Thinking Activity
Jude the Obscure
This blog is written in response to the thinking activity on the Novel 'Jude the Obscure' assigned by Dilip Barad sir, the Department of English, MKBU.
Jude the Obscure is a novel written by one of the greatest Victorian Novelists, Thomas Hardy. It was published in 1895 and it is the last novel written by Thomas Hardy. After the publication of this novel, it was vehemently denounced by critics and the society because through this novel Hardy attacked the institutions which Britain hold the most dear, like higher education, social class and marriage. After its negative reception, Hardy resolved never to write other novels.
Thomas Hardy:-
Thomas Hardy is one of the greatest novelists of all the Victorian novelists. He was born on 2 June 1840 In upper Bockhampton. He was the son of a master Mason. Hardy goat his formal education from the local schools around 8 years and later he read English, French and Latin books on his own. At the age of 16 he was apprenticed to an architect in Dorchester and then in London and again in Dorchester. He did this profession for almost 20 years. By this period he started to write poetry but none of it was published. His major success depends on his novels. His major novels are,
- Desperate Remedies (1871)
- A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873)
- Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)
- The Return to the Native (1878)
- The Mayor of Caterbridge (1886)
- The Woodlanders (1887)
- Tess of D'Uberville (1891)
- Jude the Obscure (1895)
'Jude the Obscure' was vehemently denounced by critics and the society. As a result of it Hardy never wrote novels and moved towards drama and poems, which are not popular.
Can we consider Jude the Obscure’ as a Bildungsroman novel? Justify your answer.
Before considering 'Jude the Obscure' as a Bildungsroman novel, it is very much important to know what Bildungsroman novel actually means.
Bildungsroman is the combination of two German words: Bildung, meaning "education," and Roman, meaning "novel."
"Fittingly, a bildungsroman is a novel that deals with the formative years of the main character, and in particular, with the character's psychological development and moral education. The bildungsroman usually ends on a positive note, with the hero's foolish mistakes and painful disappointments over, and a life of usefulness ahead." (Merriman Webster)
"Bildungsroman is a special kind of novel that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of its main character, from his or her youth to adulthood." (Britannica)
In the nineteenth century these bildungsroman novels were more popular. Like,
- David Coperfield
- The Great Expectations
- The Ordeal of Richard Feverel
Thomas Hardy is one of the masters of this style of novels. The novel 'Jude the Obscure' is a novel containing the same idea. The novel perfectly suits the definition of the bildungsroman novel.
In the journal ‘JUDE THE OBSCURE’ AND THE ‘BILDUNGSROMAN', FRANK GIORDANO says that,
" 'Jude the Obscure' preoccupied with Jude Fawley's developing awareness of his personal being and his efforts to define himself in order to function effectively and usefully in the society." (FRANK GIORDANO)
Through his life and various important experiences, Jude develops and learns to measure his own growth. Jude Fawley is a poor orphan who is raised by his great-aunt Drusilla in the West Country village of Marygreen. He was inspired by his schoolmaster Phillotson to learn Greek and Latin. Fate, social conditions, and his natural instincts will suppress his idealism and his hopes for an ecclesiastic career.
The novel is divided into five parts according to Jude's journey of life.
- Marygreen
- Christminster
- Melchester
- Shaston
- Aldbrickham
- Again in Christminster
At the age of nineteen, he meets Arabella Donn, she marries him on the plea that she is pregnant with his child. But this marriage completely falls down. Arabella is also disappointed with her husband and goes to Australia with her parents. Here she remarries. Jude goes to Christminster, where he gets work as a stonemason. Still he wants to go to the University for further education. Now he is near to the culmination of his life,when he meets his distant cousin Sue Bridehead, a free spirited young woman, who attracts his attention. Soon after he falls in love with her. When they both meet for the first time, they both have different opinions about religion. Jude is a devout Christian, whereas Sue embodies pagan sensuality and a New Woman’s freedom.
Sue leaves for Melchester and has been admitted to a teachers’ training college. After that Jude himself arranges for Sue to work with Phillotson, his former schoolmaster. He discovers that they plan to marry. one night Sue and Jude spend a night with each other for some reason and when college authorities know about it, she is expelled. Here after Jude declares that he is married. Sue also declares her marriage with Phillotson but then Jude finds that she is unhappy with her husband. Till the date, Jude has a kind of passion for the admission in various colleges at Christminster. Jude feels frustrated and also guilty of his love for his cousin because he realises that his interest in her is not compatible with Christian norms and social laws. That is why he quit church and burned his theological books.
Sue asks Phillotson to let her live apart from him, with Jude and he agrees. Jude and Sue stay in Aldbrickham but here Sue doesn't allow him physical relationship. In between, Arabella reappears. So by Arabella's appearance, she threatened to hold on Jude and as a result of it she allowed intimacy. In the meantime, Arabella returns from Australia and reveals in a letter to Jude that they have a son. Sue and Jude decide to adopt the little boy, called Little Father Time, who has never been christened. Jude and Sue do not get jobs because of their reputation. They move to various places for livelihood. They try to find a shelter again at Christminster, but are unable to rent lodgings because they are not married, and Jude stays in an inn while Sue and the children rent a room. The novel reaches its climax with the horrifying death of the children. Where Little Father Time Kills his siblings and hangs himself.
Now at the end of the novel, after the death of their children, Sue and Jude become again opposite from each other's beliefs. But this time they have an ideology contradictory to what was their ideologies before, in the beginning. Sue, who was a free spirited woman who does not believe in orthodoxical ideas, at the end she becomes orthodoxical about her life and laws of God. The reason for her changing beliefs is her difficult life journey against the norms of the society and the death of her children.
At the same time Jude moves away from what he was earlier in the novel, a strong believer of Christianity. At the end he becomes the exact opposite of what he was earlier.
Sue adopts a morality of guilt and sin, concluding that her children were sacrificed as a result of her sins. She feels that she has been punished by God for her relationship with Jude, she renounces her freethinking and is determined to repent her ‘sins’ by returning to Phillotson.
Jude comes in relation with Arabella into a loveless marriage. It gives him physical and mental breakdown. As a result of it, Jude drinks heavily and deliberately seeks his own death; he exposes himself to rain and cold weather. Finally, he dies. This time only Arabella is there with the dead body of Jude.
'Jude the Obscure' no doubt contains the moral and intellectual development of Jude but at the same time we should consider that the novel is rather tragic. The novel might be rather called a tragic Anti-Bildungsroman, a novel of disenchantment with existence and society, because it pictures the immense disparity between Jude’s imagined world and the real world, which causes his downfall.
"In Jude the Obscure, Hardy continues in the form of a tragic Bildungsroman, his main existential concern with man’s estrangement in the world. He reveals man’s loss of contact with the physical world. Jude is an existential outcast everywhere: at Marygreen, Christminster and Melchester" (Thomas Hardy's "Jude the obscure" as a tragic bildungsroman and a new woman novel)
In this novel Hardy questions the very foundations of traditional marriage and class-based education. Hardy makes use of the form of a realistic Bildungsroman and introduces a New Woman character, but he goes far beyond this framework presenting psychological portraits of a modern man and a modern woman in a futile search for their selfhood. As Dr R. M. Patil says, "Sue's Character clearly proves that she is a 'new woman' who wishes to break down the conventional ways of living life." Hardy shows in a series of symbolic images the tragic clash between tradition and modernity in late Victorian society.
The Development of the character of Jude ends up with the Modern insight of a free spirit man, but he loses everything in his life. And he dies at the end.
To conclude, Jude the Obscure is an excellent novel with moral and social concerns. He also denies the relevance of Christianity to a dehumanised society.
Work cited:-
“Bildungsroman Definition & Meaning.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bildungsroman.
Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (n.d.). Bildungsroman. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved November 14, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/art/bildungsroman
GIORDANO, FRANK R. “‘JUDE THE OBSCURE’ AND THE ‘BILDUNGSROMAN.’” Studies in the Novel, vol. 4, no. 4, 1972, pp. 580–91. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/29531557. Accessed 13 Nov. 2022.
Hardy, Thomas. “Jude the Obscure.” The Project Gutenberg EBook of Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy, 1 Nov. 2022, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/153/pg153-images.html.
“Thomas Hardy's ‘Jude the Obscure’ as a Tragic Bildungsroman and a New Woman Novel.” The Victorian Web, https://victorianweb.org/authors/hardy/diniejko13.html#:~:text=In%20Jude%20the%20Obscure%2C%20Hardy,at%20Marygreen%2C%20Christminster%20and%20Melchester.
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