Hello and welcome to my review of Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy which I read along
with Matthew of Mayberry Bookclub. I will leave a link to his video in the show notes
below. Jude the Obscure is divided into six parts
and each part is set in a particular area of Wessex, Hardy’s fictional landscape,
but which is based on the South-West of England. Here is a map showing the location of Wessex.
Part One begins with the eleven-year old Jude living with his great-aunt in Marygreen.
The story opens with the school-master packing up to leave Marygreen to go to Christminster
the fictional equivalent of the University town of Oxford. Jude is sorry to see him go
and hopes that one day he will be able to go to Christminster to study.
His aunt puts up with him rather than loving him and she has put him to work scaring crows
for a local farmer. But Jude feels sorry for the crows and he
throws away his clacker that he used for scaring the birds and he encourages them to have a
good meal because he says: ‘There is enough for us all. Farmer Troutham can afford to
let you have some.’ Unfortunaely, Farmer Troutham does not agree
with him and sends him packing. Jude then helps his aunt to deliver bread,
but while he is driving his horse and cart he reads and dreams about going to Christminster.
The years pass and when he is nineteen, one day as he is walking along a country lane
talking to himself a particular part of a pig hits him in the ear, having been thrown
at him by a certain young girl called Arabella who has set her sights on him.
They begin a relationship and she tricks him into marriage by pretending to be pregnant.
The marriage is a disaster and it ends by his wife leaving with her family to go to
Australia. Jude meanwhile has been apprenticed to a Stonemason
and he now considers that as soon as he completes his apprenticeship that he will take himself
off to Christminster. Part Two is set in Christminster.
Before leaving for Christminster Jude learns that his cousin Sue Bridehead lives in Christminster
and his aunt warns him to stay away from her. Of course, when Jude sees her, he is immediately
attracted to her. ‘There was not the least doubt that from
his own orthodox point of view the situation was growing immoral. For Sue to be the loved
one of a man who was licensed by the laws of his country to love Arabella and none other
unto his life’s end, was a pretty bad second beginning, when the man was bent on such a
course as Jude purposed. This conviction was so real with him that one day when, as was
frequent, he was at work in a neighbouring village church alone, he felt it to be his
duty to pray against his weakness. But much as he wished to be an exemplar in these things,
he could not get on. It was quite impossible, he found, to ask to be delivered from temptation
when your heart’s desire was to be tempted unto seventy times seven.’
In Chapter One of Part Two Hardy inserts several quotations which are not attributed. My copy
is from 1895 so there are no notes. I assume that Hardy is quoting from such men as Newman,
Pusey, Ward and Keble, noted Oxford Tractarians. On page 118 of my copy he writes this: ‘” Why
must you leave Christminster?” he said, regretfully. “How can you do otherwise than
cling to a city in whose history such men as Newman, Pusey, Ward, Keble, loom so large!”’
This proves that Hardy based Christminster on Oxford.
On Page 131 Hardy writes: ‘It is a unique centre of thought and religion – the intellectual
and spiritual granary of this country’, which could only refer to Oxford University.
Unfortunately for Jude he is not able to take advantage of the intellectual life of the
University when he realises that the advice he receives from a University professor to
stick to his trade if he wants a successful life is all too true. He also thinks that
his love for Sue is also doomed to failure. ‘Deprived of the objects of both intellect
and emotion he could not proceed to his work.’ Disillusioned intellectually and emotionally
he heads back to his Aunt, feeling ‘” the hell of conscious failure” both in ambition
and in love.’ I am impressed with the psychological truth
of Hardy’s descriptions of Jude’s feelings, having experienced similar feelings myself!
Part Three is set in Melchester where Sue has gone to study to become a teacher aided
by Mr. Phillotson, Jude’s erstwhile teacher. When Jude meets up with Sue in Melchester
she tells him that she is engaged to be married to Phillotson and she tells Jude that he mustn’t
love her. The next day she writes to Jude the following:
‘If you want to love me, Jude, you may. I don’t mind at all; and I’ll never say
again that you mustn’t.’ But Hardy is quick to point out:
‘Yet Jude was in danger of attaching more meaning to Sue’s impulsive note than it
really was intended to bear.’ In other words, there is no indication that
Sue loves Jude. Then a shocking thing happens and to appreciate
how shocking this is you need to put yourself into the mindset of the late Victorian period
and to understand their moral and religious sensibilities.
Sue meets up with Jude for a walk and they end up spending the night at an inn. However,
it is entirely innocent. But this is not how it is viewed at the Training-School where
she is studying and she is confined to her room for a week. However, she escapes through
a window, crosses a stream and goes and spends the night in Jude’s room. She removes all
her clothes and puts on some of Jude’s clothes. Again, nothing of a sexual nature occurs,
but this is viewed as scandalous behaviour and she is expelled from the Training school.
She goes to stay with a friend and Jude meets up with Arabella who has returned from Australia
having entered into a bigamous marriage while she was out there. She and Jude spend the
night together at an inn, but she returns to her Australian husband when he pursues
her to England. Sue then marries Phillotson, but it is not
a success, partly because she is physically repelled by him and partly because she is
actually in love with Jude. This is an emotionally fraught story but it
is not gloomy. Hardy handles the psychological aspects of the characters expertly and gives
them both depth and liveliness, so that you come to be invested in their emotional difficulties.
Part Four is set in Shaston where Sue is living with Phillotson, her husband, but they are
sleeping in separate rooms. And, in fact, Sue has asked Phillotson to let her go and
live with her lover. One evening, Phillotson absent-mindedly enters
Sue’s bedroom and she is so aghast that she leaps out of the window. Which I thought
was a bit of an over-reaction on her part. But she is that kind of a girl.
Phillotson concludes: ‘Now when a woman jumps out of a window
without caring whether she breaks her neck or no, she’s not to be mistaken; and this
being the case, I have come to the conclusion: that it is wrong to so torture a fellow-creature
any longer; and I won’t be the inhuman wretch to do it, cost what it may!’
Society being what it was it cost Phillotson a great deal to let Sue go to her lover.
I feel sorry for Phillotson as he is acting very nobly and he is being penalised for taking
a pragmatic view of his situation. The townsfolk expect him to condemn Sue as
an adulteress and they dismiss him from his position as a schoolteacher for condoning
an adulteress in her actions.
I don't feel sorry for Jude. It's a case of choices and consequences.
Although, I do sympathise with his frustration over Sue's emotional wavering. He was expecting
to enter immediately into a love affair at the Temperance Hotel where he had booked a
single room, but she refuses and makes him wait. I know what that feels like!
I thought part four was brilliantly written. Part Five is set in Aldbrickham and Elsewhere.
Here we are introduced to the strangest little boy in all fiction: Little Father Time. He
is Jude and Arabella’s child, who was born in Australia unbeknown to Jude. Now he IS
gloomy. His whole outlook on life is of one who is deeply depressed.
He wasn’t even given a proper name. Sue asks him: ‘But what were you christened?’
‘I never was.’ ‘Why was that?’
‘Because, if I died in damnation, ‘twould save the expense of a Christian funeral.’
Which I think is tragically hilarious. Later he warns Sue and Jude:
‘If I were you, mother, I wouldn’t marry father.’
In this part Hardy skilfully weaves the strands of the emotional connection between Sue and
Jude without exactly revealing the nature of their relationship. He leaves us in the
dark as to whether they have married or not and this doubt also has repercussions on Jude’s
ability to follow his profession. In Part Six which is set back in Christminster,
by which time they have two other children and one on the way, it is finally revealed
that, in fact, they have not married. This part of the story is extremely tragic
and heart-breaking. I find the actions of Little Father Time perplexing, not in respect
of himself. His actions are understandable considering his morbid temperament, but why
and how he could bring himself to do what he did to his half-siblings is beyond me.
His suicide note is tellingly brief and poignant. ‘Done because we are too menny.’
This event is the catalyst that drives Sue back to Phillotson and enables Arabella to
get back Jude. This following remark by a neighbour of Sue’s
sums up the situation of both couples. ‘’I’ll tell ‘ee what – you ought
not to marry this man again!’ said Mrs. Edlin indignantly. ‘You are in love wi’t’other
still!’ This is a powerful, compelling, masterfully-told
novel written by an author writing at the height of his powers.
I highly recommend this superb novel and my rating is, of course, A.
And now here is a quick recap and I’ll be back soon with another BookTube video.