Thomas Hardy :-
Thomas Hardy was raised in a small, rural village in Dorset. His father was a stonemason and his mother educated Hardy until age eight. His family was too poor to pay for university, so Hardy became an architect’s apprentice until he decided to focus on writing. His stories are generally set in the Dorset area, which he translated into the fictional county of Wessex. In 1874 he married Emma Gifford. The two were then estranged, but her death in 1912 had a profound effect on Hardy. In 1914 he married his secretary, Florence Dugdale. Hardy’s first novels were unsuccessful, and even his later works were controversial and censored. Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure drew such an outcry for their sexual frankness and social criticism that Hardy stopped writing fiction, focusing instead on his poetry. Hardy died at the age of eighty-seven.
1840 Born at Higher Bockhampton near Dorchester; His father ran a masonry business and he also played the music for a local church. His mother a cook and servantmaid.1848 Hardy attends village school at Bockhampton. His mother encourages him to read his first books and he visits London for the first time. Thomas was a sensitive and intelligent child; he progressed diligently through his studies.1849-56 His mother was determined he should be well-educated and sent him to school at Dorchester to learn Latin. Begins learning French and German. 1856-61 Apprenticed to one of his father´s employers. Started writing verse. His first poem Domicilium. He reads Darwin´s Origin of Species (1859). His morbid curiosity led him to witness several hangings, a common sight in Dorchester. The most memorable to Hardy was that of Martha Brown, who killed her husband in a crime of passion. This memory inspired Tess. 1862-7 Moves to London where he worked for an ecclesiastical architect. Attends operas and theatre, explores London, visits National Gallery almost daily. Read extensively: Spencer, Huxley, J.S. Mills, Shelley, Browninf, Scott and Swinburne. In 1865 publishes his first article, How I Built Myself a House at the Chambers´Journal. Begins sending poems to periodicals but they are rejected. Became agnostic. 1867-70 Returns to Dorchester. Begins his first novel The Poor Man and the Lady.
Jude the Obscure:-
Jude the Obscure takes place in England during the Victorian era, a period that lasted from 1837-1901. English society during this time was marked by sexual repression and a conservative worldview that emphasized the institution of marriage and the family unit, which Hardy criticized. Murders like those of Jack the Ripper in 1888 began desensitizing the public to violence, leading to scenes like Little Father Time’s murder-suicide. The town of Christminster is based on the university town of Oxford, whose colleges were only beginning to accept working-class students during Hardy’s time Hardy himself was unable to afford a university education.
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Jude the Obscure as Hardy’s indictment on Christianity’ :-
Christminster is a fictional university town based on Oxford, England. Jude first learns of it when he is eleven years old and his teacher, Mr. Phillotson, leaves Marygreen to go there. Christminster then becomes the young Jude’s goal in life, and he idealizes the place as “The New Jerusalem” and a “city of light,” watching its faint, distant glow from the roof of the Brown House. When Jude finally makes it to Christminster, he imagines the shades of dead philosophers speaking to him in the streets. In the first part of the novel Christminster symbolizes Jude’s hope and idealism, and his desire to make a better life for himself despite his low social class.
The reality of Christminster soon strikes Jude (and the reader), however, as he learns that despite his hard work and natural intelligence, the colleges are only open to the upper classes. Phillotson, his predecessor, has also failed and settled back into his earlier role as a schoolmaster, and Jude likewise remains a stonemason. In this way Christminster comes to symbolize Jude’s failed hopes and dreams, and Hardy’s pessimistic worldview. After years of moving about nomadically, Jude returns to Christminster for one last attempt to achieve his goals. It takes him a long time to realize it, but he finally gives up Christminster as a hopeless dream. He recognizes that it would take “two or three generations” to do what he tried to do in one generation – raise his social class through his own hard work and intelligence. Because of the tragedy of Jude’s situation, Christminster ultimately becomes one of Hardy’s greatest critiques of the unfairness inherent in his society.
Jude the Obscure takes place in Wessex, England in the Victorian era. Jude Fawley is a poor orphan raised by his great-aunt, but he dreams of studying at the university in Christminster, a nearby town. He is inspired in this dream by his old teacher, Richard Phillotson, who left with similar ambitions when Jude was a child. Jude starts teaching himself classical languages and learning stonemasonry work, but he is distracted from his studies by Arabella Donn, a vain, sensual young woman. Arabella pretends she is pregnant and tricks the honorable Jude into marrying her, but the marriage soon falls apart. Arabella moves to Australia and Jude finally makes his way to Christminster. At first he is enthralled by the place but he soon finds he cannot enter the university without wealth and social stature.
While in Christminster Jude meets his intelligent, religiously agnostic cousin Sue Bridehead. He immediately falls in love with her, though he tries to resist his feelings. He gets Sue a job with Phillotson, who has also failed to be accepted at a university and is a schoolteacher again. Sue soon gets engaged to Phillotson, but her relationship with Jude also grows stronger and the two cousins become very close. Jude loves Sue passionately but Sue’s own feelings are less clear. Sue is stung to learn about Jude’s previous marriage, however, so she goes through with her marriage to Phillotson.
Jude gets depressed and turns to alcohol, and he is reunited with Arabella for one night. Jude and Sue keep meeting and Sue reveals that she is unhappy in her marriage, as she is repulsed by Phillotson’s physical presence. Soon afterward Sue admits her feelings for Jude to Phillotson, and asks him if they can live apart. Phillotson agrees to let Sue leave him for Jude, but he suffers for this decision, which seems morally right to him, by losing his job and his social respectability.
Jude and Sue are united, but they live platonically for a while and they agree not to get married. Arabella reveals to Jude that she had a son by him while in Australia. Jude and Sue agree to take the unwanted boy in, and he arrives soon after. He has no name but is called “Little Father Time,” and is a gloomy, world-weary child. Jude and Sue begin to lose work and respect because of their unmarried status, but they find they can’t go through with the wedding ceremony. They become lovers and begin to lead a nomadic life, having two children of their own and caring for Little Father Time.
Jude falls ill for a while, and when he recovers he decides he wants to move back to Christminster and pursue his old dream. The family has trouble finding a room because they are unmarried and have children, and Jude has to stay separately from Sue and the children. That night Sue and Little Father Time both grow depressed, and the boy decides that he and the other children are the cause of the family’s troubles. The next morning Jude and Sue find that Little Father Time has hanged himself and the other two children.
Sue breaks down at this tragedy and grows obsessively religious, believing that she is being punished for her disbelief and sexual liberties. She leaves Jude and returns to Phillotson, despite having no change in her feelings for either. Jude is soon tricked into marrying Arabella again, and both marriages are unhappy. Jude gets sick and visits Sue one last time in the rain. They kiss but then Sue sends Jude away for the last time. As “penance” for this kiss Sue begins a sexual relationship with Phillotson. Jude dies soon after, and Arabella immediately starts looking for a new husband.
Conclusion
jude the Obscure, like the characters within its pages, was ahead of its time. Its sympathetic portrayal of Jude, a young working-class man struggling against entrenched attitudes; of Arabella, attempting to secure a stable future for herself via a cynical approach to marriage; and of Sue Bridehead whose free-spirited independence is ultimately broken by the unyielding nature of conventional opinion; all of these look ahead to the work of D H Lawrence, particularly Sons and Lovers (1913) and Women in Love (1920). The clash between spirit and flesh, together with society’s attitudes towards class, had been common themes in Hardy’s work before but in Jude the Obscure they find their most impassioned analysis. As Jude comments at the end of the novel regarding his unmarried relationship with Sue, which only brought condemnation: ‘As for Sue and me when we were at our best, long ago when our minds were clear, and our love of truth fearless the time was not ripe for us! Our ideas were fifty years too soon to be any good to us. And so the resistance they met with brought reaction in her, and recklessness and ruin in me!’. Jude and Sue fail in their ambitions and their pursuit of happiness not through their own lack of desire and ambition, but through the unyielding attitudes of the time.
Thank you
Dilip Barad
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