Jude the Obscure

This is a difficult book to review, as it’s not usually considered Hardy’s most popular, most significant, or most highly regarded. Yet it rates a “five” because, as a significant author, Hardy does one thing well: He illustrates the challenge of the desire of the human race to break free from old ideas and traditions, and to define and live out new, more satisfying and productive ways of living. He would say that the individual person should have the freedom to decide one’s destiny, not the rules defined by society or religion. In a sense, Hardy would be at home, a kindred spirit, in the discussions of the meaning of life carried out in a variety of complex ways by Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Sartre, or Camus. “Specifically in the novel” (says Cliff’s Notes), “Hardy depicts characters who raise questions about such things as religious beliefs, social classes, the conventions of marriage, and elite educational institutions and who feel in the absence of the old certainties that the universe may be governed by a mysterious, possibly malign power.” We who live in the 21st century face this constantly. An ongoing debate continues between liberal and conservative views of religion. Liberal Christians, for instance, have no difficulty accepting both scientific discovery and thought, while conservative ones conduct a constant battle against new concepts. Some will even insist on a narrow, literal view of Biblical Creation, instead of accepting the ongoing new discoveries of astro-science. Political contests abound in which those of progressive, liberal views, compete against candidates of conservative, even regressive views. Every new election in almost any country is an example of this tension. Keep the old way, or throw it out. Adopt a new way, or reject it. The recent U.S. election is the most visible illustration of this. Politicians will characterize their opponents as evil, even the devil incarnate, whether true or not, while offering themselves as the new savior, the new knight in shining armor who will ride in on a white horse and make everything right again (Translate, “Make America Great Again”). Jude the Obscure is an excellent example (even the best example) of the author’s “gloom and deterministic” philosophy of life. Optimism never appears on the scene, while tragedy dominates the narrative. The negative gets worse and worse as all sorts of situations block Jude’s desire for happiness. The book is really a post-modern, 21st century novel in the disguise of one written in a Victorian environment. Hardy’s treatment of marriage is quite akin to our contemporary context. In this regard, he was well ahead of his time. Further, he did not hesitate to depict the tragic, the horrific. The scene for example, of the deaths of Little Father Time and the younger children (Sue, who lived with Jude unmarried, expecting their third child, found Little Father Time had hanged the two babies and himself, after which Sue collapses and gives premature birth to a dead baby), were certainly shocking to Hardy’s contemporaries of the 1890's. However, they could fit in quite well with the novels, screenplays, and television dramas of today. So the five star rating comes from the unique parallel that Jude the Obscure has with the second decade of the 21st century. To put it another way, Hardy is a secular prophet in his own right.

Although Thomas Hardy's other novels don't exactly paint an encouraging picture of married life, they are overflowing with optimism compared with the sentiments expressed in "Jude the Obscure". To begin with, at least 80% of the ~400 pages in this book are highly negative in nature: The settings are dark & gloomy, with generally miserable characters steadily driving the plot from grim to outright calamitous. Interwoven throughout the story are numerous conjectures or sometimes conversations on marriage, nearly all decidedly pessimistic. Clearly, Hardy did not set out to befriend his fellow Victorians with this novel. Indeed, its poor critical reception following publication apparently induced Hardy to give up authoring fiction altogether despite living another 33 years. A collection of words so dismal has rarely before been penned, but to Hardy's credit he arranges them well enough that the novel is a page turner and enjoyable to the bitter end. If his objective was to induce people to question the purpose of marriage and probable longevity of the feelings that typically lead to it, I would say mission accomplished. Clearly, he would not have been surprised at divorce rates in modern times in countries like the U.S. where social taboos on divorce have all but evaporated. I should say that while I really enjoyed Jude, I did prefer the characterization and plot development in his earlier novels "Far From the Madding Crowd" and "Tess of the d'Urbervilles". In my opinion, characterization in particular was weak in Jude. I simply could not really empathize with any of the main characters, though I could somewhat connect with the schoolteacher Mr. Phillotson and understand why he took the actions he did. Sue Bridehead didn't seem human but more like a dressed up bag of flesh harboring mixed up random thoughts with no coherent direction except self worship. Yes, no fan of Sue here. Highly recommended, but I advise having emergency access to something like chocolate that cheers you up.

"Jude the Obscure" is roughly a century old by now, and is often regarded as Thomas Hardy's masterpiece. Having dipped into several other of his novels over the years, I can now join the crowd of those who agree in that evaluation. It's very well written, although the diction may seem intimidating to 21st-century Americans. The plot is engaging, and the characters are drawn superbly. Jude, a boy with ambitions to go to University and to teach or enter the clergy, is tricked into an unfortunate marriage, and has to learn the trade of stone-cutting to support his harridan of a wife. She leaves him and moves to Australia. He meets his first cousin Sue Brideshead and they become friends, but because Jude is married he cannot marry Sue. She enters an unhappy marriage with a school-teacher twenty years her senior. In due time, she leaves him and joins Jude. They live together, but experience the harsh social penalties imposed by Victorian mores. Sue is indecisive and Jude is passive. He is obsessed with his notion of duty, and discovers that it is impossible to satisfy all the demands placed on him by conflicting duties. At the time of its publication, Hardy received a great deal of grief from people who were outraged at the book's immorality. (A bishop actually burned the book.) Although there are no explicit sex scenes, there is an illegimate child or two, and Jude and Sue live together without marrying, all of which is unexceptionable today but shocked late-Victorian sentiments. Literature of Hardy's era was intended to be enjoyed at leisure, and "Jude" is a great opportunity to do so. It's also an excellent opportunity to immerse in English culture of the 1890s. Hardy's reputation as a novelist rests on secure ground.

Pour entrer dans le monde de Thomas Hardy, Jude n'est peut-être pas la façon la plus aisée ni la plus joyeuse, mais il faut bien commencer, et quel commencement... Jude the Obscure raconte, dans une langue épaisse, souffrante et parfois d'une clarté admirable, l'existence du jeune homme éponyme dans un Bildungsroman d'une inhabituelle obscurité. Rêvant d'étoiles, en quête d'une ascension intellectuelle qui se passerait, là-bas, à Christminster, le jeune et rural Jude déchante bientôt dans un monde qui, cruel comme chez Zola, ne veut tout simplement pas de lui. Devenu maçon, il subit rapidement les conséquences de ses désirs charnels, de sa naïveté et de son bon coeur, et traverse une adolescence déjà adulte. La découverte de Sue, sa cousine inconnue, va bouleverser sa vie. Alors, les choses de l'esprit et les choses du coeur, les appétits du corps aussi, se mêlent et se confondent, et le jeune Jude va apprendre, dans la seconde partie du roman, à vivre à l'école de la souffrance, jusqu'à une culmination qui m'a tiré des larmes. Il y a beaucoup de très grands écrivains, mais découvrir Hardy, c'est comme voir le monde sous un autre angle.

To my thinking, Thomas Hardy's Jude The Obscure is his finest novel; even more so than his famous Tess Of The d' Urbervilles. I am also a fan of Everyman's Library editions; a company that produce marvelous publications at a reasonable price.

Buen libro.

some pages were turn out

Todo correcto, tal como esperaba. Buen libro a buen precio. Si os interesa la literatura anglosajona del siglo XIX, no dejéis de leerla.