Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

Introduction

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy is an ironic and bitter attack on society values . Rigid expectations of faithful support for externally imposed moral norms repeatedly frustrate and eventually destroy both the central characters - Jude and the woman he is in love with , Sue . The novel in an intelligible manner points out a difference between an externally imposed rules of conduct about marriage and sexual relationships and the kind of moral ability to perceive or feel that grows out of inner experience and beliefs

- that is , moral reasoning

Main Body

Hardy illustrates Jude struggling to find true expression for his own individual needs under the frame of strict social beliefs about marriage . At the beginning , Jude takes social customs on trust represented by the world of Christminster , to which he longs to gain access but from which he is shut out by his low social position in society as a skilled workman . Sue is far more revolutionary : The social moulds civilization fits us into , she says , have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to the real star patterns (214 . But , at the end of their story , it is Sue who is swallowed up by adherence to tradition and feels a sense of guilt , while Jude has seen through the absurd act Thomas Hardy portrays two characters who in different ways fail despite unusual conscious attention to the problem , to find philosophical bases of life that are emotionally satisfactory (Heilman 221

Deliberately or instinctively ' Heilman writes , Hardly is using certain Romantic values as a critical instrument against those of his day , a free spirit against an oppressive society , the ethereal against commonplace and material (210 . Hardy 's writing portrays an almost irreconcilable conflict between individual and society . Sue 's spirit is in a sense , the polar opposite of the Victorianism characters and principles resembling conservatism and narrow-mindedness . Yet , in conceiving of Sue as `spirit , and then letting her develop logically in such terms , he finds her coming up with a powerful aversion to sex - in other words , with a strong infusion of the very Victorianism that many of her feelings and intellectual attitudes run counter to (Helman 210 . Hardy 's view of what really makes a successful marriage is surprisingly similar to the Victorianism . The marriage of Jude and Sue embodies two central relationships : one is a marriage based purely on animal desire , the other is a marriage of empty convention . Jude the Obscure implied that the concept of conjugal rights made a parody of the romantic language of love and displayed for viewing the cruelty of a legal contract avoidance of which was difficult or incapable of being done

Jude , while still an inexperienced and idealistic youth , is lured into a shotgun marriage with the sensual and not spiritual Arabella . The initial feeling of sexual passion soon fades , and he realizes he is caught in a marriage without love to a woman who...