The themes of the novel Jude the Obscure

 Write  on the themes of the novel Jude the Obscure

         P-104: Assignment

Name-Kishan Jadav

 Paper 104:Literature of the Victorians   

Topic :- Write on  the themes of the novel Jude the Obscure

Roll no-11

Enrollment no-3069206420200008

Email id- jadavkishan55555@gmail.com

Batch-2020-22 (MA Sem-1)

Submitted to- S. B. Gardi Department of English,
                Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Write  on the themes of the novel Jude the Obscure

Introduction:

                     Fate plays a dominant role in Thomas Hardy’s world. However much you may try to get on, fate can come like a brutal monster and crush you mercilessly just when everything seems to be going well. In his last novel, Jude the Obscure, Hardy passed the blame to society; your society can cripple you as well as your destiny. Jude the Obscure is a novel by Thomas Hardy, which began as a magazine serial in December 1894 and was first published in book form in 1895. It is Hardy's last completed novel. Its protagonist, Jude Fawley, is a working-class young man, a stonemason, who dreams of becoming a scholar. The other main character is his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is also his central love interest. The novel is concerned in particular with issues of class, education, religion, morality and marriage.So we will discuss some of its themes like Education, Marriage, Religion, Fact, Women in Society and Social criticism.

1. Education:-

                Hardy especially in this novel emphasizes education.  Because education is at the center of this novel. The theme of education plays a major role in Hardy’s last novel Jude the Obscure. Right from the start, the protagonist Jude is shown to be aspiring for higher education in universities, despite being the apprentice of a stone mason. The novel courses, among many other issues, his pursuit of this dream, finally showing his failure to achieve it. But the fault is shown not to lie within him, but the society, in the very institution of education, which, rather than helping out people like Jude, rejects them, regardless of their troubles to get so far. Colleges and Universities are shown to pay more attention to the class of the student, rather than his merit. Its not too hard to envision the role education plays in this novel, when one discovers that one of its major settings is a city renowned for its famous university- Christminister. Hardy highlights many kinds of education in Jude the Obscure. Most obviously, we have Jude's desire to get a university degree and become an academic. However, Hardy also emphasizes the importance of experiential education, because Jude is inexperienced with women and with social situations more generally, he is especially susceptible to Arabella's seduction. In the novel, the level of traditional education one reaches is closely tied to the class system, and if someone from Jude's class wants to learn, they must teach themselves. 

2. Marriage :-

           Thomas Hardy portrays marriage differently in this novel.  In this novel Thomas Hardy has shown that it is not necessary for a man or a woman to get married in order to have a relationship with each other.  Hardy gives a different concept of marriage in this novel that it may not be possible for a man or a woman to get married once and live a happy life.  The phenomenon of a happy marriage is not seen.  The marriage system is seen as a part of our society.  However marriage is considered to be a cultural tradition performed to live a happy married life.  But in Hardy's novel, marriage is portrayed differently. The novel’s plot is designed to wring all the possible tragedy out of an unhappy marriage, as Jude is first guilted into marrying Arabella by her feigned pregnancy, and Sue marries Phillotson mostly to make Jude jealous. Both protagonists immediately regret their decisions, and realize how a single impulsive decision can affect their entire lives. When they meet each other and fall in love, Sue and Jude’s pure connection is constantly obstructed by their earlier marriages, and Hardy even presents the tragedy of Little Father Time’s murder-suicide as a natural result of broken marriages and unhappy relationships.In the narrator’s asides Hardy also criticizes marriage, describing it as a binding contract that most young lovers are incapable of understanding. He doesn’t believe that the institution is inherently evil, but that it isn’t right for every situation and personality – “sensitive” souls like Jude and Sue should be able to live as husband and wife without a binding legal contract. Though he argues for this flexibility and seems to propose the couple’s unmarried relationship as an ideal solution, Hardy then punishes his protagonists in his plot, ultimately driving Sue back to Phillotson and Jude back to Arabella.

3. Religion:-

              In this novel, Hardy talks about religion and says that events in religion affect our lives to some extent.  Religion and man can never be different.  Everyone follows their own religion and believes in religion.  So even in this novel the characters are connected with religion and there are many incidents related to religion which we will discuss here. Along with marriage and society, Hardy spends much of Jude the Obscure critiquing religion and the institution of Christianity. He often portrays Christianity as life-denying and belonging to “the letter” that “killeth” (from the novel’s epigraph). In contrast, Sue is introduced as a kind of pre-Christian entity, an ethereal, pagan spirit, and she first appears buying figures of the ancient Greek gods Venus and Apollo. Jude, meanwhile, hopes to join the clergy as part of his intellectual pursuits. At a model of Jerusalem, Sue wonders why Jerusalem should be honored above Athens or Rome, but Jude is mesmerized by this city which is so important to Christianity. As with most of his arguments, Hardy also undercuts himself and favors a nuanced approach to an issue. Even as he seems to reject Christianity, he also portrays almost all the main characters as Christ-figures at several points, even describing them with Biblical language. The “pagan joy” of Sue and Jude’s unmarried, unreligious love is not actually that joyful either, and Hardy thoroughly punishes them with his plot, ultimately driving Sue to submit to a harsh, legalistic version of Christianity. By associating Sue’s turn to religion with Jude’s turn to alcohol (both used as relief from the tragedy of their children’s death), Hardy again adds more nuance – Christianity may be the “right” way for his country and time, but it can still be used for less-than-pure purposes. As “Nature’s law” fails Sue and Jude, so “Heaven’s law” also fails them, and the “letter” of the law of Christianity can seem less moral than human nature. Hardy gives many examples of this, including Sue’s return to Phillotson, which is a kind of adultery even though they are legally and religiously married. As usual, Hardy ends without any clear answer. He seems to reject a Christianity that is overly concerned with laws and traditions, but he doesn’t portray paganism or atheism as a particularly fulfilling alternative either.

4. Fact:-

              Hardy also portrays fate in this novel.  An event happens in the life of each character which is to some extent subject to fate.  We will discuss the other characters and what kind of events correspond to fate.Destiny also works in all marriages in this novel. Destiny is also blamed on the death of Little Father.whether that fate is interpreted as a supernatural punishment for rebelling against religion or a fate determined by a society structured to thwart independent, sensitive souls like Jude and Sue. The novel’s overarching story of fate is that Jude and Sue’s family is “cursed” in marriage – both Jude’s parents and Sue’s parents were divorced, and they have an ancestor who was hanged for stealing his child’s body from his estranged wife. This curse comes to affect the protagonists’ actions, as they avoid marrying each other and possibly doubling the curse. Fate looms over the characters in other situations as well, like when Jude tries so hard to get into a college but is always fated to fail because of his poverty and class. Over the course of the book Jude, Sue, and their children are slowly crushed by their bad luck and an unfriendly society. They become depressed, and start to believe that it is better never to be born than to live in such a cruel world. The climax of the novel, Little Father Time’s murder-suicide, is portrayed as an inevitable result of the situation in which he was raised: a product of divorce, depression, and bad luck. As with the marriage question, Hardy gives no easy answer regarding fate.

5. Women in Society :-

                  This novel by Thomas Hardy shows the place of female character in society.  Because there are a lot of characters in this novel who are behaving as they wish, which means that women seem to have complete freedom.  Whether she chooses her husband as she pleases or walks as she pleases is said to be very attractive to women in this novel.  This novel is a wonderful one regarding the place of women in society.  So here is a little discussion on how women lived in the society in this novel. Sue Bridehead is a surprisingly modern and complex heroine for her time, and through her character Hardy brings up many gender-related issues. Sue is unique in Victorian society in that she lives with men without marrying (or even sleeping with) them, as with her undergraduate student friend. Sue is highly intelligent and very well-read, and she rejects the traditional Christianity of her society. She also works alongside both Phillotson and Jude, first marrying Phillotson partly to further her own teaching position (instead of acting as the traditional housewife).Despite her intelligence and independence, Sue fails at her endeavors throughout the book, and through her sufferings Hardy critiques the society that punishes his heroine. Sue, like other women, is expected to be the “property” of the man she marries, so Sue is bound to Phillotson for life even after their separation. Sue is never allowed to advance in her work (despite her intelligence) because of her marital status. As an unmarried, disgraced woman she has no power in society. While Hardy was ahead of his time in creating such a strong female character, he still clings to many gender stereotypes about women: Sue is emotionally fragile and often hysterical, changing her mind at the slightest whim and breaking down in the face of tragedy. As an opposite to Sue, Arabella is greedy, sensual, and vain – the stereotype of everything Victorian society found bad and sinful in women. Though Arabella is usually the antagonist, she is also the character who ends up the most fortunate in the plot, showing just how unprepared society was for a character like Sue.

6. Social Criticism:-

               Hardy is a critical writer.  He has written many works on society.  He has also done social criticism in this novel.  In Victorian times he has criticized society at the time.  So we will discuss what kind of social criticism he did.Most of this critique is aimed at the institution of marriage, but Hardy also targets education, class divides, and hypocrisy. The early part of the novel involves Jude’s quest to be accepted into a college at Christminster, a university town based on Oxford. Jude works for years teaching himself classical languages, but he is never accepted simply because of his social class and poverty. In Jude’s unjustified failures Hardy demonstrates the unfairness and classism of the educational system. Relating to the marriage theme, Hardy also emphasizes the oppressiveness of Victorian society in dealing with any unorthodox domestic situation. Jude and Sue cannot find a room or a steady job as long as their marital status is anything but traditional, and Phillotson loses his teaching jobs because he allowed Sue to leave him. Hardy was far ahead of his time in many of his views – implying that universities should accept members of the working class, couples could live together without being married, and even that the father of a woman’s child should be the woman’s business alone – but Hardy’s society was not ready for such criticism. The backlash against Jude the Obscure was so harsh that Hardy gave up writing altogether.

Conclusion :

          So you see a lot of themes in Hardy's novel.  Hardy is a Victorian novelist.  He has written many works.  In all of that, "Jude The Obscure" was his last work.  Which became very popular and was also in discussion at the time.  He has tried to show some of the things that are left in the society, especially the education in the society and the marriage life in the society.  He has covered a lot of themes as well.  So Thomas Hardy was a good novelist as can be seen from his novel.

Citation:

Cosby, Matt. "Jude the Obscure Themes." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 24 Jul 2014. Web. 14 Feb 2021.

Course Hero. "Jude the Obscure Study Guide." Course Hero. 20 July 2017. Web. 14 Feb. 2021. <https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Jude-the-Obscure/>.

Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure. Osgood, Mcilvaine & Co., 1895.

Words-2000

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