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    Jude the Obscure
    Jude the Obscure
    Jude the Obscure
    Ebook546 pages10 hours

    Jude the Obscure

    By Thomas Hardy

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    "Jude the Obscure" is the last of Thomas Hardy's novels. Its hero, Jude Fawley, is a working-class young man who dreams of becoming a scholar. The other main character is his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is also his central love interest. Themes include class, scholarship, religion, marriage, and the modernisation of thought and society.
    The novel develops multiple intertwined themes. Most controversially, during England's Victorian era, Hardy criticized revered institutions like marriage and Christianity. He also criticizes the bourgeois values associated with marriage through the tragedy of his star-crossed lovers, Jude and Sue, whose attempts to defy social conventions for the sake of love leads to their misery.
    Another major thematic focus of the novel is the issue of fixed class boundaries, particularly with regard to access to higher education for students from the working class. Although Jude wishes to attend the university, he can't afford to get his degree and is thereby shut out from having any economic mobility out of the working class.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherClassic eBooks
    Release dateMay 23, 2012
    ISBN9788866610977
    Author

    Thomas Hardy

    Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in Dorchester, Dorset. He enrolled as a student in King’s College, London, but never felt at ease there, seeing himself as socially inferior. This preoccupation with society, particularly the declining rural society, featured heavily in Hardy’s novels, with many of his stories set in the fictional county of Wessex. Since his death in 1928, Hardy has been recognised as a significant poet, influencing The Movement poets in the 1950s and 1960s.

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    Reviews for Jude the Obscure

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    • 5/5
      So tragic. Beautifully written.
    • 4/5
      Excellent. One of the very best endings I have ever read. Loved it.
    • 3/5
      I liked this one, but I liked Tess of the d'Urbervilles better.
    • 5/5
      i am shattered every time i read this, but every few years i have to come back for more.
    • 5/5
      Well, that was depressing.Beautifully written, scathing commentary by the author on religion and marriage in Victorian England... hard to believe Hardy wrote something so forward-thinking in this time period, and easy to see why it was so badly received then. The novel feels unflinchingly honest, brutal, and sad. Poor Sue. Poor Jude. If you like fun stories with happy endings, this is not the book you’re looking for.
    • 4/5
      Jude the Obscure is Hardy's masterpiece. As in, the work an apprentice submits to prove that he is now good enough become a master. There is no other way to read this polemic against church, marriage and higher education. It is coming-out-of-the-closet, showing-his-colours, rest-on-his-laurels masterpiece. And though it was recieved with more brickbats than laurels, he did rest on it, and never wrote any other novel after this. Once you read this book, you realize why. There was nothing more to say. He has said it all.And said it well. Not even once does this book drag, there are no paragraphs spanning pages and pages. In a book which is meant to decry everything that was wrong- and indeed is still wrong- with society, there are no 4 page speeches to skip. Hardy's characters show, and do not tell. His working class, self taught hero never gets into Oxford, and his 'luminously' intelligent lover doesn't even think of it- you don't need speeches about stultified education after that. And Hardy manages to depict bad marriages between essentially good people, without demonizing anyone, and even Arabella is treated with more kindness that she can expect from a novel like this- which is about all that is fine in humanity, storybook fine, that is. Not practical, cheerful, cut-your-lossses-and-move-on there-is-a-life-to-be-lived fine, the way Arabella is.Sue Bridehead on the other hand, is certainly not practical, whatever else she might be. In fact, she is more than a character, she is a compilation of the reasons this novel exists. She is the mouthpiece for Hardy's views on all that is holy, she is the mirror he holds up to reflect society's hypocrisy, she is every bit a dream lover, and her impracticality is the only justification we get for the rather flimsy plot.This pretty lady almost certainly drives three men to early graves, but even then, I suppose that if you had to look for a lover in Victorian literature, she would be a much better option than, say, Elizabeth Bennett. One, ten minutes with her will perhaps be more interesting than any amount of time with Miss Elizabeth, who is actually not all that uninteresting herself, and two, she lives in a world where sex exists. I read somewhere that Sue is among literature's first feminists, and indeed, she is one of the greatest heroines of literature. She has the burden of carrying the novel on her slim shoulders, and she manages it with grace, though it proves too much for her in the end.
    • 4/5
      Marriage and restrict of social mores. Excellent.
    • 4/5
      I think Hardy was a man ahead of his times in regards to how he approached relationships in this book. I am not referring to the relationship of cousins, rather his outlook on marriage. I also believe he stated what many people probably felt or observed in the time period this book was written. True to his form, he stated it well and honestly if not always happily!
    • 5/5
      This is one of the few books I picked up in a college English class and never put back down.
    • 4/5
      This is a novel of contrasts, oppositions, and doubling. It's carefully constructed, which is surprising given its origination as a serial in Harper's Weekly. Because of the artifice, Hardy often hits the reader over the head with its themes and symbols (Sue is spirit/intellect/ethereal, okay, okay, we get it), and it can be difficult to not read it symbolically. I found some of the ideas - like social mobility and meritocracy - surprisingly American, but the outcome totally British. I think the big ideas of challenging social convention and the tension between what is right socially and what is right ethically would appeal to younger readers, but I think they would have trouble with the execution.
    • 5/5
      I read Thomas Hardy: Behind the Mask by Andrew Norman earlier this year and it spurred my interest in rereading Jude the Obscure. I had read Jude the first time about 25 years ago. I had recollections of the book, but honestly most were negative. By negative, I do not mean a bad story or a poorly written book, instead, I mean a diffucult story to like. On the second reading (being 25 years older), I appreciate the book much more. Having read all of Hardy, I find this book his most caustic and critical. It is essentially an indictment of traditional (i.e. 19th century religious) marriage and it's inherent pitfalls to individual opportunity and improvement. The story revolves around Jude and Sue (his cousin) and their relationships, as well as their progressive view on society and marriage. Both Jude and Sue could be considered to be naive (I mean that in a good way) to their detriment. I will not detail the story here, as to not spoil it, but fair warning be given - this is a diffufcult book to digest. As always with Hardy, fate is a major player. I strongly recommend reading (and rereading this book). The characters are well constructed (especially Arabella, who typlifies much that Hardy dislikes). Again, Hardy's observations were keen, yet caustic (in an often witty and subtle way). Here are some of my favorite:- "optional dimples" - "ready to quarrel with the sun for shining on her"- "a nest of common place school masters whose characteristic is timid obsequiousness to tradition"- ... not their essential soundness, but their occasional outcomes"- "... pioneers..." (from page 348 - Part 6, Chapter 3)- "Their cup of sorrow is now full"- "The flowers in the bride's hand are sadly like the garland which decked the heifers of sacrifice in the old times!" (wow! this says it all)Overall, this is a cruel story of opportunities denied by traditions accepted blindly and often contrary to reason. Very thought provoking, it must have been revolutionary when first published.
    • 4/5
      Socially advanced novel of marital relationships from 1895.. After the fuss aroused, Hardy never wrote another novel.Read in Samoa June 2003
    • 4/5
      Midway through this, I called my boyfriend, who has an English lit degree, and asked, "Um, besides all the spouse-swapping, is anything actually going to happen in this book?" He laughed and said, "Trust me. Something's going to happen."Something did.I finished the book at 3:00 a.m. and couldn't sleep all night. I staggered down to breakfast and sat in the cafeteria with such a traumatized expression that several friends asked me what had happened. Thomas Hardy happened, that's what. Little Father Time happened.
    • 1/5
      Nice to see the young Kate Winslet and her fine style of acting
    • 5/5
      One of the most powerful books I've ever read. I found the impact shattering. The tragedies of men's and women's struggles against the social system are portrayed as hopeless and seemingly eternal.
    • 5/5
      From the beginning, it were the occasional dissonant comments -- very brief -- that Hardy planted in his description of an ambitious schoolmaster leaving a tiny Wessex hamlet that gripped me and dragged me into the novel, promising a mildly cynical undercurrent to an everyman’s narrative. The novel starts there, taking its time describing curbed ambition and stunted growth amidst rural status-quo, but pretty soon it becomes interested in matters of morality and social opprobrium. Is marriage a socially sanctioned contract that ought to be cancellable; or is it a promise made to God, and therefore eternally fixed? At what point does social disapproval and the continuation of a community's mores turn into concerted bullying? Hardy is so very good at the plot archetype where bad things happen to good people: his main characters are unassuming people who mainly want to be left alone to pursue their own choices. Cue a crisis of faith, and a crisis of atheism, unsatisfactory work and life prospects; their resolve to pursue love and happiness is put to stringent tests unintentionally imposed by a society that simply does not get it. And Hardy uses this outline to examine a range of class issues as well as moral / religious disagreements in his idealized setting of rural Victorian England. Hardy reserves his most direct criticism for class differences: his tale of a working class layman with scholarly ambitions is excellent at conveying frustration with the closed mindset of a self-contained academia, at expressing the resignation of reaching university only through his children and their offspring. But in Jude, Hardy never explicitly chooses sides when it comes to the moral issues. The antagonists, embodied customs and societal taboos though they are, are never portrayed in an unfair light; everyone's behaviour is at all times understandable and (from their own perspective) entirely reasonable. Lack of education, self-interested moral shortcuts and privilege-induced blindness may be deplored, but cannot be demonized, much less personified in easy allegories.Hardy very skilfully makes readers care about his main characters -- Jude and Sue -- and then proceeds to relentlessly pummel his protagonists with all the disapproval that society and their notions of morality can muster. In this respect, [Jude the Obscure] reminds me of Eliot’s [The Mill on the Floss]: a tragedy inflicted by moral considerations that are at least partially self-imposed and that the protagonists feel unable to abandon without betraying their sense of self.As great as this book is in addressing moral and religious quandaries, the narrator’s voice is one of the best things about Jude. Most of the narrative is told fairly straightforwardly, without omniscient interference or explicit moralizing. But the narrator's voice sprinkles wry remarks on the text -- be they explicit comments or, more subtly, choice of words and connotations. It doesn’t often make an appearance, but when it engages in a little omniscient foreshadowing or offers a general comment about human nature, it is noticeably but not intrusively different from the surrounding narrative, and the effect is much amplified. To sum up: [Jude the Obscure] was a very engaging read, and felt like a mature novel, written by an accomplished and highly skilled novelist-- it is so satisfying to feel you're in the hands of a master at their craft. It offered moral complexity, protagonists to root for, and a world with no easy, blameable antagonists. I loved every page of it, because there was so much to keep me intellectually interested as well as emotionally invested.
    • 4/5
      Not Hardy's best, but even so, better than the works of many better known authors.
    • 4/5
      A criticism of the institution of marriage, education and religion in England. Unflinching and brutal in places. Enjoyed this much more than expected.
    • 4/5
      This book was published in 1895 to such adverse criticism that Hardy didn't write another novel. Clearly it wasn't the done thing to question the institution of marriage, the influence of the church on society and to speak up for the poor. Never mind the (extremely mild) references to sex, which by the standards of the day, were considered too much. The story focuses on a young man with ambitions to better himself by striving to make it to a college at the university town of Christminster. However, the mistakes he and (his cousin / lover) Sue, make in their youth are not forgiven in the eyes of the community - wherever they go. Unable to free themselves, things begin to spiral.

      Usually regarded as the most depressing of Hardy's novels but it would be wrong to dismiss it on those terms as there is a lot going on in this book and it keeps you turning the pages. But yes, it does contain probably the most shocking scene I have ever read.
    • 4/5
      This Hardy novel tells the tale of Jude, a rural stonemason whose ambition is to better himself through the higher education of Christminster (Oxford), and his tragic love affair with his cousin Sue. Their relationship made for an enthralling read, particularly as it was very modern, daring and unconventional for it's time. Sue is a fabulously complex heroine who derives both feelings of admiration and frustration in the reader as she stays resolute to her convictions however misplaced, whilst Jude is a typical Hardy protagonist who makes you root for him the whole way through the novel.Unlike the other two Hardy's I've read to date, this one felt like it took quite a while to get going, and I would say it was only about halfway in that I got properly hooked. For that reason I'm deducting a star, but nonetheless it was a great read and the second half was a definite page-turner. I enjoy that Hardy gives such a real sense of place in rural England through the eyes of the lower and middle classes especially, and he's the grand master of social tragedy.4 stars - not my favourite Hardy so far, but another wonderful Wessex tale.
    • 5/5
      One of my favourite British Victorian classics. A compelling story on the so-much loved theme of a subject trying his utmost to overcome his humble roots (but failing in the process). Extremely well written and engaging - even for a 21st century mind.
    • 4/5
      I read this book during my senior year in college, so it's been a "few" years! I do remember being hooked on Thomas Hardy, and not because it was required reading!
    • 5/5
      I read this out of curiosity during my freshman year in college. When I approached my English 1A professor about doing a paper on it, she -- and I'm not joking here -- said, "Why would you want to write about a dead white male?" Taken aback, I dutifully bowed my pimpled head and submitted a paper on Ernest Gaines's A Gathering of Old Men.

      Not to take anything away from Gaines, who I ended up admiring in his way, but Ms. F? You can suck it.
    • 4/5
      This is one of those books that takes you straight into another time and place. Hardy is such a vivid writer, you can feel and touch and smell and see across the places he describes.

      It is crushingly sad, but the truth of the situation is psychologically real and mature, born out of extreme frustration and despair at the social reality of the time, the limitations of class and poverty. He was angry, and his passion saturates the book. The dysfunctionality of the characters is all too familiar and believable, the self-deception, the misplaced loyalties, the character flaws they can't get past, the real experience of poverty and failure. How many people have you known who didn't or couldn't live up to their youthful dreams, never made use of their most obvious talents because of a lack of education, money, connections, resourcefulness, early parenthood?
    • 4/5
      Thomas Hardy doesn’t seem to be one of the more well-sung Victorian writers, particularly alongside the Brontë sisters and Dickens, but his text is just as full of semicolons and Victorian English slang as theirs are. This book in particular was the source of some trouble for him; his first wife, for example, thought that the book would be perceived as autobiographical and thus divorced him because she feared being considered his cousin—as Jude’s love was his cousin, Sue Bridehead—not to mention that it was wildly unpopular with critics of the time, who criticized it as being morally outrageous and instigated book burnings for it and the like.This is the sort of book that has to be read in fairly large chunks, because that’s about the only way that the story gets a reaction of anything more than, “Oh, well, nothing’s happening.” Due to that, I can’t fathom that this will be a popular novel with most modern readers, particularly those who might be attracted to it because of its perceived scandalous nature (or for the popularity of the Beatles song “Hey Jude”—they’re really very different).Coming from a less modern perspective, though, it’s extremely easy to see why this would have been extremely risqué subject material in 1895. For a population who covered their pianos with skirts so as not to show their inanimate legs, heavily implied premarital sex and living in sin with one’s cousin wouldn’t be acceptable at all, particularly when combined with various blasphemes of Jude’s.As a modern reader, I can’t say that I was too terribly interested in the book aside from the general idea of it. Had the book been published even about fifty years later, I could see where it would have been heavily edited to condense it from around four hundred pages in a trade paperback format to about half its size in something closer to a mass-market edition. Certain scenes would have to be emphasized to appeal to readers and others would have to be cut out completely. However, in spite of the slow-moving story, the writing is still interesting stylistically. When read, it seems vaguely more conversational than the usual Victorian novel, yet still fairly high-brow; as if someone were trying to describe a convoluted thesis paper in the simplest terms possible and not doing particularly well in that endeavor.This promises to hold interest for readers who can keep themselves in a Victorian mindset; for others, it wouldn’t be deemed particularly interesting or necessarily well worth reading. Still, the implications from the Victorian era are interesting enough for me to have read the whole thing through.
    • 4/5
      This was my second Hardy novel, following The Mayor of Casterbridge, which I believe contains more appealing characters and story lines. Nonetheless, Hardy's writing ability is superb, hence Jude the Obscure flows seamlessly throughout. Kudos also for Hardy's ending, which was superb.Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      What marks a great fiction writer, in my view, is this: you don't want to skip a single line. Not because it is an action packed thriller, but simply because it totally draws you in. Thomas Hardy's style and his phraseology are of an older pattern and might be a bit puzzling to a contemporary eye, not that easy to digest at first, but you persist, and after a few pages the old-fashioned turn of a phrase or an outdated word not only doesn't matter any more - it becomes essential to the writing. Lengthy, heart-rending, impassioned dialogues and soliloquies might seem a bit histrionic to a modern mind. But not unless you place yourself in that era; that's what I tried to do.In this novel, Hardy raises two essential questions: he points out that the desire to learn is classless, and, to an even greater detail, he questions the fairness and validity of the institution of marriage - in those days!...- which was totally unexpected, for me, at least: for, of course, there are prejudices about this even now (always will be) but to much smaller extent...Our Jude is torn between religious aspirations (which seem to be more equated to a desire for enlightenment and learning than actual longing for God) and love for a woman who is his soul-mate - his idealistic, whimsical, well-read, precocious Sue, whom he follows in mind and deed, himself being not as strong-willed as she, with whom he has such unique mutual understanding. And even here it's all unpredictable - the tragedy strikes and Sue's personality alters altogether. She erroneously decides that the tragedy is God's punishment for her hedonistic way of life (erroneous here as well - as her life was just driven by sober thinking, that's all). Jude, in resignation, calls himself "a paltry victim to the spirit of mental and social restlessness, that makes so many unhappy in these days". In frustration, in the end he is resigned to do carving on the stone walls of colleges he could never enter.Passionately written and at times very lyrical, Hardy captures his protagonist's mental agony to a most compelling extent. A very worthy read.
    • 5/5
      When this book was first published there was such an outcry about the subject of the book that Hardy decided to stop writing fiction. What was the subject that created such opprobrium? A couple who could have married each other decided to forego the contract of marriage but live together and have children. It's hard to believe that an action that is almost commonplace now could excite such rage in 1896. Hardy was obviously ahead of his time.Jude Fawley was raised in the small village of Marygreen by his great-aunt after his parents died. His great-aunt was too poor to send him to school but he had gone to night school with Mr. Phillotson until that teacher decided to go off to try to get a degree at Christminster (a made up name for Oxford). Jude has a great passion for reading and conceives a notion to follow in the schoolmaster's footsteps. He manages to teach himself the rudiments of Latin and Greek but, realizing that he must have a way to earn money, also learns the trade of stone cutting. While he is still apprenticing he catches the attention of Arabella Donn, the daughter of a pig farmer. Arabella manages to entice Jude into her bed and then, claiming to be pregnant, into marriage. Both of them soon rue their marriage and Arabella goes off to Australia with her parents. Jude finally realizes his dream of going to Christminster. He also realizes his dream of meeting his cousin Susanna whose picture was in his great-aunt's house. When they meet they are drawn to each other but since Jude is still married he fights the attraction. When Susanna is dismissed from her employment Jude introduces her to schoolmaster Phillotson. Phillotson hires her as an assistant and soon is smitten by her.Phillotson and Susanna marry but Susanna is repulsed by the idea of physical love with him and asks him to let her go to live with Jude. Phillotson agrees, causing the local people to get him fired from the school. Susanna lives with Jude but does not share a bed with him. Finally the marriages between Phillotson and Susanna and between Jude and Arabella are dissolved but Susanna is reluctant to marry Jude for fear that the love they have will disappear with marriage. They pretend to get married and they do have children together. Then a tragedy occurs (as in most Hardy novels) and Jude and Susanna separate.Even though you know tragedy is coming it was still a shock when it occurs. No-one could read this book and not feel sorry for Jude and Susanna. Even Phillotson is a tragic figure and I felt badly for him. Arabella, on the other hand, is such a conniving, heartless woman that it seems strange that Jude would get caught by her. It is certainly not strange that the bloom goes off the rose of their marriage very quickly.Hardy shows his true feelings about marriage pretty clearly in this book. His wife, Emma, is said to have disapproved of Jude the Obscure. Hardy and Emma spent more and more time apart after its publication and Hardy started seeing other women. However, after Emma died Hardy apparently felt remorse and revisited places where they had been happy together.We have two more works by Hardy to read but they are short stories. I have a new appreciation for Hardy after reading all of his novels although it is hard to say that I have enjoyed them. Hardy, like the playwright Chekhov, isn't meant to be enjoyable. Instead they show us the human condition and let us draw our own conclusions.
    • 4/5
      2011, Blackstone Audiobooks, Read by Frederick Davidson“Remember that the best and greatest among mankind are those who do themselves no worldly good. Every successful man is more or less a selfish man. The devoted fail ...” (Pt 6, Ch 4)Jude Fawley, a stonemason raised by his working-class aunt, dreams of a university education at Christminster, having been inspired by schoolmaster, Richard Phillotson. But his plans are thwarted when he is tricked into marrying the rough-and-tumble Arabella. The marriage goes awry, not surprisingly, and Jude resolves to go to Christminster at last. Regrettably, when he attempts to enroll at the university, his plans are again stymied. Still, he is pleased to make the acquaintance of his cousin, Sue Bridehead. To no avail, Jude tries desperately not to fall in love with her; and he is devastated to learn that she has become engaged to Phillotson. However, this is another marriage doomed from its inception. Eventually, both Jude and Sue, who “seem to be one person split in two,” are divorced; but Sue does not wish to remarry. When Arabella reveals she has Jude’s son, Jude and Sue raise the boy together, along with two other children of their own, until tragedy – unspeakable tragedy – strikes. Sue, “creed-drunk” and manic with guilt, believes the tragedy to be her fate for having left Phillotson. Hopeless, they both eventually remarry their former spouses. Jude begs Sue to return to him, but she cannot: “No – let me make my last appeal. Listen to this! We've both remarried out of our senses. I was made drunk to do it. You were the same. I was gin-drunk; you were creed-drunk. Either form of intoxication takes away the nobler vision ... Let us then shake off our mistakes, and run away together!” (Pt 6, Ch 8)Jude the Obscure, while not my favourite of Hardy’s Wessex novels, is beautifully written, adorned with characters who’ll live on with me (as I’ve come to expect when reading Hardy) – and, oh, so tragic! Hardy uses his narrative superbly to expose the harm created by the absolutely unyielding social codes of his time as regards marriage, higher education, and social class. One of the things I love most about classics is their echoes for our modern times. We’ve certainly loosed the rigid thinking on marriage and divorce that Hardy called for – to a fault, I would argue. But I think we have a long way to go in making higher education more accessible and social mobility more achievable. I thoroughly enjoyed, and this audiobook edition is fabulously read by Frederick Davidson – great characters’ voices! Highly recommended!
    • 1/5
      Wherein I express my eternal hatred of Jude the Obscure:

      Thomas Hardy is a fascinating guy and excellent writer, though depressing as hell. He liked to eavesdrop on his neighbors and then put them as characters in his novels, which is why said neighbors all hated him. He also had a huge chip on his shoulder because he wasn't allowed to divorce his wife to marry another woman, which has major significance in Jude because the two lovers who should end up together instead die alone and saddled to despicable spouses because they couldn't divorce and thus marry. Though not worrying about the fact that they were cousins.

      That said, I HATE Jude with a passion greater than the force of a gabillion suns imploding. It is the only book that has ever left me feeling so impotent with depression and rage that all I could do was lie in bed and watch as it sucked all of the happiness from my soul like a colossal Hoover. I might be overstating a tad, but it really is my most-hated book of all time forever and ever amen.

      If it were possible, I'd give it negative stars, I hate it that much.

    Book preview

    Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

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