Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure: A Critical Study (Thomas Hardy Studies)

THOMAS HARDY'S JUDE THE OBSCURE: A CRITICAL STUDY, BY MARGARET ELVY Revised and updated A study of Jude the Obscure using contemporary feminist and literary theory. Jude the Obscure (1895), Thomas Hardy's last novel, is a sister (or brother) book to Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), before he turned to poetry and other forms of writing. The author attacks similar targets: the family, politics, religion, marriage, education and sexuality. Hardy was on fire when he wrote Jude the Obscure - it is a very angry work. ISBN 9781861713438. Illustrated, with notes and a bibliography. Also available in hardback. This new edition has been completely revised. www.crmoon.com Jude the Obscure contains far more polemic and philosophizing than Tess or any of Thomas Hardy’s earlier novels. The preaching and polemic threatens to undo the narrative, which is nevertheless 'realist', like other Thomas Hardy fictions. In Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy was stretching the novel to the limit, testing the boundaries of what is 'acceptable'. In Jude the Obscure, the things that say 'you shan't' are, variously, God, religion, education, circumstance, chance, nature, and marriage. All of the institutions and 'causes' reside inside the individual, which is what makes the problems they create so difficult to deal with for Sue and Jude. Patriarchy, culture and society are not in some 'out there' space, but in people. Hardy's thoughts on Jude the Obscure, as expressed in the Life and letters, include his desire for a novel about characters 'into whose souls the iron has entered'; a desire to make the story 'grimy' in order to heighten the contrast between the ideal life and the 'squalid real life'; the novel 'makes for morality', Hardy said; and ended up 'a mass of imperfections', a remark many artists have made of their work. Thomas Hardy's basic point is that marriage can become a prison which traps people who should part. As he explains in his 1912 Postscript to the Preface to Jude the Obscure, 'a marriage should be dissolvable as soon as it becomes a cruelty to either of the parties'. This laudable humane vision forms the centre of the book, but the view is often expressed vehemently. In the Preface, Hardy calls Jude the Obscure 'simply an endeavour to give shape to a series of seemings, or personal impressions'. Often, the 'series of seemings' becomes an argument or tract. Jude the Obscure is at times a soap box tantrum, which mars it, according to some critics, such as Virginia Woolf. As with Tess, of the d'Urbervilles the main theme of Jude the Obscure is intolerance and inhumanity, part of Hardy's 'long plea against man's inhumanity to man - to woman - and to the lower animals', as he explained in a 1904 conversation. AUTHOR’S NOTE: The aim of this study of Jude the Obscure is to explore aspects of Thomas Hardy’s classic novel in terms of contemporary cultural theory, including feminism and postmodernism. Most critical studies of Thomas Hardy use second wave feminism and modernist theory, rather than more recent developments in critical theory. My approach was to be as up-to-date as possible in terms of theory and philosophy. THOMAS HARDY'S JUDE THE OBSCURE: A CRITICAL STUDY CONTENTS Abbreviations ••• 1 Introductory: The Thomas Hardy Myth ••• 2 Thomas Hardy and Feminism ••• 3 The Letter Killeth: Jude the Obscure ••• Notes ••• Bibliography •••