Jude the Obscure follows a common theme like his book Tess of the d'Urbeville's. This theme is conventionality verse morality. Hardy's subtitle of Jude the Obscure says it all, "the letter killeth." This interprets to the letter of the law killeth, the social conventions of the Victorian Age figuratively and literally breaks Jude. The basic story line is Jude is first married to Arabella. Arabella tricked Jude into marrying her. Jude is in Christminister and meets Sue, whom he falls in love with. However, Sue gets married to Phillotson. After some time both Sue and Jude get a divorce and end up living together (and never marrying each other).
It is evident in the text that Sue and Jude's relationship is looked down upon (they have trouble receiving lodging because they are not married). Despite the fact that the book shows marriage in a negative light and both women in the book have undesirable qualities this book is not an anti-marriage book. Also, this book could suggest the importance of marrying the right person, so that, one can be happy, but the overall theme is not to promote the importance of marrying the right person.
Hardy uses marriage as the means to manifest the social conventions of the time. By convention Sue and Jude should not have had divorces even though they were participants in unhappy marriages. Even though they both had legal divorces the church shuns them because of their divorces. It is almost an unspoken rule, even though divorces are legally allowed socially they are not approved.
Also by convention, they should not have been living together. Even Jude's son is pressured into the conventions of the time and in the end of the novel hangs himself and Jude and Sue's two sons. In a moral sense Jude and Sue tried to be true to their heart and defied the conventions of the time and attempted to live together. They do not go far enough, they should get married. Jude and Sue are still tied down by the social conventions and can not take the last step to break free of the conventions of the time. Jude and Sue are constantly "on the run" to avoid the stares and shuns from their neighbors.
Hardy is clever in his use of symbolism. The name of the town is "Christminister." This is town, which Sue and Jude have trouble finding lodging. People should be showing Christ like love; however they shun Jude and Sue. There is an abundant amount of irony with the church. The church should help and attempt to understand Sue and Jude but the church neglects the two.
This book is an excellent example for the critique of social convention versus morality. The examples are poignant and the distressing end for the characters makes the criticism of social conventions self-evident.

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Summary: Jude the Obscure
Review: Jude the Obscure is an interesting book, but it is, like most classics, depressing. That is one of the things that makes Jude the Obscure so rich. If it had been a happy love romance it wouldn't be considered a classic. It instead challenges the readers to question the them which is on marriage. Hardy attacks marriage from every angle making the reader feel that there is no hope.

Jude the Obscure has a rich plot that pulls you into the story. You feel for the characters in the book. You want Jude to be able to obtain his goals. You feel frustrated when he once again gets sidetracked from his goal because of his one weakness-women. If you like the classics, especially tragedies, than you will appreciate Jude the Obscure. It is good literature, has great symbolism, and the ending scenes will leave a poignant impression that won't be easily forgotten.

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Summary: Jude the Obscure
Review: There are several novels written in the Victorian era about the life of common people and the struggles they encounter. Jude the Obscure is on the top of many best-seller lists and appears on many Great Literary Works lists, not to mention my own personal list of favorites. Jude the Obscure is a great novel to read if you are looking for complicated characters, emotional injustices, a complex story line, and unexpected events in each chapter. The novel Jude the Obscure, written by Thomas Hardy, portrays the life of Jude Fawley and his relationships with women, his religious obstacles, and other problems faced by a common person in the Victorian times.
Jude is a stonemason who appears to be very religious. His list of faults includes a drinking problem, his ignorance of women, problems dealing with stress, and his inability to decide what to do with his life. In fact, when Jude is not able to deal with the issues in his life, he stops everything that he is doing and thinks only about the problem at hand. After this thought process, he begins to drink and hope that the problem will disappear when he becomes sober. Throughout the novel, there are two women who corrupt Jude in some way, either by turning him away from his religious ambitions, by degrading him in a social atmosphere, or leading him away from his dreams by putting their own first. The women in his life, Sue and Arabella, put Jude at an emotional high of loving him unconditionally or tearing him down to the point of causing him to drink. His two wives (which he has a different times) simply play on his emotions like a roller coaster throughout the novel and use him to get what they want out of life, which they too, are incapable of deciding. Several plot events explain Jude's religious beliefs and how he struggles to sustain those same beliefs in the relationships he has. It is his religious faith and the interactions Jude has with Sue and Arabella that shape the novel and the course of events.
The author, Thomas Hardy, does a great job in illustrating the religious beliefs social expectations of the Victorian period. Hardy uses both women in the novel to portray the ideals of different classes of women on religion and worthwhile. He uses Jude and Phillotson to portray the differing ideals of religion among varying classes, but also to paint the social expectations of men in the Victorian period. Hardy uses the different social classes of the men to as an excuse for their behaviors. For example, Jude does not cheat on his wife while she is away for a year because they are still married. Because Jude values the bond of marriage both from the church and socially, he is faithful while his wife, who does not have the same moral standards, is off getting married to another man. There are several examples in the novel from all four of the main characters that will give insight into various aspects of life and the ideologies of people in different social atmospheres. Hardy also does a great job in describing each of the characters in a way that their description matches their personality traits or their ideals on life. Hardy also brings to life the scenery in which the novel takes place, allowing the reader to visualize the setting of the events. By drawing the reader in visually, he creates more of an emotional appeal and the reader becomes more involved with the events of the novel.

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Summary: Blurred view of life
Review: Jude the Obscure is a novel typical of those written in its time period in England. When I had read fifteen pages into the first chapter, I turned to the title page to see the date-1895. That's correct, this is the time period of The Scarlet Letter fame. For those who are unfamiliar with The Scarlet Letter, it was written in the mid-1850s. The Scarlet Letter would have made an excellent short story of about twenty-five to thirty pages. It made for an extremely dry, slow novel. Jude the Obscure impressed me immediately as following after the same tradition. The difference: Jude the Obscure is twice the length.

Remarkably, however, Thomas Hardy manages to salvage his style. Before too long, I was actually drawn into the tragic story of Jude. He began as a character I could closely identify with. He was born into a working-class family, and he had lofty dreams of a life of distinguished intellectual greatness. He taught himself almost everything that he knew of higher learning, and planned to move to a place where he could be formally trained.

Of course, none of this works out; otherwise, it wouldn't be much of a story. To cut it short, Jude fell in love with Arabella (whom he met when she threw pig parts at him), got her pregnant, and gave up his childhood dreams for a marriage with her. After all, Jude says, "it was better to love a woman than to be a graduate, or a parson; ay, or a Pope!" The remainder of Jude is largely a recounting of his tragic sexual and marital relations with his cousin Sue and later, with Arabella again.

It is difficult for me to sympathize with the pathetic Jude or even credit him as a character by the end of the story. Here is a man who is so determined that he teaches himself languages; he studies tirelessly in an effort to prepare for university. His character is strong. Yet in a matter of weeks he decides that he doesn't care anymore. I've seen men distracted by women before, but he wholeheartedly dumped his dreams and ambitions in favor of a pretty woman with a pig bladder. From there he proceeds rapidly downhill for 350 pages, personifying every possible malfunction of marriage.

This malfunctioning marriage seems to be the sole unifying theme of Jude. Yet it is difficult to put a finger on just what Hardy is trying to say with his story. If he were trying to display all of the shortcomings of marriage, why would Sue, who self-righteously opposed marriage as an unnecessarily binding bunch of paperwork, wind up back sharing a bed with her first husband? If he were using the trouble that came to Sue and Jude by trying to live out of wedlock as a tool to show the power and security of real marriage, why is Sue portrayed as being so unhappy to return to Phillotson, her first husband?

All in all, Jude the Obscure was just not my kind of book. I visited the local paperback exchange a week ago and picked up a few novels by Isaac Asimov. In the author's note, Asimov stated what has become an inspiration to me in my writing (many will recognize this as similar to a famous saying by Twain):

"I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing-to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer Prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics- Well, they can do whatever they wish."

If only Thomas Hardy could make up his mind on what he wants to say and say it, I think we could all be spared an incredible and thought-stifling novel.

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Summary: Just kick the gun an inch closer...
Review: When you watch movies nowadays, more than often you see many of the female characters portrayed as extremely weak in one form or another. In an intense battle scene where our hero is in trouble and needs someone to kick the gun a little closer so he can shoot his enemy, what is the he loves girl doing? Screaming her head off. She nearly ruins the happy ending by her inability to be useful.

I found Jude the Obscure to be somewhat of a literature version of this classic movie scenario. The main female characters did move the plot along, but only in a downward direction. Jude starts out as a young man aspiring to achieve greatness in the learned city of Christminster. Soon, he is lured into a relationship with Arabella, for which he begins ignoring his hopes of high education. While this relationship is not entirely a manipulation of Jude by Arabella-he falls for her pretty hard, even without her trickery-Jude is ready to get out and head for Christminster when Arabella reveals her "pregnancy" and they are quickly married, to comply with the social expectations. Before long, Jude learns that Arabella is by far a much different woman than he first thought. His pushed-aside dreams of Christminster are mocked and trampled by her, and of course he must find a practical job to support them. It doesn't take long for Arabella to get tired of the situation-of Jude's sensitivity to the world, his hopes for education, and his all-around "sissy-ness"-and she heads off to Australia with her parents.

Jude does end up moving to Christminster, where he meets his cousin Sue. For some reason, he falls in love with her. He decides that he likes this girl long before he actually talks to her. Love? Sounds more like attraction. At any rate, through a long and complicated set of events, Sue is married to Phillotson (ironically, the man from whom Jude got his love for learning), and later separated and divorced. Jude also obtains a divorce from Arabella. Jude and Sue develop a friendship, while she keeps him at a distance, knowing of his feelings for her. Arabella returns from Australia and comes to talk to Jude; Sue becomes jealous, and decides to have a "more than friends" relationship with him.

Social expectations dictated that they should be married, and Jude is all for it. Sue has issues, though. She feels that marriage is nothing more than a ceremony that puts bounds and chains on something intangible, and although she and Jude go several times to be lawfully wedded, she always backs out. Without giving away too much of the plot, eventually it's more harmful to her and Jude to NOT be married than to go through with the ceremony. When tragedy strikes the family they have made together, Sue becomes our well-known female movie character. As Jude attempts to pick up the pieces of their broken life, Sue is unable to do anything more than repeat the same ideas over and over-it's a sign, this is wrong, we're sinning, religion is the answer. Quite the opposite from her earlier thoughts in the book, where Jude was planning to be a priest and she constantly disagreed with his religious and moral views. I honestly think that Jude and Sue could have pulled through their hardships if she would have done something more than just "scream." Instead, she chickened out big-time. By her own uselessness at that critical point, Sue led to Jude's eventual death-she couldn't just kick the gun a few inches closer, and the enemy triumphed. Interestingly enough, I think Sue was the enemy. She was Jude's downfall.

Despite all that (in fact, probably because of it), Jude the Obscure is a very good book. The characters are an adventure to become familiar with, and although for me it was frustrating, it was a good read as Jude's life went "down the tube" more and more rapidly. Best of all, you can't actually hear the annoying high-pitched screams I talked about in movies-you'll just have to imagine it.