Jude the Obscure

by Thomas Hardy

'As you got older, ... you were seized with a sort of shuddering, he perceived. All around you there seemed to be something glaring, garish, rattling, and the noises and glares hit upon the little cell called your life, and shook it, and scorched it.

If he could only prevent himself growing up! He did not want to be a man'

Jude Fawley, the stonemason excluded not by his wits but by poverty from the world of Christminster privilege, finds fulfilment in his relationship with Sue Bridehead. Both have left earlier marriages. Ironically, when tragedy tests their union it is Sue, the modern emancipated woman, who proves unequal to the challenge. Hardy's fearless exploration of sexual and social relationships and his prophetic critique of marriage scandalised the late Victorian establishment and marked the end of his career as a novelist.

The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Literature, 19th Century, Victorian, Novels, British Literature

301 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 16, 1895

About the author

Thomas Hardy, OM, was an English author of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. He regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain.

The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex, delineates characters struggling against their passions and circumstances. Hardy's poetry, first published in his 50s, has come to be as well regarded as his novels, especially after The Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

The term cliffhanger is considered to have originated with Thomas Hardy's serial novel A Pair of Blue Eyes in 1873. In the novel, Hardy chose to leave one of his protagonists, Knight, literally hanging off a cliff staring into the stony eyes of a trilobite embedded in the rock that has been dead for millions of years. This became the archetypal — and literal — cliff-hanger of Victorian prose.

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like sunshine, unicorns, and lollipops, then you probably won't like this book. If it's raining and you're vaguely manic depressive or if you just want to sit around for a few hours and feel sorry for someone other than yourself - well, Jude's your man.

I can't fault Hardy's talents at controlling the mood. Even before it became horrendously horrendous, there was a pall of doom that hung over everything that poor Jude touched.

[emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

welcome to...JUNE THE OBSCURE.

is this a good pun, or am i losing my mind? either way, this is PROJECT LONG CLASSICS, my life mission a lighthearted attempt to make big books more approachable by dividing them up into small chunks and smacking some wordplay on top.

i don't know what this is about (it's only on my tbr for penguin clothbound collection purposes), and i will be reading 3 chapters of it per day this month.

they should call me emma the obscure.


PART I, CHAPTERS 1-3
i too spent most of my adolescence thinking if i could just live in a city it would fix me. in my version it was new york because i was obsessed with NYU, but jude longing for the town his teacher moved to also works.


PART I, CHAPTERS 4-6
dreams of "knowing latin" have now taken a firm backseat to the first girl jude made eye contact with.


PART I, CHAPTERS 7-9
wow. the "she faked a pregnancy in order to keep him" style of misogyny has deep roots.


PART II, CHAPTERS 1-3
jude has gone to the teacher's town to chase his hot cousin, sue. (he ditched his pregnancy-faking wife. not unlike season 1 of glee.)


PART II, CHAPTERS 4-6
jude gets his hot cousin a job with the teacher he's a fan of and what does he get? the teacher going for the cousin. women, am i right?


PART II, CHAPTER 7; PART III, CHAPTERS 1-2
so far, jude has married a girl he hooked up with repeatedly and then consented to her leaving, whined a lot about wanting to be some kind of educated person and continually not done anything about it, and chased his cousin around even though he's married and she's about to be. not that sympathetic of a character as yet.


PART III, CHAPTERS 3-5
it appears sue has spent her life reading books, refusing to get married, and hanging out with guys she rejects when they declare their love. a modern woman.


PART III, CHAPTERS 6-8
sue is married and arabella is back from australia. can jude's life get any worse! (i don't think jude's life is all that bad.)


PART III, CHAPTERS 9-10; PART IV, CHAPTER 1
arabella is married to a different guy (in spite of being also married already) and told jude not to tattle. cool!


PART IV, CHAPTERS 2-4
sue's husband came in her room while she was asleep and she promptly got out of bed and jumped out the window. it goes without saying they no longer live together.


PART IV, CHAPTERS 5-6; PART V, CHAPTER 1
awww, the cousins are getting matching divorces.


PART V, CHAPTERS 2-4
congratulations to sue and jude on the illegal adoption of jude's nameless and unchristened heretofore australian son!


PART V, CHAPTERS 5-7
sue just turned to jude and said our lives are literally perfect! there's only one problem. this kid is dumb. (but now their lives aren't perfect even outside that obvious flaw, because everyone knows they don't accord with social laws and they're being chased across kingdom come [read: rural britain] by the rumor mill.)


PART V, CHAPTER 8; PART VI, CHAPTERS 1-2
i had a few different jokes written here but now i have to delete them all. basically...the aforementioned dumb son killed himself and the two other kids jude and sue had. and then sue was pregnant but that baby died too.

can't say i saw that one coming.


PART VI, CHAPTERS 3-5
sue just married the teacher again (conveniently she never married jude) because she thinks her kids died for her sins. okay yikes!


PART VI, CHAPTERS 6-8
arabella got inspo from that, i guess. we're back where we started re: marriages.


PART VI, CHAPTERS 9-11
if you didn't know jude was going to die in this section, you don't know my boy thomas hardy.


OVERALL
with this book i conclude my reading of the penguin clothbound thomas hardy editions, and this is by far my least favorite. all of them are very melodramatic and moral and didactic, but they vary in believability and timelessness.

this one was the worst offender. outdated and over the top.
rating: 2.5

[karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

i have just discovered betterbooktitles.com, so i am including this, but it is a total spoiler, so be warned.



jude the obscure is one of my favorite books of all time. and reading the biography of him now is making me very antsy to reread this. it used to be part of my "summer reruns" ritual; to reread all my favorites each and every summer. then i got old and realized that kind of thing was a luxury i would have to give up, or risk missing out on all kinds of books that are currently crowding my shelves and toppling over on my floor. jude the obscure was introduced to me at the tender age of 13. i was taking some stupid study skills class, and the teacher, always prone to leaving the topic and talking about her life on the streets of lean mean central falls and imparting life lessons/knife lessons to all of us was musing one day and said... "if you ever want to read the most depressing book of all time -read jude the obscure." well, i am a title -collector (to this day) and i squirrelled it away in my little notebook, and came across it at the more perfect jude-age of 15. man, she wasn't kidding. what an amazing piece of writing. poor jude and his ambitions, his poor choices in love (if a woman throws a pig's penis at you and you take it as a declaration of love, you are on the road to some pain, my friend)but it has everything - the hypocrisy of the church and the delicacy of woman's place in academia and the danger of breeding super-precocious children. it's hardy, so everything ends poorly for all involved, but it is done with such a stunning touch, you find yourself panting at its beauty. "somebody might have come along that way who would have asked him his trouble, and might have cheered him... but nobody did come, because nobody does." i mean, really. it just chills for me.

and my knife skills are top-notch.

come to my blog!

[Nate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this if you're looking for that final push towards suicide.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

As my son puts it: "You are Hardy-broken yet again!"

How come I was not warned against Jude after my long suffering with Tess? How come nobody stood up and said:

"Listen, Lisa, this is a wonderful, brilliant novel, but it is not for you! You won't survive the pain of the injustice and the legal prostitution and the brutal loss of the children. You will yet again be book-scarred!"

How come? Or maybe I did get a ton of good advice, just like Sue and Jude, but I didn't act on it, just like them, until my heart was Hardy-broken and I had followed Jude in his agony and mourned for the harder fate of Sue. Staying alive TO THAT?

Phillotson, you despicable old pimp. I shall never forgive you even though you so generously forgive yourself for indulging in buying back what could not be owned - a human body!

Arabella, you pitiful piece of work. You are too common to understand just how evil you were.

Sue, I forgive you for trying to internalise the pain of the loss of your children. You were a beautiful bird as long as you were kept in the wild. The cage doesn't suit your wings.

Jude! I have no words. You loved and lost and that is an honourable thing. Honesty of heart is a wonderful gift.

The world is coughing with you this year!

I am off to read my December Dickens, hoping for a good tucking in of the favourite characters after the rollercoaster. That's the comfort I need after this excellent way to break my heart piece by piece!

[Lisa of Troy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Words cannot express how extraordinary this book is.

Jude Fawley has hopes of being a scholar one day. This is his impossible dream, and he never gives it up although he faces setbacks time and time again. His quest to reach above his station is incredibly challenging, and the townspeople are less than encouraging.

This is the story of what it means not to judge. Jude’s story is beautifully complex, and he is treated cruelly when he shouldn’t be.

The characters feel painfully real, and the journey is such an emotional rollercoaster. Jude the Obscure is certainly unforgettable.

This has to be one of my new favorite books of all time. Will reread.

The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Softcover Text – $13.02 Penguin Classic Version from Blackwell’s
Audiobook – Free through Audible

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[°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ʜᴇʟᴇɴ Ροζουλί Εωσφόρος ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° ★·.·´¯`·.·★ Ⓥⓔⓡⓝⓤⓢ Ⓟⓞⓡⓣⓘⓣⓞⓡ Ⓐⓡⓒⓐⓝⓤⓢ Ταμετούρο Αμ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Συγκλονιστικό και μνημειώδες μυθιστόρημα που δεν θα ξεχάσω ποτέ.
Πιστεύω ειλικρινά πως ειναι το μοναδικό έργο μέσα στην τραγική απλότητα του που απαιτεί μια ζωή ανάγνωσης και μελέτης προκειμένου να γίνουν κατανοητά τα σημαντικά μηνύματα του Χάρντυ.

Γράφοντας αυτή την κριτική αμέσως μετά την ολοκλήρωση της ανάγνωσης αυτού του αδυσώπητα μελαγχολικού και καταραμένα τραγικού βιβλίου δηλώνω έντονα και άσχημα συναισθηματικά φορτισμένη.
Για το λόγο αυτό και επειδή πάντα γράφω την άποψη μου για ότι διαβάζω ψυχικά ορμώμενη , ίσως και να αναφέρω κάποια γεγονότα ή καταστάσεις που μαρτυρούν την εξέλιξη του βιβλίου. Δε γίνεται αλλιώς. Με έχει πραγματικά συγκλονίσει.

Κάνω ΠΡΟΕΙΔΟΠΟΙΗΤΙΚΟ ΣΠΟΙΛΕΡ εδώ, οπότε θεωρήστε υπεύθυνο τον εαυτό σας για την παραπέρα ανάγνωση.


Πρώτα απο όλα είναι ένα σπουδαίο μυθιστόρημα ιδεών και ιδανικών διαχρονικών για την ανθρώπινη ιδιοσυγκρασία.
Ο Τζουντ είναι ένα ευαίσθητο ορφανό παιδάκι εγκαταλειμμένο μετα το χαμό των γονιών του σε μια ηλικιωμένη θεία που θα τον προτιμούσε νεκρό για να αποφύγει το βάρος της ανατροφής του.

Ένα απογοητευμένο πλάσμα, που λατρεύει τη φύση και τα ζώα. Συμπονά κάθε μορφή ζωής συμπάσχει και υποφέρε�� ακόμη και για τα αυτονόητα για άλλους «εγκλήματα» διαβίωσης. Το κόψιμο των δέντρων, η σφαγή των ζώων, η βία και ο πόνος δεν ταιριάζουν στον χαρακτήρα του.
Τα ιδεώδη του είναι πολύ υψηλά και διαφορετικά απο αυτά του κόσμου που ζει. Επομένως ο κόσμος δεν θα φανεί ποτέ καλός για τον Τζουντ.

Έτσι, η ιστορία μας ξεκινά με τον Τζουντ ως παιδί και τον ακολουθεί κατα τη διάρκεια της ζωής του, τεκμηριώνοντας ποικιλοτρόπως την αργή και βασανιστική καταστροφή των ιδανικών του.

Μέσα απο τη βικτωριανή εποχή που επικρατεί ο Τζουντ αντιμετωπίζει τις στάσεις που συνδέονται με την κοινωνική τάξη,την οικονομική κατάσταση, τις ευκαιρίες για μόρφωση και πνευματική καλλιέργεια, τις θρησκευτικές επιρροές, τον θεσμό του γάμου και την επιρροή του κοινωνικού Δαρβινισμού στην επικρατούσα σύγχρονη σκέψη.
Όλα αυτά εξερευνούνται και αναπτύσσονται μέσα στην ιστορία μας πλαισιώνοντας το τραγικό πορτρέτο της ζωής, της κοινωνίας, του κατηγορητηρίου και του χρόνου που ζει και βασανίζεται ο Τζουντ ως αντισυμβατικός ονειροπόλος.
Ο αντιπρόσωπος του ιδεαλιστικού ρομαντισμού που τολμά να αντισταθεί και πληρώνει ως αρχαίος τραγικός την ανυπακοή του.

Ο γάμος του με την Αραμπέλα μια παρωδία, μια αφελέστατα νεανική απόφαση.

Η αγάπη του για την ξαδέλφη του παντοδύναμη, παθιασμένη, αιώνια, βαθιά, αναντικατάστατη, αρρωστημένη και θανητοφόρα.

Το όνειρο ζωής του Τζουντ η εισαγωγή του σε καποιο μεγάλο κολέγιο στην «πόλη των φώτων».
Σκληρά εργαζόμενος, πάμφτωχος και αυτοδίδακτος σε ελληνικά και Λατινικά κείμενα πορεύεται με ιδανικά και ρομαντικά οράματα μέχρι την είσοδο του κολλεγίου.
Η πόρτα παραμένει ερμητικά κλειστή για τον Τζουντ και δέχεται ένα τρομερό χτύπημα όταν αντιλαμβάνεται πως η κοινωνική του θέση και στάση καθώς και η χειρωνακτική εργασία θα επηρεάσουν άσχημα το μέλλον του.

Η Άραμπελ τον φυλακίζει με πονηριά σε έναν καταστροφικό γάμο για να μπορέσει η ίδια - κενή συναισθηματικά και πουλημένη ηθικά- να πραγματοποιήσει τα χονδροειδή ένστικτα της.

Η ξαδέλφη του είναι μια αιθέρια ύπαρξη. Μια νεράιδα της απόλυτης ελευθερίας που καθορίζει τη ζωή του. Αντισυμβατική, ρομαντική και σύγχρονη για την εποχή της πιστεύει ακράδαντα στον ιδεαλισμό της ελεύθερης αγάπης χωρίς απαραίτητα τη σεξουαλική ευχαρίστηση. Θέλει σύντροφο ζωής που να βιώνουν κυρίως πνευματική σχέση αγάπης παρά κοινωνικά συμβατική ή σεξουαλική.

Ανάμεσα στον Τζουντ και την ξαδέλφη του δημιουργείται μια παντοδύναμη αγάπη, μια ακατανίκητη σχέση αφοσίωσης και εμμονής. Ένα παράφορο πάθος πρωτίστως ψυχικής ένωσης και μετά σαρκικής. Δεν τελούν ποτέ το μυστήριο του γάμου. Δεν είναι επαναστάτες. Είναι ο φόβος πως η σύμβαση της Βικτωριανής κοινωνίας μέσα στο γάμο θα καταστρέψει την παντοτινή τους ευτυχία.

Μέσα απο υπαινιγμούς και μεταφορές προσφέρεται μια γεμάτη πλοκή απο βιβλικές αναφορές και ουσιώδη μηνύματα σπουδαίων προγόνων της λογοτεχνίας.

Προς το τέλος της ιστορίας κορυφώνεται η τραγωδία μα λείπει η κάθαρση.

Ένα συγκλονιστικό γεγονός καταρρακώνει και τους δυο καταστρέφοντας κάθε συναισθηματικό και πνευματικό δεσμό.
Κάπου εδώ γκρεμίζονται τα ιδανικά. Καταφθάνει με απόλυτη κυριαρχία το ανυπέρβλητο κακό. Ο πόνος. Η συντριβή. Η απόγνωση. Η παράνοια. Και η αυλαία πέφτει με την ίδια θλιβερή μελαγχολία για να κρύψει ένα μακάβριο σκηνικό ζωής.
Για να θάψει βαθιά στο σκοτάδι τον παλιό ρομαντισμό και να ρίξει προβολείς στον εκτοπισμό του εκσυγχρονισμού,σε μια νέα τάξη πραγμάτων που τα θρυμματισμένα ιδανικά είναι αδύνατο να επανασυναρμολογηθούν.


Διαβάστε οπωσδήποτε αυτό το βιβλίο. Είναι εξαιρετικό έργο τέχνης λόγου, αξιών και μηνυμάτων!!



ΥΣ. Θα ξερίζωνα με ευχαρίστηση τα μαλλιά της Αραμπέλας με χατζάρα βυζαντινου ρυθμού.. θα της έκανα λοβοτομή και κόψιμο στην κοιλιακή χώρα με τσεκούρι χωραφιού

( ζητώ συγγνώμη για την ωμή βία που αναφέρω,μα ειλικρινά θα το έκανα).


Καλή ανάγνωση!!
Πολλούς ασπασμούς!!

[Henry Avila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thomas Hardy ended his brilliant career writing novels with this book, Jude the Obscure because of the adverse reaction in Victorian England , this was thought unseemly immoral not a decent product , you didn't parade such filth to the public but he did, almost fifty years too early yet liking poetry more , it was not a hard decision for him to stop back to his first love making exquisite poems.... In the tail end of the 19th century two intelligent but undisciplined rather immature first -cousins, meet and fall in love, Jude Fawley and pretty, independent Sue Bridehead Jude's great ambition is to better himself attend the university at Christminister, (Oxford) studying alone , friendless for ten long years Latin, Greek and ancient classical literature, in the small country village of impoverished Marygreen, the orphan living with an unsympathetic cold , great-aunt Drusilla the spinster, she warns him about the many bad marriages in the family, not caring but instead seeing the far distant glorious lights of the fabled city, the poor boy has the gift but lacks money or family connections, in a class conscious society he wouldn't be welcomed at school...Before encountering Sue, her mother dead and estranged from the father, Jude makes a tragic error in judgement marrying the scheming, coarse Arabella Donn, the daughter of a pig farmer she forces him to the altar by a lie, she was in trouble... sorry a mistake...he pursues a profession he hates being a stonemason, having learned earlier the skill as a boy still all his hopes, dreams, fantasies are crushed scattered to the wind his detested life in poverty will always be, for the would be scholar. Arabella exits, to the other side of the world Australia, they are not compatible no surprise, too many disagreements and Sue enters for a short time until Mr. Richard Phillotson Jude's old schoolmaster, mentor in Marygreen and only friend, gives Sue a job as a teacher in a nearby town, at the urging of Mr. Fawley she needed the job, people are not comfortably the cousins living together innocently they say, especially in the Christian city of Christminister...The school instructor twenty years Sue's senior asks her to marry him she agrees, even as her love for Jude grows, Miss Bridehead thinks it will be for the best into a respectable situation, live as a decent woman and not being a burden to Jude just one little problem arises, she loathes the kindly, thoughtful, unattractive gentleman something makes her skin crawl when he touches her and the feelings won't leave. Sue and Jude constantly meet, talk and kiss the passion is there but the complications are too . Every time Jude passes the university on the street, his sad eyes observe, the mind wonders the ache begins for what might have been, he can never forget...

[Fabian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally read it!

This one was so often interrupted and left for dead... & I guess it was better to keep straining the eyes and pausing after glorious upon glorious sentence for better understanding. Yeah- he's one of those authors often times associated with Greatness, & with good reason.

"The Return of the Native" is another interrupted and altogether discarded novel which had incredible prospects. This one rollercoasters from Dickensian beginnings (Jude the pauper and dreamer) to omnipresent tragedy (yes--Shakespearean & modern, too).

Jude is an Everyman cursed by an even larger figure: the pre-feminist minx. In the case of Jude, being associated to a woman in a then-bizarre two-in-one-ness is The Fatal Flaw. & not just to any woman: Sue Bridehead, a Bovary-ian counterpart, is ambivalent and mean and unromantic. Of course she will singlehandedly betray Jude's affections, break his heart. She is a sad drama queen, & every woman in this novel is an antagonist!

There is a downfall to this modest Everyman, sure, and though it is propagated by his unfortunate mistake of falling for a BITCH, there are outside influences which too contribute to the misery that pervades.

Jude is an idiot, of course, and the moral is clear, though other themes insert themselves with automatic ambition, themes such as Marriage (this book should be mandatory for anyone studying the rituals of the [dreadful:] lawful union), Christianity, Urban Sprawl, Social Decay, Shattered Dreams, Lowly Expectations.

It is a difficult read, and I am happy to put it behind me. It is a sure fire classic, as grand a production as any writer can produce. I will read it again when I have more time & patience... I predict within the next ten-15 years.

(2011)

[Lizzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

“But his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small.”

I realize wistfully that I cannot revisit all books I read and loved a long time ago. Oh, how I regret not having an endless existence to go back and revisit my most precious memories. However, I have so many new celebrated novels yet to explore.

I read Jude the Obscure when I was in college, I was so young but used to read whenever I did not have class or did not have to study. If I remember correctly, I discovered it in an English Literature class. I was exposed to marvels through it that are never far away. Yes, I loved Thomas Hardy’s appealing protagonist. I liked that he wanted to advance himself, but no effort would be enough for him to rise above his social status in those times. He is continually knocked out in his aspirations. His love life is no more successful, as he seems to choose unsuitable women.

“People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort.”

Thus, Jude represents almost every men of his time in England or maybe many other places. From the title we understand that he is an obscure man for his choices make no sense. If I remember correctly, all along we are reminded of what could have been. Nothing could be more melancholic. Despite my lack of maturity at the time I read it and the gloom that involves the novel, a feeling of amazement still rises in me when I think of it. Thomas Hardy must have been a master to inspire me so at my youth.

“Somebody might have come along that way who would have asked him his trouble, and might have cheered him by saying that his notions were further advanced than those of his grammarian. But nobody did come, because nobody does; and under the crushing recognition of his gigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world.”

I might one day yet decide to go back to this great book.
___
Note: quotes from Goodreads.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

To read of Tess or Jude? I was completely undecided, so took the action of a coin toss to decide for me.
Problem, had not a penny in my pocket, so whisked out a visa card and launched it across the room.

Frontside up - Tess
Backside up - Jude

Jude it was then...
(Don't worry Tess, you will have your day!)

He might have won my card toss but there is no winning in Hardy's final novel. A novel of such bleak and devastating intensity it's little wonder he finally called it a day.
Stirring up a feeling of failure and disappointment in life, the protagonist Jude Fawley is a scholarly chap who aspires from an early age to study in the university town of Christminster, situated in Hardy's fictional county of Wessex, become a clergyman, and distinguish himself in the world.

But two women would enter his life, Arabella and cousin Sue, to ruin everything.....

His tragic story moved me in such a way that was almost unbearable, too painful to comprehend, the light at the end of the tunnel didn't even exist.

Jude is brought up by his old Aunt and is devoted to a local schoolmaster, Phillotson, and dreams of following in his footsteps after he moves to the Oxford-like town of Christminster. He builds a fantasy life for himself, and believes this is based on his entire destiny, well, that is until the selfish Arabella Donn enters the frame, followed by unhappy Sue Bridehead. What happens next?, we have murder-suicide, failed marriage, a miscarriage, deathly illness and loss of faith, could a novel be more depressing.Hardy skewers the cruelty and hypocrisy of the way society works. He shows how, even in moments when men attempt to do something about the injustice of it all, they end up merely papering over the problem so that they don’t have to see what’s amiss.

I have to say it's very well written, and clearly see why Hardy is regarded so highly, you take all three central characters to heart, it's impossible not to, and his portrayal of the villages and countryside evokes such feelings within, however, I am unconvinced that Hardy’s critiques of Christianity and marriage are altogether just and reasonable, but do recognize the truth for love in the hearts of Sue and Jude, through their anguish and hopelessness, their anxiety and grief.
Of the other earthy characters in it, dare I say they actually made me laugh at times, but generally any cheerfulness is on a very small level to say the least.

As for Hardy’s career as a novelist, it’s a shame that he ended it so soon, he here proves himself to be one of the great creators of complex characters with emotionally devastating problems, grabbing the readers attention in a very short period of time, I didn't think it was the masterpiece some might see it as, but did leave a very strong impression on me....I even felt sorry for the Pig.

[Game0ftomes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jude the Obscure is a bleak and tragic novel that explores themes of ambition, love, and societal constraints. The story follows Jude Fawley, a working-class man who dreams of becoming a scholar, and his doomed relationships with his cousin Sue Bridehead and his wife Arabella. As Jude struggles against the rigid social system and his own personal failings, the novel presents a harsh critique of marriage, religion, and class divisions in Victorian England.
While Hardy’s prose is undeniably rich, the novel can feel overly pessimistic, with relentless misery that borders on melodrama. The characters, especially Sue, are frustratingly inconsistent, making it hard to fully connect with them. Despite this, the book remains a powerful, if sometimes exhausting, read that captures the crushing weight of societal expectations.
Overall, Jude the Obscure is a thought-provoking but emotionally draining novel. It’s worth reading for its historical significance and social commentary, but its unrelenting bleakness may not appeal to everyone.

[Dolors · Rating 4 out of 5]

“God had created woman for the sole purpose of tempting and testing man. One must not approach her without defensive precautions and fear of possible snares. She was, indeed, just like a snare, with her lips open and her arms stretched out to man.” Guy de Maupassant, Clair de Lune.

I wonder who the real tragic protagonist in Hardy’s tale of doomed love and transcendental disillusion is. What seems evident according to the incriminating behavior of the female characters in the story is that women are not to be trusted for their either manipulative or gullible nature. Many might easily consider Sue Bridehead, Jude’s alma mater, the major villain of this wretched story. A perverse seductress full of inessential stratagems and provocative pouts, whose tribulations ruin the lives of two good-hearted men, tantalizing them with sharp mind and incorporeal beauty.
One can throw stones at this treacherous creature based on false social embodiments of love and despise her impetuous rebellion or choose to dig deeper and endure acute spiritual turmoil in an inner battle of wills between abstract ideology and constrained reality.
One can focus on Sue’s ellusive actions and self-centered individualism or see her as a token of the transition between the new and the old mental frame of the semi-liberated female in Victorian society, whose entanglement in centuries of sexual enslavement and intellectual repression brings her to continuous inner conflict.
One can choose to condemn those who attempt to struggle against centuries of subjection or be forgiving for the inconsistencies that define humankind and its perplexing contradictions. Because when human nature is tamed by oppressive convention or shackled by fundamentalist morality, abrupt and almost unpardonable reactions can unchain from the most emancipated and spiritually untainted individuals.

“There is something external to us which says, “You shan’t” First it said, “You shan’t learn!”, Then it said, “You shan’t labour!”, Now it says, “You shan’t love!” (357)

In the end, Sue’s gravest betrayal is to turn against her own convictions when her willpower fails under the pressure of social stigma and the corrosive guilt that comes from horrific calamity.
Call me biased but I choose not to condemn Sue Bridehead. I choose to embrace her obscure mystery and all the ambiguity of her complex psyche instead.

If Sue evokes the torn nature of humanity trapped between turbulently opposed tides, Jude’s genteel and innocent morality arises as the soothing balm for the restless soul in the still pool of rationality.
Jude’s rootless origins are as inert as Marygreen, the place where he grows up as part of the emerging tradesmen class. His uncommon sensitiveness and his sense of ideal justice nurture this dreamy laborer’s aspirations to attend College in Christminster, the alluring cultural town next to Marygreen, to become a learned scholar and a man of wisdom. But the the law of nature can’t be fooled indefinitely and lofty ideals need to be confronted with animal instinct when the allure of the flesh surpasses the call of the mind. Arabella, the merciless huntress and the archetype of Victorian female in search of economic security through marriage, lures Jude into a permanent contract based “on a temporary feeling which has no necessary connection with affinities” and a marital life of shared misery leads the couple to walk their separate ways.
Free from his conjugal ties, Jude starts treading the path of his dreams and moves to Christminster, where he finds work as a stonemason refurbishing the phantasmagorical walls of the same elitist Colleges that turn him down because of his humble origins. When the stagnant medievalism of Christminster’s cultural hollowness becomes evident, Jude finds in ethereal Sue the perfect substitute for his idealistic aspirations, clinging blindly to a body-and-mind consuming passion that can’t be fully reciprocated by a woman who identifies physical sexuality with submission to social convention. “We ought to have lived in mental communion, and no more”. (372)

Who commits the greater sin? The sightless or the guileless? The one who clings to ghostly reflection of the idealized mirage or the one who fumbles with faltering candlelight amidst the engulfing darkness of moral hypocrisy? The devotedly religious or the unredeemed pagan? The ethical collectivist or the self-destructive individualist?
The law of men might seem crueler than the law of nature but Hardy’s equally haunting and lyrical prose oozing with symbolic realism shows otherwise. Nature is as astonishing a miracle as it is an inescapable curse. Two pure doves are liberated only to be hunted down again to have their hearts ripped out to produce a fake love potion by a perfidious quack, a rabbit caught in a gin bellows in agony bleeding to a slow and agonizing death, a compassionate man dies alone with a feeble blessing on his cracked lips, a heedless woman punishes herself masochistically with a long lasting self-debasement and spiritual corruption. Only the pig is spared an excruciating suffering with a fast kill in the hands of clement Jude, whose fate won’t grant him the same luxury. Nature is the bleak mirror of doomed existence and certain obliteration. A mirror that Hardy turns around to us proving we are all characters of his dire novel and that the world is a too much obscure place for those visionaries whose ephemeral light glows ahead of their time, regardless of hollow social constraints and racking tragedy. The rawness of nature will eventually find all the characters in this novel called life and their only choice will be whether to face her with bitter damnation or with a forgiving blessing on their lips. I choose not to condemn. I choose to embrace. I choose to absolve. I choose to be merciful. What will your choice be?

“But no one came. Because no one ever does.”(45)

[Colin Baldwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing classic. By far, my favourite Thomas Hardy, which happens to be his last novel. I read it first and then went on to enjoy his others.
Some tough themes, for sure. I think it was banned on release.
Was Hardy too ahead of his time with this one?

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

My uncle called me from France because he'd heard third-hand that I was about to read Jude the Obscure and he felt he needed to warn me away from it. I was going through a divorce; he felt that I was too fragile for Jude. He was trying to save me, like warning your friend who just got out of traction against dirtbiking down the Matterhorn. This is the bleakest book from the bleakest author, a serious contender for Bleakest Book Ever Written, a book so dire that almost everyone hated it when it came out, not just hated it but were furious at Thomas Hardy for producing it; their response was so vitriolic that he never wrote a novel again.

Hardy in order of bleakness
Less bleak
Return of the Native
Far From the Madding Crowd
Mayor of Casterbridge
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Jude the Obscure
Most bleak

I mean, it turns out that one of the messages of the book is that one shouldn't stay in a marriage that's not the right marriage, so from a certain perspective, what's the problem, right? One of the other messages is "But society will beat you down no matter what you do, and then everyone dies alone and miserable," so I guess there's that.

Hardy was a free thinker, a realist and a radical. Like Dickens, he was concerned with the lives of the poor - rural poor, mostly, as opposed to Dickens' London poor. He was pro-women's rights. He was some weird homebrewed species of agnostic. Sue Bridehead is a fascinating, complicated character: skeptical, rebellious, self-destructive.



Hardy has this flair for vivid scenes. At one point two characters break up, and the whole thing is carried out via notes passed by schoolboys between classrooms. It's fantastic. He's melodramatic and overwrought and super entertaining, even at his most depressive, which, again, is right here in this book. It's either this or King Lear for Bleakest Book Ever. I don't know what my uncle was so worried about, I thought it was great.

[Nikola · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Juda nieznany" zasługuje na miano najbardziej dramatycznej historii miłosnej.
Dużo niezdecydowania i braku konsekwencji, co i tak jest przeświecone głęboko ukrytymi uczuciami.

[Captain Sir Roddy, R.N. (Ret.) · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few days ago I finished Thomas Hardy's last novel, Jude the Obscure. I was completely overwhelmed and truly needed a few days to reflect upon the experience and collect my thoughts before attempting a review. Bear in mind too, that this is the first time that I have read Jude, and I sincerely believe that this novel may require a lifetime of reading and study in order to fully tease out and understand the import of Hardy's message.

First, a little background about the novel. This novel took Hardy sometime to write. He started with an outline in 1890, and did not complete the book until 1894. It was first published serially in Harper's New Monthly Magazine from December 1894 to November 1895, and then it was published in book form. Hardy took a lot of heat for the novel from reviewers and critics, other authors, as well as the general public. It developed a reputation as Jude the Obscene. The relentlessness and vitriol of the negative criticism caused Hardy to forsake ever writing another novel of fiction; and he spent the remaining thirty some odd years of his life concentrating on his poetry.

I also want to include, at this point, a strong 'Spoiler Warning.' In crafting this review, and discussing Hardy's authorial intent, I am finding it quite impossible not to discuss some relatively important plot points and elements. Therefore, continue reading at your own peril. All I can observe is that regardless of what I can say, or what you may have heard about this novel, it is a monumentally huge novel that simply must be read by any and all students of great literature. Okay, consider yourself forewarned.

In some respects, Jude the Obscure can be looked upon as the coming-of-age story of Jude Fawley. Others have postulated that it is also an anti-bildungsroman as it documents, as we shall see, the slow and torturous destruction of Jude and his ideals. Interestingly, this is the only Hardy novel, that I am aware of, that starts with the protagonist as a child and follows him through his life.

In Jude the Obscure, Hardy addresses the prevailing Victorian attitudes associated with social class and standing, educational opportunities, religion, the institution of marriage, and the influence of Darwinism on modern thought. Throughout the novel, Jude, Sue Bridehead, and Arabella Donn are used by Hardy to explore and develop the all-encompassing portrait; and to some degree, indictment; of the society and time that Jude and Hardy reside in. It seems that the novel sets up an examination of the contrasts between the idealistic romanticism of the second generation poets, John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley (Hardy truly admired Shelley!), and the more modern cultural movement of social Darwinism.

First and foremost, this is a novel of ideas and ideals. Jude is a sensitive young fellow, always concerned with the lot of the animals and people around him. As a child he is even dismayed at seeing trees cut down, and can't bring himself to scare away the 'rooks' (crows) that are eating the seed from a newly planted field that he's been paid to protect. Later, as an adult he is compelled to leave his bed late at night and find the rabbit, screaming with pain, that has been caught in a trap and dispatch it as an act of mercy. These are some of the first signs of Jude-the-romantic, and Jude-the-dreamer. The ideals he has formed are something really quite different from that of the world around him, and this can't bode well for him.

The first third of the novel focuses on Jude's desire to become an educated man and become admitted to the great colleges of 'Christminster' (loosely modeled on Oxford) in Hardy's 'Wessex' countryside. Jude, like Hardy, is an autodidact and teaches himself Greek and Latin, and views Christminster as the "city of lights" and "where the tree of knowledge grows." Jude's romantic visions and ideals suffer a terrible blow when he is denied admittance to the colleges and is advised that "remaining in your own sphere and sticking to your trade..." is his best course of action. Idealism aside, Jude now begins to understand that his social class and standing will continue to strongly influence his future.

Issues associated with Love and Marriage also dominate much of the novel's landscape, and can be quite painful to read and consider. Early on, Jude is essentially trapped into a truly disastrous marriage with the attractive, but coarse young woman, Arabella Donn, the daughter of a pig-farmer. Trust me, she can slaughter the animals that Jude cannot. Arabella's 'unique' method of introducing herself to Jude is to throw a bloody pig's penis at him as he walks by while she is cleaning and sorting the offal of a slaughtered hog! Simply put, Arabella is the 'Delilah' to Jude's 'Samson.'

Jude's young cousin, Sue Bridehead, on the other hand, is at times, one of the most erudite and intellectual women of the fiction of the late-Victorian. Ethereal and fairy-like, Sue is an idealist too, but her idealism tends towards a more modern view; even though some its roots reflect that of the second generation Romantics too. For example, Sue quotes to Jude, several lines from Shelley's great poem, Epipsychidion (Three Sermons on Free Love). At first blush, it seems easy to assume that Sue endorses the Shelleyan view of 'Free Love' and not binding oneself contractually and exclusively to only one other. While Shelley meant this from the perspective of sexual gratification, Sue has developed her own brand of romantic idealism that leads her to believe that it is only the iron-clad contract (marriage) that dooms the relationship.

I had to spend some time thinking about Sue and her beliefs, but I have come to the preliminary conclusion that neither she, nor Hardy, are anti-marriage, but that it is the nature of the contract of marriage in the Victorian age (i.e., with all of its trappings of submission, subjugation, and so forth) that doom its likelihood of long-term success in her view. In fact, in support of this notion, Hardy made a notebook entry in 1889, in which he writes, "Love lives on propinquity, but dies of contact."

It seems that Hardy's development of the character of Sue Bridehead and the novel's storyline may reflect a portion of his own troubled relationship with his wife Emma and her increasing religious beliefs through the years of their own marriage. Also, it may well be that Sue's character reflects a bit of Hardy's cousin, Tryphena Sparks, a woman that he is rumored to have had an affair with in 1868, and who later died in 1890. Hardy, in the Preface to the 1895 edition of Jude, stated that the novel was partly inspired "by the death of a woman" in 1890.

Even though Sue Bridehead bears children with Jude, sexual relations and intimacy remains a very difficult proposition for her. For example, when married to her first husband, Richard Phillotson, she is startled awake by him entering her bedroom absentmindedly (they slept in separate rooms), and she leaps from a second story window into the night rather than sleep with him! Again, much of the time she is with Jude, they also sleep in separate bedrooms, which has the effect of keeping Jude's passions for her quite 'hot'. This is not, however, the romantic ideal of the loving wife and life-mate that Jude has envisioned for his dear Sue though. It is also not the picture of romantic idealism for Sue either, as she is truly looking for a partner through which she can fully experience Love's spiritual and intellectual bonds, and not just the contractual or the sexual.

Toward the end of the novel there occurs such a shocking event that finally and irrevocably alters the lives of Jude and Sue, and largely severs their tenuous emotional and spiritual bonds to one another. The romantic ideals of both are smashed hopelessly and simply cannot be reassembled.

Modernization has come and displaced the old world romanticism of Jude Fawley and Thomas Hardy. Jude-the-Dreamer and Jude-the-Idealist have no place in this new order, because to transcend to his ideals means that he must die as Keats and Shelley so eloquently discovered. Unfortunately for Jude, even Arabella is present to witness his final suffering and agony. Jude's story has become, in a very real sense Hardy's modern retelling of the 'Book of Job.' [Note the word play too -- the "J" from 'Jude' and the "Ob" from 'Obscure':]

As I said above, I have a sense that I have probably only just scratched the surface of this titanic novel, and that there is much, much more to glean. It is full of allusion and metaphor, and rife with biblical references and nods to Hardy's literary ancestors, Milton, Wordsworth, and Shelley. Before I tackle Jude again, or re-read any of his other novels for that matter, I want to first read Claire Tomalin's recent biography, Thomas Hardy (2006); Rosemarie Morgan's Women and Sexuality in the Novels of Thomas Hardy (1988); and also delve into Thomas Hardy: The Complete Poems (1981), edited by James Gibson.

Read this novel! When you are through, let me know; for I'd love to discuss it with you and see what you think too. Five out of five stars for me.

[Magrat Ajostiernos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Casi tenía miedo de leer Jude porque me habían vendido esta historia como un DRAMA SIN FIN, y no sé si es que me he hecho ya al estilo Hardy, pero no me ha parecido para tanto. Es cierto que resulta impactante por una serie de acontecimientos del desenlace pero no me gustaría quedarme solo con eso.
Me ha parecido una novela muy crítica con la sociedad victoriana en muchísimos aspectos, con personajes muy complejos encerrados en una época en la que son incapaces de ser felices por culpa de las convenciones sociales, siendo ellos muy adelantados a su época o su país. He disfrutado de cada página por el estilo tan especial del autor y hay personajes como Sue y Arabella que me han fascinado.

***Sigo recomendando encarecidamente empezar con este autor por 'Lejos del mundanal ruido'

[Luís · Rating 4 out of 5]

I surprise myself that good Victorian society received this obscure Jude with disdain, all gasping in outraged amazement in its tight corsets given this scandalous opus, which undermines all its immemorial certainties by vigorously questioning the validity of social conventions of the time: the place of well-born scholars in areas of education, the decorum of the clergy, the role of the family and above all, the institution of marriage, at the heart of this dark and provocative novel.
It is indeed very clever for Thomas Hardy to have orchestrated the heavy questioning through tragic romance because one would have to be made of stone not to be touched to the heart by the sad destiny of Jude, the simple countryman who dreamed of being a cleric. A monk who, having failed to rise above his condition through science and religion, lost himself in exercising a noble and pure love that he had wanted to free from secular laws.
If Hardy excels as much as in “Tess d’Urbervilles” in depicting the places, more urban than rural this time, it is above all through the density of the characters that he keeps us in the grip of this dark story:
Jude may be astonishingly naive (I admit, in passing, that it had taken me to see a man play the role of innocence usually assigned to young girls in 19th-century novels), but he is a character of integrity. Such that one cannot help but shudder with empathy and anger at the injustices done to him.
I admire the subtlety of the author when he makes him the toy of the contradictory manipulations of his women: Sue, being of solar conviction, vibrant, versatile, all in spirit, as opposed to Arabella, the telluric, made of coarse clay, venal and poor in the soul - a final word for the character of Phillotson, Sue’s other husband (when I tell you that the marriage is having a rough time in this novel!) who demonstrates, at least for a time, openness of spirit in marital adversity quite astonishing for the time.
A dark novel which, if it transported me a little less than “Tess,” gave me the same pleasure of words as Thomas Hardy’s prose is beautiful and passionate.

[Jr Bacdayan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a review shrouded in misery and gloom, a meditation on life’s sadness and bleakness. Let those who read this derive their little satisfaction from the beauty that we sometimes discern springing from the melancholy, otherwise one should not partake this endeavor at all. Happy Halloween?

Sometimes in the morning, I wake up and ask myself “why carry on?” Sometimes you’re filled with this immense pressure and wish to just stay lying in bed forever. Sometimes people tell themselves that they’re tired of everything. Sometimes we just give up. Jude the Obscure is a book for those some.

Thomas Hardy’s final masterpiece is a beautiful and tragic tale of what reality is and what it means to love and to dream. Our hero or victim, whichever light you choose to see him, Jude, finds misfortune in Hardy’s Wessex due to a love that does not adhere to society, and a dream that is crushed by it.

Jude is a dreamer, an orphan, and a pauper, the worst combination in a man. It is as if, from the very beginning, his life was meant for sadness. He does suffer, and he endures much.

“Somebody might have come along that way who would have asked him his trouble, and might have cheered him by saying that his notions were further advanced than those of his grammarian. But nobody did come, because nobody does; and under the crushing recognition of his gigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world.”

It is irresponsible to talk about Jude and ignore one of its central themes, marriage and divorce. “People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort.” Personally, I have always taken a pro-choice stance in this matter. Coming from a Christian country where divorce is not legalized, I am aware that people refer to the option of divorce as a smear to the sanctity of marriage. However, I’m inclined to believe that people are not all Christians and that whatever people choose to practice and believe should be respected. Let love shared be through and torn upon the whims of the two involved and no one else.

Jude and Sue, visionaries ahead of their generation, were meant to suffer for a belief that reflected the encroachment of the modern, developing world on the traditions of rural England. Like Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton before them harbingers of change are always burdened with the wrath of the world. They are sacrificial lambs to mark the dawn of a better era, doomed pigs slowly bled to death at the cruel hands of the unmerciful world.

“But his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small.” Jude’s unrealized dream of going to the university and being a scholar or vicar through the great halls of the Christminster colleges reflects Hardy’s critique of the institutions of higher learning and his compassion for rural England’s underprivileged. A view inspired by real life events in Hardy's life that reflects this world’s defectiveness.

Let me now talk about the relationship between Sue, Jude and Phillotson. I have always discerned that there is much allegory in Thomas Hardy’s writing and here I see one as well. A lot of readers do not understand why Sue, one of literature’s greatest female figures, one of such intellect would be able to abandon Jude and succumb to society’s creed and return to Phillotson. I see it as thus, Sue is Hardy’s representation of the intellectuals. She is smart, young, beautiful, unaffected by creed. Sue must choose between Jude and Phillotson. This represents an intellectual’s choice between dreams and reality. Jude represents the intellectual’s noble dreams. A man who dreams of learning, of mastery, of changing the world, of sacrificing one’s self for the good of all. While Phillotson represents reality, he who has given up on his dreams and has settled himself into a conceded position. Sue at first chooses Jude, for like young scholars, we all in our youth pursue noble ambitions and dreams of grandeur. But social order affects and time flies, people are forced to turn to reality, and thus Sue leaves Jude for Phillotson no matter how she detests it. In the end, we all leave our dreams and settle into this reality we face.

“I am in a chaos of principles—groping in the dark—acting by instinct and not after example. When I came here first, I had a neat stock of fixed opinions, but they dropped away one by one; and the further I get the less sure I am. I doubt if I have anything more for my present rule of life than following inclinations which do me and nobody else any harm, and actually give pleasure to those I love best. There, gentlemen, since you wanted to know how I was getting on, I have told you. Much good may it do you! I cannot explain further here. I perceive there is something wrong somewhere in our social formulas: what it is can only be discovered by men or women with greater insight than mine--if, indeed, they ever discover it-- at least in our time. 'For who knoweth what is good for man in this life?--and who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?”

Somehow I find myself agreeing to this particular nugget from the novel. As I age, I realize that I believe less and less in worldviews and ideas which when I was younger, I was quite passionate about. Now I would not bother much with noble things like religion, social democracy, world peace, nationalism, and even justice. Do not get me wrong, I admire these social constructs but I do not consider them as a something I can devote my life to. I am of their cause, but now I am a pragmatic. I am a selfish cynic with nothing but my own satisfaction in mind. Let the innocent devote their lives to their grand causes, let me not suffer. For my field of vision is getting narrower as time passes and darkness consumes. For like Sue, I have abandoned Jude and have commingled with Phillotson.

“Jude continued his walk homeward alone, pondering so deeply that he forgot to feel timid. He suddenly grew older. It had been the yearning of his heart to find something to anchor on, to cling to—for some place which he could call admirable. Should he find that place in this city if he could get there? Would it be a spot in which, without fear of farmers, or hindrance, or ridicule, he could watch and wait, and set himself to some mighty undertaking like the men of old of whom he had heard? As the halo had been to his eyes when gazing at it a quarter of an hour earlier, so was the spot mentally to him as he pursued his dark way.”

“As you got older, and felt yourself to be at the center of your time, and not at a point in its circumference, as you had felt when you were little, you were seized with a sort of shuddering, he perceived. All around you there seemed to be something glaring, garish, rattling, and the noises and glares hit upon the little cell called your life, and shook it, and warped it.”

In the end we all stop dreaming and we face this reality. But let us not give up no matter how dreary things may seem. For every failure is a victory against hopelessness, every slip-up a success against utter defeat, every mistake a light unto the inevitable darkness, and every fall a cry of rebellion against this life that only brings disappointments saying “you will not tear me down, not yet.” We try, and we try again for it is the only thing we can do. For to hope is human, and to suffer more so. And though in the end we are all defeated by ‘that final dreamless sleep’ called death, we can at least cling to those little triumphs of fortitude along the way.

[Ellie Hamilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adored !!!!!!

Not as much as A Pair Of Blue Eyes but still Hardyy mann ❤️

[Brett C · Rating 5 out of 5]

I truly enjoyed this story. It's the most depressing story I've ever read. I thought the author would wrap it up and end on a positive note: he didn't. I kept rooting for poor Jude as he faced one saddening challenge after another.

The author's tone, the sense of woe, and the solemn mood throughout the course of the book kept me hooked. This one will have me reflecting on the story for years to come. I highly recommend this one to anyone who likes classic literature. Thanks!

[Lorna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jude the Obscure is a classic novel by Thomas Hardy and considered by many to be the masterpiece of his literary career. Published in 1895, it was a shocking book to the Victorian times as it was a scathing and critical look at the institutions of marriage, education and religion as we follow Jude Fawley from age eleven years old living with his great-aunt Drusilla since he is essentially an orphan. As a young boy, Jude is inspired by one of his teachers to pursue his studies in higher education. When this schoolmaster leaves to go to Christminster to further his pursuits, Jude decides that he must fill in the gaps in his own education and basically over the next ten years becomes very adept at his studies, including foreign languages in order that he would one day be able to go to Christminster and pursue his dream. When Jude decided to go to Christminster, he learns that his cousin Susanna Bridehead is living there also and she is in the same line of work as he, that of stone masonry. Thus begins the constellation of four primary characters that will play off one another in very different ways as their lives intersect throughout this heartbreaking novel.

"Only a wall divided him from those happy young contemporaries of his with whom he shared a common mental life; men who had nothing to do from morning till night but to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. Only a wall--but what a wall."

"The city of learning wore an estranged look, and he had lost all feeling for its associations. Yet as the sun made vivid lights and shades of the mullioned architecture of the facades, and drew patterns of the crinkled battlements of the young turf of the quadrangles, Jude thought he had never seen a place look more beautiful."

It is not hard to see why this has been an enduring classic. Jude the Obscure was a riveting book that I couldn't put down, often rereading passages. I will not only read this again but continue to read other books by Thomas Hardy.

[Nickolas B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ένα πραγματικό αριστούργημα της λογοτεχνίας. Ο νατουραλιστής Τόμας Χάρντυ γράφει για την ζωή του Τζουντ, ενός φιλομαθούς και αισιόδοξου νέου στην Αγγλία του 19ου αιώνα, ο οποίος θα ερωτευθεί με πάθος την ξαδέλφη του Σου και μαζί θα βυθιστούν στο πάθος, την δυστυχία, τον κοινωνικό ρατσισμό και τον πουριτανισμό της μικρής κοινωνίας του Γουέσεξ.

Μέσα λοιπόν σε αυτή την κοινωνία των ηθών θα ανθίσει ένας από τους μεγαλύτερους και πιο παθιασμένους έρωτες της λογοτεχνίας. Ένας έρωτας από την βάση του καταδικασμένος, ανάμεσα σε δυο εραστές οι οποίοι προσπαθώντας να διαφυλάξουν την ακεραιότητα των ιδανικών τους, περιέρχονται σε αδιέξοδα και κατατρύχονται από τους προσωπικούς τους δαίμονες.

Εξαιρετική γραφή από τον Χάρντυ που εμβαθύνει στην ανθρώπινη ψυχή των χαρακτήρων του, αφού έχει φροντίσει να τους δομήσει σωστά και με απόλυτη προσοχή. Η ροή του βιβλίου δεν σταματάει πουθενά και παρασέρνει τον αναγνώστη ενώ ταυτόχρονα τον μεταφέρει στις μικρές πόλεις και τους σιδηροδρομικούς σταθμούς όπου οι ήρωες του βιβλίου παίρνουν αποφάσεις ζωής.

Θεωρώ πως ο συγγραφέας εκτός από έναν μεγάλο έρωτα έδωσε και μια από τις πιο συγκινητικές και απρόβλεπτες ανατροπές στην παγκόσμια λογοτεχνία...

Πολύ καλή δουλειά της μεταφράστριας αλλά οι εκδόσεις ΝΕΦΕΛΗ θα πρέπει να είναι λίγο πιο προσεκτικοί... Η εισαγωγή στο εμπροσθόφυλλο είναι γεμάτη σπόιλερ...

Φυσικά 5/5 και κάτι ακόμα!!!

ΥΓ: Θα το αγαπήσουν οι φαν του Ντίκενς!

[Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well it’s Hardy. What can I tell you? No HEA here as they say in the publishing industry. Not with him. He writes brilliant but painful novels. Do you know he finally gave up writing novels because of ongoing and belligerent criticism?

📜In this story a young man is destroyed by Oxford. And simply shouldered aside to fall apart. A stark tale about the dark, harsh side of academia.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I can't bear that they, and everybody, should think people wicked because they may have chosen to live their own way!”

This is my third reread in recent weeks of one of the four central Thomas Hardy novels; the first two were Tess and Far from the Madding Crowd, and I will also reread Return of the Native and (maybe) The Mayor of Casterbridge. Each of them feature strong, independent and passionate women who are flawed, but are seriously interesting in their challenging of Victorian mores. All of the novels are beautifully written, deserving of being named classics, and are (in some sense) all romantic tragedies, but this one, Jude, Hardy’s last novel, published in 1895 and like the others castigated for being obscene and immoral, is probably the most miserable of the three:

“Somebody might have come along that way who would have asked him his trouble, and might have cheered him by saying that his notions were further advanced than those of his grammarian. But nobody did come, because nobody does; and under the crushing recognition of his gigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world.”

Boom!

Jude Fawley is a working-class young man, a stonemason, who dreams of becoming a scholar, is largely self-taught, and is denied admission to a school very similar to Oxford (Hardy was himself rejected by Oxford). The other main character is Jude’s cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is also his central love interest. The novel mainly addresses themes of class, education, religion, morality and marriage:

“People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort.”

Jude early on marries Arabella, who leaves him; he introduces friend Sue to his (loveless) teacher and (for some unknown and completely baffling reason) she marries him (anyone who reads or writes romances knows: You don't marry dull; you may marry hot and rich and stupid and come to regret that, too, but marrying dull has its own punishment), though she truly loves the (legally married) Jude. They do live together for a time and have children together, but society condemns them, and Sue in particular, once the free, rebellious spirit, turns conservative and religious and actually, dutifully goes back to her unlovable husband (like Sue, Hardy's first wife went from being free-spirited to becoming obsessively religious as she got older).

Both Sue and Jude are complex characters. I “liked” Tess and Bathsheba better, but Sue is a more complicated woman. Here she is outlining the development of her feelings for Jude:

“At first I did not love you Jude; that I own. When I first knew you I merely wanted you to love me. I did not exactly flirt with you, but that inborn craving which undermines some women's morals almost more than unbridled passion--the craving to attract and captivate, regardless of the injury it may do to the man--was in me; and when I found I had caught you, I was frightened. And then I couldn't bear to let you go--possibly to Arabella again--and so I got to love you, Jude. But you see, however fondly it ended, it began in the selfish and cruel wish to make your heart ache for me without letting mine ache for you."

But Sue’s feelings for Jude change all the time, especially in the lead-up to the (hard) conclusion.
And so how does it all work out? Well, let me say, amidst lots of lively social commentary and debate, you will read about murder, miscarriage, suicide, despair: Misery. I needed something happier to read, probably, with the dark days of winter settling in, so I take a star off what is probably a five-star book. Allow me to have Jude summarize the book, in a way:

“Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, ‘There is a man child conceived.’”

But as bleak as it can be, it can be devastatingly majestic, too. Misery, yes, but within a sadly beautiful indictment of Victorian morality that crushes individual joy and happiness. Hardy is worth reading, for sure.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

“But I don’t admit that my failure proved my view to be a wrong one, or that my success would have made it a right one; though that’s how we appraise such attempts nowadays—I mean, not by their essential soundness, but by their accidental outcomes.”

This is a true tragedy, but didn’t feel sad, exactly. Instead, the tragic events happen as a matter of course. There was a feeling of predestination in the prose, from the very beginning of the story. I found myself mumbling while reading, like multiple Star Wars characters, “I have a bad feeling about this.”

This is my first time reading Hardy, and while it was certainly full of expected woe, I enjoyed his writing style immensely, and eagerly turned the pages all the way to the end.

All of the characters in this novel can be exasperating, and it is interesting to compare them and think about who is most to blame. But if you go deeper, you find a multitude of themes within these pages. I’ll mention two that I appreciated most, one active (where the characters have some control) and one passive (where they don’t).

The active theme is about the risk of allowing dreams to die. This is the story of two dreamers with lofty, unconventional ideas. Jude believes he can be a self-taught scholar, and make his way from poverty to study in the hallowed halls of his beloved Christminster. Sue dreams of living the fulfillment of her ancient, possibly pagan beliefs, which she favors to those that are predominate in her own time.

Jude works terribly hard as a boy, all on his own, to make himself into his dream. While fulfilling his job driving a cart, he teaches himself Greek and Latin by strapping a classic text to the cart and holding open a dictionary in his lap, working it all out as he drove. What can go wrong for someone with such a desire to learn? Alas, the tragedy comes when he allows life to steer him off course, and is intimidated into giving up his goals.

Sue is confusing, because she is a free-thinking woman at a time when she was not allowed to be, which creates all kinds of conflict—within and around her. She if full of feelings and ideas, but instead of putting these ideas toward an ambition of her own, she does what powerless people sometimes do—project them onto someone else (which in this story, doesn’t go well for any of the someone else’s).

“But I did want and long to ennoble some man to high aims; and when I saw you, and knew you wanted to be my comrade, I – shall I confess it? – thought that man might be you.”

The second theme, one the characters have less control over, is how societies rebuke can shake the truly sensitive soul, especially when that soul has unconventional views.

Both Jude and Sue suffer great tragedy, because they cannot bear the repercussions of their ideals.

“If people are at all peculiar in character they have to suffer from the very rules that produce comfort in others!”

Is this the fault of the character or the fault of society? We still see sensitive, idealistic people suffering the wrath of the mainstream. Some strong characters break through anyway, but how many of the sensitive ones would you find littered by the side of that road who have given up, or worse?

Tragedy indeed.

“'It is wrong and wicked of me, I suppose! I am very sorry. But it is not I altogether that am to blame!’
'Who is then. Am I?’
‘No—I don’t know! The universe, I suppose—things in general, because they are so horrid and cruel!’”

[Marc Lamot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thomas Hardy played a trick on us, here. The real protagonist of this novel is not Jude, but Sue: she explores the boundaries of individual freedom in Victorian society and is very unconventional in her behaviour. But her freedom expresses itself in a negative way, even destructive; she cannot give herself, not even to Jude, unless to keep him away of another woman. Her behaviour is inconsistent, but that's just what makes it credible, though not sympathetic. Jude is the darling of the story, but also a kind of cue ball; he assimilates the ideas of Sue and for him that's fatal.

This is a truly dark, naturalistic story: the hopeless life of Jude, who is especially embittered by his (illusionary) ambition to climb on the social ladder. Other themes: the attraction of the soul versus the flesh; the debate on love and convention, on open relationship and the bond of marriage; the city as a symbol of hypocrisy and rigidity, materialised in the stones and buildings; the fatal crossing of class limits and the consuming pressure of social conventions. But, contrary to classic naturalism, there's no determinism in the events Hardy describes. In my opinion this was not the most accomplished novel Hardy ever wrote (for me that definitely was Tess of the D’Urbervilles), but it sure is his most layered and most interesting. A nice background element is the explicit elaboration on train travel. Rating 3.5 stars, upgraded to 4.

[Laysee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Jude the Obscure years ago in an undergraduate Literature course and remembered feeling emotionally devastated. Time has erased almost all memory of the setting and plot except that of a young child who made a brief appearance. He is called Father Time because he seems perpetually melancholic and aged from having lived a storm-tossed life despite his tender years. My heart broke when I met him again and encountered the hopelessness he must have felt.

Father Time is the son of Jude Fawley, the lead protagonist, in this 1895 classic story that is set in fictional Wessex in the southern part of England. I lost count of the times I said to myself “Oh Jude!” or “Poor Jude!” I finished reading this book on Valentine’s Day, a day romantic love is celebrated, and was struck by how Jude the Obscure must be one of the saddest love stories in classical literature. Love, ostensibly between individuals who profess to love each other, is sorely tested and cruelly blighted by a confluence of factors that are insurmountable: core character traits/flaws, deprivation marked by poverty and lack of education, traditional values surrounding morality and marriage, and the stronghold of social opinion. Hardy painted a worldview that was irredeemably bleak as the lives of the characters seemed to be driven by Fate, leaving them no autonomy to chart their own future.

Hardy first introduced us to Jude as an 11-year-old orphan weeping by a well as he bids farewell to his teacher (Mr. Phillotson) who is heading to Christminster to further his studies. Jude lives with his Great Aunt Drusilla who dutifully raises him but regards him as a burden. To earn his keep, Jude works on a farm as a human scarecrow! This tenderhearted child ends up feeding the birds and getting beaten. To young Jude, the birds ‘seemed, like himself, to be living in a world which did not want them.... A magic thread of fellow-feeling united his own life with theirs.’ Jude aspires to go to university in Christminster like his teacher in hopes of one day becoming a member of the clergy. How can one not feel protective toward Jude, cheer him on, and hope he realizes his dreams?

Jude’s tender-heartedness and honesty are his areas of strength as reflected in his readiness to help others (e.g., find storage for Phillotson’s piano, advertise wonder pills for a money-faced village doctor who promised him Latin grammar books but forgot them; run errands for his Great Aunt’s bakery). However, they also constitute his greatest weakness and render him susceptible to manipulation and deceit. In his youthful naivety, Jude (barely 19 years old) is dubbed into marrying Arabella Donn, a coarse and morally lax pig farmer’s daughter who seduces him and feigns pregnancy. His plans for Christminster vanish as he finds himself rearing and slaughtering pigs instead. Arabella soon abandons Jude for greener pastures but returns to hound him several times, each time diverting him yet further from his aspirations. She thrusts their son Father Time (a son he does not know he has) on him, which upsets his relationship with Sue Bridehead, Jude’s true love. Jude yields to Arabella’s importunity and manipulation time and again, including marrying Arabella a second time. Oh Jude! How stupid can you get? Jude’s soft-hearted nature also means that he is easily moved by others’ distress, defers to others’ opinions, and readily caves in to their demands against his better judgment and needs. Sue is a seemingly unconventional, asexually frigid woman who holds him at arms-length, and refuses to marry him. Jude concedes to all of her reasoning for not wanting a permanent relationship. Alas, Victorian society does not look kindly on couples who live together without a marriage license. In one horrific episode, the couple is denied housing when they show up with their children; a hyper-sensitive Father Time takes the hostility to heart with tragic consequences.

Add to Jude’s gentle nature his passive tendency to wait on the sidelines instead of taking prompt action, and we have a slow cooking crockpot of disaster - unfulfilled dreams and a sequelea of events that culminate in tragedy. He has too many scruples for his own good and is his own worst enemy. Another tragic character flaw is perhaps Jude’s low sense of self-efficacy that has its roots in his humble beginnings. Jude clearly values education and the high calling of the church. In his own words, ”I care for something higher.” However, he has doubts about his ability to succeed given his lack of access to books and tutors. Circumstances such as the snobbery of the university elite also pose huge roadblocks to his quest for betterment. The one time he picks up courage to write for admission to the Christminster colleges, he is rebuffed and rejected. Poor Jude! There is nothing more deterrent than being humiliated for taking a step forward.

What upsets me the most is how the story rewards the bad and punishes the good. Shallow and unprincipled characters like Arabella who are unscrupulous in furthering their own agenda end up getting what they want and having their own way. In contrast, characters with integrity like Jude get short-changed. Similarly, unconventional characters like Sue who value independence suffer because society is not ready for them. Religion too is cast in an extremely poor light with guilt gnawing at the conscience, bringing destruction. Sue regards her children as deserving death because they are begotten of sin; she perceives their death as punishment for breaking her marriage oath to Phillotson whom she does not love. The loss of her children precipitated a reinstatement of her marriage and conjugal rights to a man she loathes as penance for longing after a man she loves. I hated how Hardy gave opportunistic and lying Arabella the last word in this novel. It is grotesquely unfair. How could you, Mr. Hardy?

The tragedy that unfolds in this story feels overblown and melodramatic. By design it is perhaps Hardy’s indictment against life in Victorian England that despises the working class, ‘the so-called self-taught’ with their ‘laboured acquisitions’ and denies them opportunities to better themselves. Hardy criticizes the Church whose religious conventions constrict rather than liberate the human soul. Likewise, he criticizes the institution of marriage. One of my GR friends, Ken, astutely observed that Hardy likely used his characters “as a foil against society, the Church, and other harsh monoliths. In other words, the characters aren't the point themselves so much as they're used to MAKE a point."

Jude the Obscure turned out to be an absorbing but difficult read. Hardy wrote a strong prose that was itself a pleasure. I had the privilege of reading it with a group of extremely well-read and erudite Goodreads members and learned so much from our group discussion. There are religious allusions and literary conventions that are an inherent part of this novel’s richness and complexity, which I will not go into. Suffice to say, Jude the Obscure is a well written classic that showcases Hardy’s profound understanding of human nature and empathy for individuals who are trapped by circumstances beyond their control.

[P.E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived.'
('Hurrah!')
'Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it. Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein.'
('Hurrah!')
'Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly? ... For now should I have lain still and been quiet. I should have slept: then had I been at rest!'
('Hurrah!')
'There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor ... The small and the great are there; and the servant is free from his master. Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul?'





The main strengths in Thomas Hardy's novel in my opinion :

1) The faithful account of a series of misgivings, unhappy tidings, premonitions, and favourable signs in the romantical relationship between the main characters.


2) The adept exploration of something akin to the friendzone, this giant euphemism for a zone not a trifle friendly, with affixed escapism in the unrequited lover. Thomas Hardy is certainly articulate with this.


3) How Hardy informs a deeply disturbing relationship between cousins from two estranged branches of the same family.


4) Sue's character and its complexity : contrary, whiny, elusive, whimsical, taunting, teasing and at times quite painful with Jude.
Their relationship is a manipulative relationship on spiritual grounds.


5) The apt hints at Suzanne's masochism :

p.127 :
'no man short of a sensual savage - will molest a woman by day or night, at home or abroad, unless she invites him. Until she says by a look "Come on", he is always afraid to, and if you never say it, or look it, he never comes.'
Disturbing apologics of rape? Also, Sue takes entire responsability for a former admirer... Twisted.

p.150-151 :
'Women were different from men in such matters. Was it that they were, instead of more sensitive, as reputed, more callous, and less romantic; or they were more heroic? Or was Sue simply so perverse that she wilfully gave herself and him pain for the odd and mournful luxury of practising long-suffering in her own person, and of being touched with tender pity for him at having made him practise it?'

Also, Sue is contradictory at best :

p.151 :
'Her actions were always unpredictable: why should she not come? (...) His supper still remained spread; and going to the front door, and softly setting it open, he returned to the room and sat as the watchers sit on Old Midsummer eves, expecting the phantom of the Beloved.
Jude making terms, excellent elucidation of the process in forlorn lovers.

All above accounting for Hardy's tourmented view on women at best.


6) The excellent depictions of settings and their mergure with dreams and memories.


7) How Jude, devious and insincere, shows a fair deal of self-deceit :

p.185 :
'Ah - it isn't true!' she said with gentle resentment. 'You are teasing me - that's all- because you think I am not happy'
[Jude:]'I don't know, I don't wish to know.'


8) Then, after many flourishes and much mystery, how they both act like dallying sissies.

Sue observes artful silences on her motives... She seems stangely contrived and dubious with duplicity, or is it duality?


9) How Jude is excessively judgemental. A study in progress on the wrongness of always being the Rightful One. How Jude broods and bear obvious grudges to Sue. Self-imposing, agravating, judgemental, devious and mean.

p.185...
OK, I revise my opinion : Suzanne does seem torn apart by inner conflict between her legal bond and her involvement with Jude.


10) How all this is rooted in a past attachment with a student...
Sue undertook responsability for an admirer... We learn about this past relationship with a former enamoured friend driven to suicide... quite dodgy.


11) Thomas Hardy dabs some brilliant insights of feminine psychology :

p.211 :
'I have sometimes thought, since your marrying Phillotson because of a stupid scandal, that under the affectation of independent views you are enslaved to the social code as any woman I know'
'Not mentally. But I haven't the courage of my views, as I said before. I didn't marry him alotogether because of the scandal. But sometimes a woman's love of being loved gets the better of her conscience, and though she is agonised at the thought of treating a man cruelly, she encourages him to love her while she doesn't love him at all. Then, when she sees him suffering, her remorse sets in, and she does what she can to repair the wrong'

p.313 :
'At first I did not love you Jude; that I own. When I first knew you I merely wanted you to love me. I did not exactly flirt with you, but that inborn craving which undermines some women's morals almost more than unbridled passion - the craving to attract and captivate, regardless of the injury it may do to the man - was in me; and when I found I had caught you, I was frightened. And then - I don't know how it was - I coulndn't bear to let you go - possibly to Arabella again - and so I got to love you, Jude. But you see, however fondly it ended, it began in the selfish and cruel wish to make your heart ache for me without letting mine ache for you.'


12) Good point, thoroughly and apt study on contrary natures :

p.226 :
'Apart from ourselves, and our unhappy peculiarities, it is foreign to a man's nature to go on loving a person when he is told that he must and shall be that person's lover. There would be a much likelier chance of his doing if he were told not to love."

I find a parallelism to be made with the story of the engraver of the Ten Commandments, falling alsleep, then, awakening to find a man engraving them, but contrariwise :
'Thou shall kill, thou shall covet your neighbour's wife...'

p.286 :
'It is a difficult question, my friends, for any young man - that question I had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing at the present moment in these uprising times - whether to follow uncritically the track he finds himself in, without considering his aptness for it, or to consider what his aptness or bent may be, and reshape his course accordingly. I tried to do the latter, and I failed. But I don't admit that my failure proved my view to be a wrong one, or that my success would have made it a right one; though that's how we appraise such attempts nowadays - I mean, not by their essential soundness, but by their accidental outcomes. If I had ended by becoming like one of these gentlemen in red and black that we saw dropping in here by now, everybody would have said : 'See how wise that young man was, to follow the bent of his nature!' But having ended no better than I began, they say : 'See what a fool that fellow was in following a freak of his fancy!'


13) The harmony of foreshadowing, echoes and mirroring in the plot.

e.g. The melancholy when Sue and Jude reenact the mariage between Sue and Phillotson...

e.g. Jude's and Sue's second marriages with their betrothed.

e.g The disconsolate echoes in time and places when Jude haunts ancient haunts.
Also, it is curious how the world hardly moves around Sue and Jude : Vilbert the quack doctor, Mrs Edlin the widow friend of Mrs Fawley still alive and kicking at the end of the day.


14) True-to-life, heart-rending depiction and understanding of sadness.

See the exquisite pain in Jude raving mad at suffering :
"I don't care which! Say cherry brandy . . . Sue has served me badly, very badly. I didn't expect it of Sue! I stuck to her, and she ought to have stuck to me. I'd have sold my soul for her sake, but she wouldn't risk hers a jot for me. To save her own soul she lets mine go damn!... But it isn't her fault, poor little girl - I am sure it isn't!"


15) Writing style remarkable, and figures not heavy-handed.


Now, THE CONS :

- Brutal twists and turns in the characters quite unaccountable... before (in Altbricksham) and after (in Christminster) their elopement, when they are not speaking to score points on duty or morals... Honestly, I can't make these two extremes meet in so short a span with no intermission whatsoever.

--------

Also, Jude the Obscure has numerous siblings in world literature :

*Jude the Obscure is Le Désespéré's fake twin. Unlike Léon Bloy's heroin, at first, Suzanne is not a devout, prostrate woman. Well. Not only. At any rate, Sue is not meek and subdued.

*Jude the Obscure is brother-in-laws with Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov and Jude are both dashing, something of a self-taught man dissatisfied with their status, audacious, both acquainted at some point with alcohol. Both harvest deeply ingrained contradictions. And both contemplate an idea impossible to fulfill.

*Sue is besties with Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's.

*Jude is forefather to Jurgis, the wretched worker in The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.


Matching Soundtrack :
Epitaph - King Crimson

Read in the Wordsworth Edition 1995, 2013