A study guide for Thomas Hardy's "Jude the Obscure"

By Gale and Cengage

A study guide for Thomas Hardy's "Jude the Obscure", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students series. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: May 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535840958

Book preview

09

Jude the Obscure

Thomas Hardy

1895

Introduction

Thomas Hardy confronted late Victorian England as a controversialist in an era when conformity and regimentation were the social norms. He was a pessimist in a society that prided itself on its industrial progress, its economic prowess, its imperial reach, and its military and naval might. Hardy was not a reformer but a storyteller; he was not an advocate but an anatomist. He examined and explored human lives in their complex psychological, social, and economic contexts. In Jude the Obscure, first published in 1895, Hardy examines the institution of marriage not as a philosopher or polemicist might but as a novelist, by means of placing complicated characters in difficult situations where they face conflicts between desire and duty and where self-fulfillment and social demands strongly contradict each other. In his consideration of marriage, Hardy, while never graphic or indelicate, focuses on the role of passion in determining how people behave and on the power of the severe grief and pain that can sometimes tragically result from compulsory marriage.

Hardy's moral views often put him at odds with his society, as did his scrupulous examination of aspects of human activity that many thought best left unmentioned. In order to show how the constraints of marriage can impinge destructively on human nature, Hardy established Jude and his beloved Sue Bridehead as figures whose sexual and intellectual aspects are in conflict with each other.

Written with Victorian reserve but an ancient Greek sense of the tragedy of life, and in the prose of the great poet that Hardy was, Jude the Obscure challenged and continues to challenge culturally received opinions. Hardy was aware of the delicacy of his undertaking, as he made clear in his 1895 preface to the novel:

For a novel addressed by a man to men and women of full age, which attempts to deal unaffectedly with the fret and fever, derision and disaster, that may press in the wake of the strongest passion known to humanity, and to point, without a mincing of words, the tragedy of unfulfilled aims, I am not aware that there is anything in the handling to which exception can be taken.

In Jude the Obscure Hardy establishes the humanity of a set of characters whose humanity is sorely tried by the rules and conditions of late Victorian society and by their own inner conflicts. In consequence, the work stands not only as one of the great Victorian novels but as a historical document, grappling with one of the fundamental social issues of late nineteenth-century England. Considered a classic, Jude the Obscure is widely available in paperback and hardcover, including a Modern Library edition published by Random House.

Author Biography

When Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset, England, on June 2, 1840, he appeared to be stillborn until the midwife realized he was alive. Hardy's father, also called Thomas, was a builder and stonemason. His mother, Jemima Hand, poor but literate, had been a domestic servant since the age of thirteen. Their unhappy marriage took place only because Jemima was pregnant. In December 1841, she gave