Rating: 
Summary: Hardy needed help!
Review: When I first read this book, all I could think was "Oh my God. Another tragedy!" I've come to the conclusion after reading this, 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' and 'Tess of the D'Burvilles', that Hardy must have either hated life, hated women, or both. However, my appreciation of this book has risen slightly since I have had to study it within the context of the ideologies it represents. (I am currently doing a unit on Victorian Ideologies at the best uni in Western Australia.) This still doesn't make the tragic ending any less horrific and unsatisfying and frustrating and just plain awful!!! Thinking about it now makes me cry! I couldn't cry when I was reading it because I was so mad! But in retrospect, how sad. Please take my advice and DO NOT read this book if you're feeling depressed! But for an insight into the ideologies that trapped both men and women of the Victorian era, 'Jude The Obscure' is certainly well worth a read.
Rating: 
Summary: Brillantly tragic.
Review: This was an amzaing novel for not only it subject matter but its handling and the depth of its charaterlization. Every step of the way Jude and Sue seemed so real that you wanted tp see what ahppens to them. THe novels brillantly probes the meanings of the charater and their realtionships. Every step of the way I was riverted to reading and when i had to stop I often felt that i could not, Simpl amazing
Rating:
Summary: Dark and Beautiful
Review: This book, as I'm sure you have heard by now, is unbelievably sad. Yet, it lures you into its spell and keeps you connected to the characters, though what each of them go through is horrible. For, within this sad, miserable love story, is a beautifully poetic tragedy. Perhaps the way it's written is what makes me think so. I love the classic Greek tragedys, myths, and legends, and from what I have read, Hardy was influenced by these same things. In any case, it captured me. It has the fable-like magic of "Tess of the D'Urbervilles," while still holding its own as a unique work. I love this book and the author who wrote it. He had a great talent for cutting the excess and presenting a simple picture of life's complex situations.
Rating:
Summary: woman are not so easy to understand
Review: We see women of type "Sue" all time but we never can understand them as was potrayed in the book. They are caught between moral and desire. They endup doing what they never desired and suffers in the end. Unfortunately, they are given much higher tolerance to suffer and take pains to the level of absurdity. We men like "jude" find them totally irrational creature and can never understand them. Hardy's heroines always in some sense provoke the desire to understand them. Hardy is as usual The Best.
Rating:
Summary: Thomas Hardy changes a Seattle residents' view of the Brits.
Review: As a British person, I am perplexed as to how this novel could possibly change the view of the Seatle resident on the Brits (see review by Seattle). I dread to think what his or her opinion of the Brits was before this novel, let alone her revised opinion of us since reading the novel. It is amazing how simplistic some of these prejudices are, especially since they can be re-vamped in such a shallow way by reading a Thomas Hardy novel, which completely sums up British culture in a nut shell ( I think not). I always think it's advisable that to hold an opinion, you must have an educated and broad justification for it. That means until you know what you are talking about, remain respectively non-judgemental about other people etc in the world. Nevertheless, this is a wonderful book by the great Thomas Hardy. It is dark, moralistic and tragic, so don't expect a pleasent Jane Austin type read. The film, made from the book, starring Kate Winslet and Cristopher Eccelston, is a superb adaptation of this novel. It's grim and hopeless theme is well portrayed. I reccommend you to read this book!
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent!
Review: Just read it, I really didn't enjoy English Lit until I read this book. It altered my entire view on the Brits.
Rating:
Summary: Love in the air
Review: The story of a man of high ideals but lowly background, who throws himself into a seemingly endless fight against the conventions of his time & who finds himself torn between two women: the seductive, scheming Arabella & the intelligent, iconoclastic Sue.
Rating:
Summary: Tragically unrealistic
Review: I read Jude as a challenge. I couldn't relate to the characters at all. Except maybe Arabella. Jude and Sue were tremendously sad characters. Jude was obviously an intellegent man, but idiotic in his view of Sue. Sue was a sorceress, contented only when messing up other people's lives and leaving them broken-hearted. Though very well-written and to some extent heartfelt, Jude to me was a classic with poor morals and suicidal mortals.
Rating:
Summary: Inspiring and horrifying at once. As relevant as ever.
Review: This novel renewed my fascination with the written word. Hardy's prose has a uniquely akward elegance, his characters truly live within the text, and the story grips us and keeps us up at night. Horrifying and invigorating at once, it kept me dreaming of certain possibilities dreamed of one hundred years ago, and still yet to be realized. A comparison to Tess can reveal a great deal about the past fifteen years in American culture, considering the fact that Jude has begun to overshadow Tess in the eyes of social critics as Hardy's greatest contribution. After reading these two novels, I believe they show us how far we've travelled in terms of gender equality: just as far as we had travelled one hundred years ago. Jude's new-found popularity shows our own subtle shift from a culture failing to recognize the plight of the victimized woman, to one underhandedly rejecting the emergence of the outspoken, independent, "modern" woman. More than that, these books remind us of exactly who suffers in the wake of our obstinance. In its time, this novel was one of the few in history to affect real social change. It was the sited inspiration for the re-organization of the English Public Education system. Unfortunately, not all of the ills of society can be cured with fiction. We're still working on some of them, Tom. Please have patience.
Rating:
Summary: A tragic tale exposing the moralistic, class-based society.
Review: Jude The Obscure is a heart-rending, tragic tale about an ordinary, rural boy, who seeks to make his name at Christminster (Oxford) university. His aspirations to learn are readily felt by the reader and the heartache felt by Jude on being refused admission to learn is only a beginning to the tragic tale that Hardy sets out hereafter. Having experienced an unsuccessful marriage with Arabella, who could not sympathise with his desire to read and learn, the reader is forever hopeful that he will eventually find somebody who is able to share his ambitions and respect his sensitive nature. It is this hope that stays with the reader throughout the remainder of the book. Jude and Sue's story, though more tragic in its day, still strikes a chord with anybody able to sympathise with the horrible irony of their situation. Although standing outside of society and detesting the morals and conventions of the time, both Jude and more so, Sue, cannot fight against the poverty th! ey are pushed into or the religious teachings that they have been brought up believing. It is their poverty that leads Jude's son to hang both himself and Jude and Sue's other children and it is this same poverty and the tragedy of the children's death that forces them apart. The children's death to Sue signals that her and Jude should not be together but have responsibilities to their past (once again Hardy's attack on the damage caused by religion). Their 'forbidden' love labelled as such because of the religious Victorian morals only serves to increase their poverty as Jude's chances of either securing a successful job or gaining admission to Christminster become ever more few - exposing the class-ridden society for what it meant to its victims. Hardy's only fault in writing Jude the Obscure is to expose too harshly the innate weakness of Sue (who seems unable and unprepared to throw off the shackles of Victorian society) and the inability of Arabella to empathise with ! Jude's desire to go to Christminster.
|
