I’m not sure that Jude needs much of an introduction. The novel relates in bleak detail the life of Jude. Unhappy marriages, academic ambition thwarted, a disastrously unhealthy life as a stone mason, child suicide, infanticide and miscarriage. I hadn’t read the book before but I was expecting all of those things, and I had a vague mental image of the Job of biblical fame.
As a boy Jude rails against a natural order of things which offends his sense of morality. The grown Jude sets his sights on man-made injustices, a lesser ambition, but still beyond his power to redress.
The first social injustice to thwart Jude is class stratification. Jude as a youngster is motivated and intelligent, but despite perseverance, application and ability he can not cross the class divide and is denied entrance to university. In a downward spiral emphasised by Jude’s frenetic circumambulations through the counties of Wessex his ambitions are reduced in scope with each set-back.
The advent of women into Jude’s life has no happier outcome, and this is Hardy’s second theme. Hardy paints marriage as an unhappy and incompatible conjunction of sacrament, contract, social tool and access to legitimate sex.
I don’t know how I can even begin to describe Hardy’s brilliance in working out his themes. Lively set pieces earn their place twice over: the teacher’s problematic disposal of his cumbersome piano, for which his initial enthusiasm has waned; Jude’s beating at the hands of an irate farmer, a helpless victim to an irresistible centrifugal force as the blows fall; the flinging of ‘the characteristic part of a pig’ by Jude’s future wife. Each is competently worked, and each is a commentary on Hardy’s themes. Hardy’s writing is consistently taut in this way and nothing goes to waste.
And the attention to detail is remarkable. The stone that Jude chips away at as stone mason is the same stone that forms the bastions of the establishments of academic excellence; dividing Jude from the formal education he craves.
Jude is unlike other Hardy novels I have read in several ways. Downplaying the pastoral, Jude frequents the towns and cities of Wessex, eschewing nature for the constructs of man (emphasising again that Jude is going not against nature but human contrivance.) His preferred method of travel is the train, cruelly delineating Jude’s marked path in life.
It is amusing that coincidence plays no part in this novel. I have always been quick to accuse Hardy of incorporating the convenient coincidence, and perhaps, historically, I have not been alone in this. There is a rationalisation of each instance of suspect happenstance, which initially struck me as defensive. But, of course, it also fits with a narrative which is tightly driven by character and circumstance.
This is the first of Thomas Hardy’s novels to fill me with undiluted admiration and liking, and I think I could marvel over its virtues and accomplishments indefinitely. Two further items demand immediate attention (then I will stop!)
Religion is referenced repeatedly. Samson and Delilah occur several times, with obvious intent. There are shades of The Pilgrim’s Progress, particularly here:
‘Some way within the limits if the stretch of landscape, points of light like topaz gleamed. The air increased in transparency with the lapse of minutes, till the topaz points showed themselves to be the vanes, windows, wet roof slates, and other shining spots upon the spires, domes, freestone work, and varied outlines that were faintly revealed. It was Christminster, unquestionably [...]‘
In the character of Christian, Jude falls by the wayside, led astray by women. In a paradox that would bear further consideration, it is never Jude’s intention to follow the straight and narrow, the path mapped out for him.
Jude finally curses his life in the words of Job, with whom he has shared similar afflictions. Mapping Jude onto Job continues to exercise my imagination. I can speculate that Jude’s God is rationality and his temptation is social convention… but it’s going to need some work.
Every aspect of Jude interests me immensely, but the burning theme is marriage and sex. In addition to Jude and his occasional, opportunistic wife, Arabella, there is the ethereal and sexually unawakened Sue, and the unfortunate school master, Phillotson.
Each of these characters has something individual to say about the relations between men and women, but Phillotson personifies the view of irreversible marriage which is espoused throughout the novel. Expectation, disappointment, frustration, cruelty. Phillotson begins by claiming sympathy and ends in evoking distaste. Hardy lays on the whole ‘failing relationship’ experience.
From a modern point of view a novel that encourages divorce and dissolution is not really on message, but in context it makes perfect sense. The modern reader might even infer, from this tale of woe, that it is the existence of the escape clause that can render the loop-hole unnecessary.
Delusions of difficulty and depression have left Jude ostracised on my bookshelf for the better part of twenty years.
Jude is not difficult to read. Light on scenic description and heavy on action, the novel is about being set on a track, and this onward pull is apparent in the novel both in terms of metaphorical passage, and Jude’s unceasing travels.
Depressing? That is a more difficult question. Despite several direct references to fate this is not a novel about the cruel whimsicality of a fate written in the stars. This is a novel melancholically following a destiny defined by circumstance and disposition. As such there is an inevitability and a specificity which visit each new disaster on Jude in a spirit of resignation (with the exception of one harrowing scene which I am unable/unwilling to rationalise in any way whatsoever.) The novel is in the tragic mould, but it is not depressing.
This, Hardy’s last novel, reportedly outraged Victorian society, with the result that Hardy wrote no more novels. I’m not terribly surprised that the Victorians were upset. Hardy gives them a standard ending in which the woman who plays the game, who marries, observes the proprieties (at least in appearance), continually falls on her feet. Those who question and refuse to conform end unhappily. On the surface this is correct and moral, but the morality actually resides in those who are conventionally beyond the pale, casting an unflattering light on the integrity of Victorian values.
The tribulations of Jude, although distressing, are not as devastating as the bitterness expressed in this way by Hardy.
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Fantastic review Sarah. My mum’s book club in France have just read Jude so I’ll share it with them.
x Michele
Great review. I’d love to read it right away. I loved the two Hardys I’ve read and want to read them all. Isn’t he marvellous?
As I’ll start in chronological order, I will read this one in I don’t know how many years. I’m linking this review to my new Hardy page.
Thanks, Michele and Emma.
Michele – Hope your mum enjoyed it as much as I did. Bet they had a great discussion: although I don’t know where you would start, or how you would finish
Emma – My initial encounters with Hardy didn’t go so well, and it was in part your enthusiasm that prompted me to try again. He is marvellous and I love his writing and I think your Hardy project is a great idea.
Great review! I read a section of Jude the Obscure and was hoping we’d get to it in my Victorian Literature class next semester, but we’re reading The Mayor of Casterbridge instead. I’ll pick up Jude if the first Hardy is enjoyable. The backcover description makes it sound like an interesting read, at the least.
Thanks, Danielle.
I haven’t read the Mayor of Casterbridge, and I don’t know anything about it. But having enjoyed Jude so much it’s nice to have some more Hardy in reserve.
I hope you enjoy both of them.
I do envy you the chance of studying Hardy formally. Sounds wonderful.