Jude the obscure

Starting from the observation that Thomas Hardy's vision of marriage, as reflected in Jude the Obscure (1895), should not be oversimplified into a straightforward denouncement of this institution, this paper offers evidence that his views are much more refined. By delineating marriages and the free union of its main characters, the novel intends to address several important issues. Sue Bridehead, who has the function of the author's ventriloquist on this issue, offers scathing criticism of the Victorian marriage, which she views as an economic institution with nothing in common with love. As suggested by the examples of the conjugal lives in the novel, this institution represents a sordid contract that forces the spouses into an unequal relationship and is fundamentally unfit to shape the changing nature of emotional relationships. The novel suggests that legal provisions are unnecessary complications to already complex relationships between the sexes. Jude may be interpreted as Hardy's appeal for the reformation of marriage laws that thwart the simple dissolution of marriages and contribute to the victimization of the more vulnerable spouse, objectification and denial of basic human rights to women. Hardy's narrator gives priority to the free union of Sue and Jude, which is based upon equality and friendship, over conventional marriage. Sue attempts to raise their relationship to a higher level that transcends not only a socially and legally regulated institution but also physical love. Even though the couple endeavours to create a transcendent relationship free from external influences, their love is doomed to failure. The crucial question that the novel attempts to answer is-is a free and independent emotional relationship possible in Victorian society? The novel's tragic end suggests that the unconventional cohabitation of Sue and Jude is too advanced for the time and place in which it occurs.

The  literary consequences of the railway include the death of Carker in Dombey and Son (1848, the same year that the first railway bookstall was opened by W. H. Smith), that of Ferdinand Lopez in Trollope's The Prime Minister (1876), the suicide of Anna Karenina (1877), the railway's scarring of the landscape in Middlemarch (1872); and the opportunity for two characters of the same class to meet in the same (third-class) carriage, as in the opening chapter of Dostoevsky's Idiot (1869).

This essay navigates the dynamic evolution of literature in response to societal changes, dissecting three pivotal themes: the constraints of realistic conventions, the transformative impact of the modernist era on Western morality, and the decline of Victorian stoicism amid growing religious skepticism. Scrutinizing the limitations of traditional storytelling methods, we delve into instances where realistic conventions falter in encapsulating the intricacies of human experience. The exploration of the modernist era unveils its pivotal role in reshaping moral landscapes, leaving an indelible mark on Western literature. Simultaneously, the decline of Victorian stoicism, intertwined with a shifting religious zeitgeist, reflects broader societal transformations. Synthesizing these themes, we unravel a complex tapestry that shapes and challenges the contemporary literary landscape. The essay emphasizes the ongoing dialogue surrounding effective storytelling methods, urging continuous exploration and interpretation within the ever-evolving realm of literature.

The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people. But if he refrains from molesting others in what concerns them, and merely acts according to his own inclination and judgment in things which concern himself, the same reasons which show that opinion should be free, prove also that he should be allowed, without molestation, to carry his opinions into practice at his own cost."-John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Chapter III p. 691 Contents

The Victorian Period ushered in 1837 and ended in 1901. It is the period when Queen Victoria ascended the thrown of England. The Poets and the novelist of this period started thinking freely. The Novelist like Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens wrote a number of novels highlighting the problems happening with women in the society. They also focused the pitiable Condition of women. Hardy's novels express women's struggle for emancipation from social constraints. It is so that on marriage the control of women's property and income from women's real property, that is, property held in the form of freehold land passed under the common law to her husband. Marriage and divorce were existed in the society. Re-marriage was also the system in the Victorian society. A woman could be divorced on the simple grounds of her adultery or by cruelty, rape, sodomy incest or by gaming. There is another vice which was prevailed in the society was the rigid read views on marriage and the role...

This dissertation investigates the conception of love in the Victorian and Edwardian ages taking Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure and D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers as an examples. In the first novel love was prohibited, just for self-interest and sexual desire, relationships were controlled by society and the conventional marriage. , in the second novel which was marked by the changes of the British society from the conservative to the permissive one. Love was permitted, thus it was abnormal in the same time; as new kind of love had emerged. The controversial issue this dissertation seeks to answer is the distinction between the 19 th and 20 th century England in terms of social facts and literary representations, togather with the shifted of British society to a permissive one, pointing on, the difference between Hardy's and Lawrence's visions of love is explored. This research aims to show the difference between love in the Victorian and the Edwardian eras by analysing the two works refering to society norms and beliefs..

La finalidad de esta tesis será el análisis de la novela de Thomas Hardy Jude the Obscure. Más concretamente, el estudio y comparación de los dos personajes protagonistas femeninos: Sue Bridehead y Arabella Donn, dos mujeres atrapadas en un contexto determinista y naturalista, marcadas por sus diferentes orígenes y posiciones en la obra. Sue es la individualista, la mujer con ideas muy avanzadas para su tiempo, mientras que Arabella forma parte del folclore rural, y está siempre dispuesta a adaptarse para poder sobrevivir. El trabajo mostrará cómo la dicotomía entre ambas mujeres ofrece una crítica abierta a instituciones como el matrimonio. Asimismo, Hardy ofrece un final que no deja indiferente. La incapacidad de Jude de adaptarse solo le traerá desgracias. La última novela de Thomas Hardy muestra, por consiguiente, la incertidumbre del fin-de-siècle y las diferentes reacciones que sus personajes principales muestran ante esta época de grandes cambios. ABSTRACT The main purpose of...

The aim of this thesis is to explore the role of quotation in Jude the Obscure. Quotation will be defined not only as literary quotation, allusion, or motto, but also as any structural citation (such as literary conventions or narrative paradigms) that represents both material and non-material references. I will analyse the poetical role of quotation in the novel's representation, observed as the work of intertextual relationships producing mimetic effects. This heterogeneous approach requires an investigation of the text's poetics through its external referents co-ordinated by the dominant discourses. Thus quotation will be investigated in two ways: stylistic, directed at the dialogue between the semantic fields in the text (Kristeva's vertical intertextuality), and textual, focused on the figurative meaning of the relationship of the text with other texts (Kristeva's horizontal intertextuality). The main objective is to understand the allegorical sense of reference...

This dissertation investigates the conception of love in the Victorian and Edwardian ages taking Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure and D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers as an examples. In the first novel love was prohibited, just for self-interest and sexual desire, relationships were controlled by society and the conventional marriage. , in the second novel which was marked by the changes of the British society from the conservative to the permissive one. Love was permitted, thus it was abnormal in the same time; as new kind of love had emerged. The controversial issue this dissertation seeks to answer is the distinction between the 19 th and 20 th century England in terms of social facts and literary representations, togather with the shifted of British society to a permissive one, pointing on, the difference between Hardy's and Lawrence's visions of love is explored. This research aims to show the difference between love in the Victorian and the Edwardian eras by analysing the two works refering to society norms and beliefs..

This powerful and enjoyable collection of essays reflects on the little-known work and life of the controversial late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century lesbian novelist Lucas Malet (the pen-name of Mary St Ledger Harrison). Malet, the daughter of the Christian socialist Charles Kingsley and later a Catholic convert, is perhaps best known as the author of The History of Sir Richard Calmady (1901), an extremely popular novel in its own day, about the life and loves of a disabled aristocrat and his turn to a form of charitable socialism and a mannish New Woman to escape the hereditary curse that has hitherto blighted his life. Associating with writers such as Henry James, Thomas Hardy and Vernon Lee and with her novels exploring topics such as..

This paper attempts to explore the narrative structure Hardy employed in Jude the Obscure. Based on close reading and textual analysis of Jude the Obscure, the essay argues that the text takes on the form of circular structure and contrastive symmetry. With such pluralistic forms, a perfect harmony is thus achieved between the content, especially in the tragic themes, and form so as to enhance the tragic effect and irony of the text. It is concluded that both in time span and narrative structure Hardy transcends the 19 th century Victorian norms, thus Hardy may be also acknowledged as a modernist writer.

The paper is a study of Thomas Hardy’s female character, Sue, in Jude the Obscure. To discover the reasons for Sue’s failure in dealing with both society and her personal life, the character is analyzed from the framework of Foucauldian power relations and the concept of individuality. According to Foucault’s dynamic view of power relations, individuals or subjects in every society are free and dynamic and power produces individuals who act, and are not simply objects upon whom others act. Individuals change and take shape after they engage in power relations, and this is how our participation in power relations literally makes us who we are. In other words, an individual is not passive and a victim of power relations, but free to succumb to the demands of power relations or use the possibilities before him and practise his own ethics. To Foucault, subjects can practise their individual freedom through ‘care of the self’; that is, one can achieve a self other than what power relatio...

Jude the Obscure (1895) is the fictional swansong of Thomas Hardy. If on one hand it is a criticism of an elitist and exclusionary education system, on the other hand it is a critique of the society that clings to the outdated and often inhumane, demands of matrimonial proprieties and sanctities. It is not a fairy-tale; it is a scary tale recounting the miseries of those writhing inside derailed wed-locks. The novel becomes remarkable forits portrayal of dysfunctional and coercive marriages, pleading for free-love, and raking up of explosive issue like sexual incompatibility between married couple. Perched in the last decade of the nineteenth century, Hardy here gives a clarion call to take the institution of marriage out of its Victorian shell and make it progressive.

Thomas Hardy's last novel Jude the Obscure (1895) is centred on its working-class protagonist Jude Fawley's efforts first to become a scholar, then his experiences of resisting the orthodoxies of his society and lastly defying Christianity as a restrictive social force on the individuals. This paper aims to discuss Jude's liminal character from the cultural perspectives on liminality respectively developed by the French ethnographer Arnold van Gennep and the British cultural anthropologist Victor Turner. Jude as a liminal character experiences similar transitions or rites of passage as defined and categorized by van Gennep. Yet, Jude's liminality remains permanent in each stage of his life since he cannot thoroughly perform the transition rites to leave one social position behind and undertake a new one. Also, analysed as a liminal character from Turner's understanding of the term, Jude fails to use the potential that his liminality provides him with to challenge the societal dogmas. However, he terribly suffers from the consequences of his liminal identity throughout the story. Jude's tragic end displays how he is punished for his lifelong liminality that prevents him from moving either to the centre or the margins of his Victorian society. This essay argues that Hardy's portrayal of Jude as a liminal figure reminds the definitions of the term, developed by van Gennep and Turner, but produces a literary example that is quite antithetical to their conceptions particularly due to his apparent pessimism. For, Hardy depicts Jude's threshold identity as an obstacle in his efforts to belong to any particular social, cultural, economic, or intellectual group rather than an opportunity to challenge each social position.

Although the rural working class of the Victorian period had firm beliefs on the importance of secure and stable families as a necessary part of their community (Schoenfeld-Dysfunctional Families in the Wessex Novels of Thomas Hardy‖ 25), some of Hardy's characters had very different beliefs about the concept of marriage. On the one hand, there were those who believed that getting married was the moral thing to do irrespective of whether there was love or not and there was the other school of thought that believed in the idea that morality could only exist if there were love and equal treatment of all people. And for some, marriage was a sacred institution which no one was supposed to break out of, once a couple got married while for others, the factor of separation was a viable option if the marriage did not work (Schoenfeld-Dysfunctional Families in the Wessex Novels of Thomas Hardy‖). Hardy revealed the diversity that formed the basis behind decisions to marry. Whereas marriage was an important part of the society, the reader came to see the multiplicity of motives that individuals in these unions possessed. One might question whether society merely wanted obedience or improvement.

The present paper deals with the Victorian realist writers' search for voicing the women's existential voice within a rigid society through subverting the romanticist literary style and themes. The chosen corpus of this study is Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure. The study, therefore, focuses on the female protagonist Sue Bridehead's suffering and journey towards creating a life that subverts the Victorian social norms. Introduction:

Thomas Hardy's Jude The Obscure was a favourite novel not only of my father's but also of mine. Like Jude Fawley, my father was a workingman denied access to higher education. He left school at twelve and worked as an ironmoulder. Like Jude he had a fascination with learning, and for years studied philosophy and theology and literature at adult education classes. Jude was an especially poignant novel for me because it commemorated that exclusion that my father felt so bitterly. When, in those later years of Jude's claim that 'they are making it easier for poor students now,' (V.iii; 1106) I went up to Oxford, that sense of being an interloper, an intruder, an outsider, given an emotional underlining by the force of Hardy's novel, was always with me. The bitterness of the injustices done to my father and thousands upon thousands like him was always present. The sensation was in no way diminished by the man at the appointments board telling me in my final year, (I later used the episode in a short story for the New Yorker), 'Well, Mr Wilding, you've edited Isis, you're tipped for a first, you've done very well for an iron-moulder's son.' Jude was the one great English novel that gave expression to some of the horrors of English class society, that refused to have the topic quietly swept away. In this it stands as a landmark in the development of English fiction. The radical challenge of Hardy's vision of Christminster-Oxford is consistent. 'For a moment there fell on Jude a true illumination; that here in the stone yard was a centre of effort as worthy as that dignified by the name of scholarly study within the noblest of the colleges.' (II ii; 951). The value of manual work is consistently asserted: the contempt with which manual workers are treated is shown time and time again. 'He was a young workman in a white blouse, and with stone-dust in the creases of his clothes; and in passing him they did

Although the rural working class of the Victorian period had firm beliefs on the importance of secure and stable families as a necessary part of their community (Schoenfeld ―Dysfunctional Families in the Wessex Novels of Thomas Hardy‖ 25), some of Hardy's characters had very different beliefs about the concept of marriage. On the one hand, there were those who believed that getting married was the moral thing to do irrespective of whether there was love or not and there was the other school of thought that believed in the idea that morality could only exist if there were love and equal treatment of all people. And for some, marriage was a sacred institution which no one was supposed to break out of, once a couple got married while for others, the factor of separation was a viable option if the marriage did not work (Schoenfeld ―Dysfunctional Families in the Wessex Novels of Thomas Hardy‖). Hardy revealed the diversity that formed the basis behind decisions to marry. Whereas marriage was an important part of the society, the reader came to see the multiplicity of motives that individuals in these unions possessed. One might question whether society merely wanted obedience or improvement.

Humanity as a whole has diverse and varying social norms and regulations that govern day to day interactions of individuals to others and also stipulate their expected association with those around them, which may be other similarly socially constructed societies or those with different rules and regulations governing the social and religious lifestyle. This paper intends to analyze the effects, influence and ultimate changes due to multiplicity (with applying Jean Francois Lyotard " s concept of multiplicity) in the mid and late Victorian era by using Thomas Hardy " s Jude the Obscure as a template to look back at the social construction of that era. In a world with the tolerance of diversity, it is accepted and tolerated that people are different; they think differently, they judge differently, they make different choices, they speak differently and they live differently. In this world people know that ideas could be unlike and different from each other but they could be reasonable and true. In this world, people can make different choices, live differently and they can be embraced and tolerated easily. In this world, people can make their own rules and justices as long as they do not harm others. In this world, the notions like good, bad, wrong, right are relative and different for each individual and all these concepts can change according to time, place and circumstances.

Abstract
Disillusionment is one of the major thematic thrusts of literary enterprise from the time
immemorial. This foregrounds the fact that man’s disillusionment is ontological. The study
investigates the trope of disillusionment in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. The paper
reveals different struggles that Jude, the eponymous character, passes through. Through
Hardy’s explicit portrayal of life in Victorian society, Hardy condemns human institutions
which endlessly perpetuate people in suffering, castration of hopes and limit them sociopolitically.
In spite of his legitimate and lofty dreams, Jude dies like a dog. Moreover, social
factor responsible for the abortion of Jude’s ambitions and ruination of his destiny are
emphasised in the study. The literary relevance of Hardy’s Jude the Obscure is not limited to
the Victorian period which was the time when he wrote. This assertion is based on the fact
that Hardy has fictionalised the struggle of the common man in the face of helplessness.
Thus, the narrative has universal and timeless significance. Disillusioned protagonist is a
recurrent figure in much of the twentieth century English fiction. The trope of disillusionment
is an attempt to depict the hopelessness, confusion, frustration, alienation, disintegration and
estrangement of modern man.
Keywords: Disillusionment, Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

The aim of the paper is to analyse the idea of cooking/eating in two novels by Thomas Hardy: Jude the Obscure
and Tess d’Urbervilles. Both works present the idea of food as one of the major points of reference in human
relationships. One of the aspects worth analysing is eating as one of the most crucial primary needs. Another one is
family eating. The meetings are preceded by careful preparation of meals (e.g. Sunday preparations in Arabella’s
house or cooking in the house of the Crick family). The food often becomes the major topic during these meetings,
showing in this way the idyllic character of family eating: the looks of dining rooms and kitchens are essential as
well as the possibility of talking to each other while eating. This idyllic space of collective eating (according to M.
Bakhtin) can be frequently destroyed by social conventions; when Tess was rejected by society, she used to eat
alone and did not take care of what she eats. Both novels explore the idea of food making it important for the
creation of an idyll.

The tragic outcomes of most of his fictional heroines have led many to accuse Thomas Hardy of
being a misogynist, harshly punishing women for their open defiance of Victorian social
expectations. However, by writing about sexually-charged issues at a time when subjects such as
premarital sex, rape, illegitimate children, adultery, and divorce were taboo, Hardy challenged
his readers to consider the destructive power caused by hypocrisy and double standards, making
many consider him to be among the first feminists. These conflicting perspectives reflect the
internal ambiguities of a gifted man torn between wanting to maintain the conservative comfort
of the Victorian era while yearning for the more equitable freedom of the Modern era.
Spanning the course of six decades, the literary works of Thomas Hardy note the evolution of the
New Woman, particularly in his novels. From the accepting and submissive Cythera Graye in
his first book to the questioning and defiant Sue Bridehead in his last written novel, Hardy
documented the growth of the independent woman, as well as her struggles for acceptance and
unconditional love. Though his heroines become stronger and more determined with each novel,
Hardy maintains a consistency in their natures, indicating an essentialist view. All of his female
characters are inherently passive, a trait that makes them vulnerable, though not inferior. Hardy
worked to reconcile his adherence in the belief of a natural difference between men and women
while advocating for equality between them.
A close examination of the fictional heroines in his major novels, a study on his personal
experience, philosophy, and the perspective of a woman who knew him demonstrate that
Thomas Hardy did not hate women; he hated the artifice of contrived relationships. A selfdescribed
meliorist, Hardy held hope for a better world but feared society was leaving itself
without a future with the oppressive treatment of women. Though quiet and reserved in his
personal life, Thomas Hardy loved intelligent, strong-minded women, but he feared the potential
power of the emerging New Woman figures as much as he feared a world without them.
INDEX WORDS: Hardy, New Woman, Misogynist, Feminist, Ambiguity, Essentialist, Nature

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, a monthly professional academic journal, covers all sorts of researches on literature studies, art theory, appreciation of arts, culture and history of arts and other latest findings and achievements from experts and scholars all over the world.

The writing of Thomas Hardy cannot be readily defined as an embodiment of the Realistic tradition. His too-liminal status as the last Victorian novelist, regional writer, and a collector of English rustics, has been vivaciously debated and contested (Miller, 1970; Widdowson, 1989; Moore, 1990; Morgan, 1992; Armstrong, 2000; Mallet, 2002; Nemesvari, 2011). This argument contributes to the debate on the relation between the real and the textual in Hardy’s last novel, Jude the Obscure (1895), which shows that Hardy’s language has features of a self-referential novel, close to the antimimetic poetics of postmodernist genres, which insists, however, on the connection with the real, where lies the inspiration for creativity and political intervention.  Through the analysis of the allegorical figures of “intertexts” interwoven in the language of the novel, it will be argued that the representation of the novel registers the connection between Hardy’s visual imagination and his intention to intervene in a discursive field.

Most of the women characters Thomas Hardy tried to present in his novels were willing to struggle for their human rights and emancipation especially in terms of marriage laws and sexual liberty. They were new women to the Victorian society in different aspects though they were paradoxical sometimes and torn between being themselves and being what the society imposed. On the one hand, they were attractive, lively, intelligent, and intellectually emancipated but, on the other, they were vulnerable and eventually crushed by a society that looked at them as inferior to men. In other words, they were against the institutionalised marriage and against treating woman as a property in general and against sexual depression which women had to suffer at that time in particular. These traits were not expected from a Victorian woman who was believed to be educated and brought up to be a mother and a wife no more no less. The Victorian woman, whether married or single, was expected to be weak and helpless, a delicate 'doll' who was not allowed to make decisions. The wife's duties were mainly the housework and making sure that her many children were taught moral values and that the home was a comfortable shelter for her husband and family from the stresses of Victorian time. Hardy's portrayals of women characters were different from the conventional image. Through such new different portrayals, Hardy tried to restore to woman 'not only a flesh and blood reality, but also a human nature lovable in its all imperfections'. 1 At the time, Victorian society had a very narrow view of the potential and individuality of women. A good example of Hardy's emancipated women is Sue Bridehead in Jude the Obscure. In Hardy and the Erotic, T. R. Wright assures that 'Sue Bridehead is in many ways at the centre of Jude the Obscure

The purpose of this paper is to concentrate on the contemporariness of Hardy’s novel, Jude the Obscure and how far it problematizes the elements of Victorian society that has relevance in connection to the context of modern society. The further focus is on Hardy’s effort to stand against the institutionalized notion of ‘Marriage’ and ‘Education’ where the female characters are portrayed as a text that reproduces the history of Victorian society. The paper also questions the strong feeling of Victorian compromise that forces Hardy to stay back. Hardy’s subversive nature is personified in the name of Jude, ultimately submits himself as a scapegoat to the Victorian social construct. Therefore, the paper is dealing with those hidden features that are yet to be explored in hardy.

Ernestina de Champourcin's only published novel La casa de enfrente (1936) has received scarce attention from the scholars of literature. One of the reasons behind this critical neglect is the fact that the novel came out less than two months before the beginning of the Civil War. Even though the initial reaction to La casa de enfrente seems to have been favorable (Landeira 32-3), the tragic events of the war, as well as Champourcin's exile, plunged the novel into oblivion. At the same time, we are accustumed of seeing Champourcin as a poet, while her contribution to the novelistic genre remains forgotten. In 1975, during her first interview given after returning to Spain, Champourcin describes La casa de enfrente as -error de la juventud‖ (Villar, -Ernestina de Champourcin,‖ 13). The few critics who discuss La casa de enfrente share the author's lack of enthusiasm for the novel. Hanley believes that the novel's only relevance resides in its capacity to clarify some aspects of Champourcin's development as a poet (146-7). Landeira refers to the work as immature and adolescent (33). Villar concludes that La casa de enfrente makes no significant contribution to the development of the novelistic genre (La poesía 18). In my opinion, however, the lack of critical interest towards the novel should be attributed not so much to its defects, as to the difficulty of placing it within a certain genre¹. I propose to read La casa de enfrente as a Bildungsroman. This kind of reading allows for a greater appreciation of the novel. Some of its aspects that might seem confusing at first glance become clearer if we analyze La casa de enfrente as part of this genre. At the same time, discussing Champourcin's novel as a female novel of formation will enrich our understanding of the trajectory of the Bildungsroman genre in Spain.