A young man with a passion for learning who aspires to be a professor despite his position in the working class. He works as a stone-mason and academic life is always outside of his reach. The novel follows his career woes and his tumultuous love life, centered on his tragic relationship with cousin Sue Bridehead.
Sue Bridehead:
Jude's intelligent independent cousin. She works first as an artist-designer and later as a teacher. Sue is a modern woman and a free-thinker. She rebels in her marriage and carries out a scandalous affair with Jude. She has a nervous disposition and has trouble making decisions about relationships.
(2)Epigraph"The Letter Killeth":
The epigraph to the novel is “the letter killeth,” which comes from a quote from Jesus in the Bible:
“The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth light.”
Hardy intended this quote to refer to marriage where the contract of the institution kills joy and true love but Hardy purposefully leaves off the optimism of “the spirit” Jude and Sue’s joy is fleeting even when they are only following “Nature’s law,” and in the end they find no good answer for how to properly love and live together. By the novel’s tragic end Hardy still leaves the question of marriage unanswered, emphasizing only his dissatisfaction with the institution as it stands.Much of Jude the Obscureconsists of a critique of the institution of marriage, which Hardy saw as flawed and unjust. The novel’s plot is designed to wring all the possible tragedy out of an unhappy marriage, asJudeis first guilted into marryingArabellaby her feigned pregnancy, andSuemarriesPhillotsonmostly 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 ofLittle Father Time’s murder-suicide as a natural result of broken marriages and unhappy relationships.
The novel is not a simple diatribe against marriage, but instead illustrates a complex, contradictory situation. Sue and Jude want their love to be true and spontaneous, but also totally monogamous and everlasting.
(3)Jude the Obscure as Hardy's indictment on Christanity:
Jude the Obscure has often been interpreted as an indictment of the society that made it impossible for a working man to obtain higher education. In fact, Hardy openly blames the English educational system, which provided no opportunity for an ambitious but impoverished young man who wanted to study at a university. Besides, Hardy violently attacks the Victorian concepts of class division and marriage as a holy institution. Unlike the earlier novels, Jude is mostly set in modern, urban environment; in small drab industrial towns, railway trains, workshops and streets.
Jude the Obscure is a poignant novel with disquieting moral and social concerns. Its message aims to put into question the very foundations of traditional marriage and class-based elitist education. In his narrative strategy, 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 in his previous major fiction, Hardy shows in a series of symbolic images the tragic clash between tradition and modernity in late Victorian society. He also denies the relevance of Christianity to a dehumanised society.
☞ Today's Education system in the context of Hard Times:
In Hard Times Dickens had shown how the education is making huge difference between that time and today's time. The prefference of people had changed toward the quality of education It is a very significant factor in the economic growth of any country. Since its independence, India has always concentrated on increasing the literacy rate in our country. Even today the government runs many programs to improve Primary and Higher education in India.
In Dickens'novel the opposition between "fancy" and "fact" is illustrated from the earliest pages of the novel. Clearly the Gradgrind school opposes fancy imaginative literature and "wondering." Instead, they encourage the pursuit of "hard fact" and statistics through scientific investigation and logical deduction. But the Gradgrinds are so merciless and thorough in their education that they manage to kill the souls of their pupils. Sissy Jupe and the members of Sleary's circus company stand as a contrast, arguing that "the people must be amused." Life cannot be exclusively devoted to labor.The education which is taught in the schools today is the modern education. Modern education teaches about the skills required todaythat is the skills of science and technology, science of medical science etc. In addition to listening, the modern education includes writing, visualizing, imagining, and thinking skills.
Having education in an area helps people think, feel, and behave in a way that contributes to theirsuccess, and improves not only their personal satisfaction but also their community. In addition, today's education must depend on:
đź’ˇDeveloping human personality, thoughts,
đź’ˇ Dealing with others
đź’ˇPrepares people for lifeexperiences.
☞Marriage:
Marriage is the beginning the beginning of the family and is a life long commitment. It also provides an opportunity to grow in selflessness as you serve your wife and children. Marriage is more than a physical union; it is also a spiritual and emotional union.There are many unhappy marriages in Hard Times and none of them are resolved happily by the end.Mr. Gradgrind's to his feeble complaining wife is not exactly a source of misery for either of them but neither are they or their children happy. The Gradgrind family is not a loving or affectionate one. The main unhappy marriage showcased by the novel is between Louisa Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby. Louisa marries him not out of love but out of a sense of duty to her brother Tom the only person in the world she loves and who wheedles her into saying "yes" because he works for Bounderby and wants to improve his chances at rising in the world. Bounderby's intentions regarding Louisa seem a bit creepy at first but he turns out to mean no harm to her . The only solution to this bad marriage, once Louisa has escaped the hands of Jem Harthouse, is for Louisa to live at home the rest of her days. She will never be happy with another man or have the joy of children, though Dickens hints she will find joy in playing with Sissy's future children.
☞Industrialism of Digital Era:
Industrial Revolution is a way of describing the blurring of boundaries between the physical, digital, and biological worlds. It’s a fusion of advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), 3D printing, genetic engineering, quantum computing, and other technologies. It’s the collective force behind many products and services that are fast becoming indispensable to modern life. Think GPS systems that suggest the fastest route to a destination, voice-activated virtual assistants such as Apple’s Siri, personalized Netflix recommendations, and Facebook’s ability to recognize your face and tag you in a friend’s photo.
As a result of this perfect storm of technologies, Industrial Revolution is paving the way for transformative changes in the way we live and radically disrupting almost every business sector. Although it is different from the industrial revolution of the Hard Times in which Dicken's had described,but somewhat it is also connected to it in terms of changes.
The period between 1343 and 1450 is known as the Age of Chaucer . It marked the first significant literary age in English literature. It heralded a new era of learning. Chaucer’s age also witnessed many social, political, and religious challenges.
There was a strong dislike for the Papal or Church’s interference, which had previously been the citadel of moral authority, social prestige but now suffered from corruption, turpitude and superstitions.
There were "strong nationalistic passions"due to the 100 Years’ War between England and France.
There was also the "charged atmosphere "due to the Peasant upheavals in England.
The "middle class also emerged "as a strong social stratum.
All of this represented a transition from a feudal social setup toward a free society where men and women could exercise their individual whims and fancies without fear of reprimand.
There is a transition from the age of Medievalism to the age of Modernism. Geoffrey Chaucer was the night star of the former and the morning sun of the latter.
Another significant event of the age was theBlack Death orplague that affected a third of the country’s population. This affected various social dynamics like limiting labour and employable bodies.
Characteristics of the Age :
Here are the main characteristics of the period
☞Language
☞Curiosity and Criticism
☞Prose
☞Poetry
☞Age of Termination
Language:
The age saw the
"emergence of the standard English language".
This was the single biggest development of the age as English had previously been heavily curbed by the influence of French and Latin.
The East Midland dialect became the accepted form of standardized English. The language saw great achievement and expression in the masterpieces of Chaucer.
French and Latin saw a waning influence on the language of the day. Chaucer’s use of language to describe the man and his place is embellished with beauty, simplicity and humour.
The common examples from the daily life account details of blooming gardens in spring to unique human characteristics. The language glorified themes of
⏺beauty,
⏺vitality and
⏺The secular sentiment.
Curiosity and Criticism:
The age is known for its scathing criticism of the established order and religion. Church’s control over temporal affairs of common men was challenged during this period.
There is a renewed interest in the common man’s affairs. There is a
"theme of derision of romance,"
especially by Chaucer. The drama takes the prominent stage. The dominance of historical fables and romance of Medieval agewas eschewed for more humanistic themes.
It was a period of great social and intellectual movements as well as poverty, unrest, and revolt. It had the plague called the Black Death as well as the growth of the scientific temper and inquiry.
It had great criticisms of the Church as well as the celebration of the commoners. It is often regarded as the precursor to the Renaissance Movement of the Elizabethan age.
Prose:
The English prose had its beginning in this age. Due to the ripening of the language, the prose could now be experimented with. The Biblical translation of John Wycliffe is an example of it.
The prose writing is both origional and individual . There are experimental works like that of Thomas Malloryand also a desire to shed the grip of Latin as seen in demand for an English Bible.
The formation of allegory was refined in this period. There was a return of alliteration which had been replaced with rhymes in the middle ages.
The prominent prose writers of Chaucer’s age were Chaucer,John of Trevisa and John wycliffe .There is also a great influence of Scottish works like Barbour.
Poetry:
The Age of Chaucer saw the birth of English Poetry. In Chaucer’s age, poetry continued to flourish and assumed an unparalleled position. The most noted poets of this age were Chaucer,John Gower and William Langland.
"Spencer became the father of poetic diction"
as there was no poetic diction before this age. The poetry saw the amalgamation of
⏺ Religion ⏺Humanism ⏺Secular passions.
There were new forms of poetrylike narrative and descriptive poetry that were enhanced during this time period.
Chaucer himself was known for his trenchant observations. He was sociable and loved mingling with people from diverse backgrounds as evidenced in his work; ‘The Canterbury Tales’.
In it, he has been able to pen minute peculiarities and complexities of human nature.
"Chaucer uses seven lined stanza ABABBCC, known as the Chaucerian rhyme meter"
There is liberal use of humour. There is an insistence on human sentiment like in ‘The Legend of Good Women’.
Normally the Chaucerian poems are divided into three stages :
☞Italian
☞ French
☞ English
However, there is also some criticism for the inordinate length of some speeches and preachy discourse on ethics etc.
Age of Termination:
Even though there were no novels or drama in his age, Chaucer’s work did plant the seeds for its development in the succeeding Elizabethan age. If ‘The Canterbury Tales’ had been in prose and divided into scenes and acts, it would have been the language’s first drama.
Biography of chaucer:
Before William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer was the preeminent English poet, and he remains in the top tier of the English canon. He also was the most significant poet to write in Middle English. Chaucer was born in the early 1340s to a fairly rich though not aristocratic family. His father, John Chaucer, was a vintner and deputy to the king's butler. His family's financial success came from work in the wine and leather businesses, and they had considerable inherited property in London. Little information exists about Chaucer's education, but his writings demonstrate a close familiarity with a number of important books of his contemporaries and of earlier times . Chaucer likely was fluent in several languages, including French, Italian, and Latin. Sons of wealthy London merchants could receive good educations at this time, and there is reason to believe that, if Chaucer did not attend one of the schools on Thames Street near his boyhood home, then he was at least well-educated at home. Certainly his work showcases a passion for reading a huge range of literature, classical and modern.
Chaucer first appears in public records in 1357 as a member of the house of Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster. This was a conventional arrangement in which sons of middle-class households were placed in royal service so that they could obtain a courtly education. Two years later, Chaucer served in the army under Edward III and was captured during an unsuccessful offensive at Reims, although he was later ransomed. Chaucer served under a number of diplomatic missions.
Chaucer's first published work was The Book of the Duchess, a poem of over 1,300 lines, supposed to be an elegy for Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, addressed to her widower, the Duke. For this first of his important poems, which was published in 1370, Chaucer used the dream-vision form, a genre made popular by the highly influential 13th-century French poem of courtly love, the Roman de la Rose, which Chaucer translated into English. Throughout the following decade, Chaucer continued with his diplomatic career. During his missions to Italy, Chaucer encountered the work of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, which were later to have profound influence upon his own writing. In 1374, Chaucer was appointed comptroller of the customs and subsidy of wool, skins, and tanned hides for the Port of London; his first position away from the British court. Chaucer's only major work during this period was House of Fame, a poem of around 2,000 lines in dream-vision form, which ends so abruptly that some scholars consider it unfinished.
In October 1385, Chaucer was appointed a justice of the peace for Kent, and in August 1386 he became knight of the shire for Kent. Around the time of his wife's death in 1387, Chaucer moved to Greenwich and later to Kent. Changing political circumstances eventually led to Chaucer falling out of favor with the royal court and leaving Parliament, but when Richard II became King of England, Chaucer regained royal favor.
During this period, Chaucer used writing primarily as an escape from public life. His works included Parlement of Foules, a poem of 699 lines. This work is a dream-vision for St. Valentine's Day that makes use of the myth that each year on that day the birds gather before the goddess Nature to choose their mates. This work was heavily influenced by Boccaccio and Dante.
Chaucer's next work was Troilus and Criseyde, which was influenced by The Consolation of philisophy which Chaucer himself translated into English. Chaucer took some the plot of Troilus from Boccaccio's Filostrato. The Canterbury Talessecured Chaucer's literary reputation and was his great literary accomplishment; a compendium of stories by pilgrims traveling to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury.
Geoffrey Chaucer is said to have died around the year 1400, although the exact date is not known. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Wordsworth.He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain, such as those from his native South West England.
While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially, he gained fame as the author of novels such as,
☞Far from the Madding Crowd (1874),
☞The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886),
☞Tess of the d'Urbervilles(1891), and
☞Jude the Obscure (1895).
During his lifetime, Hardy's poetry was acclaimed by younger poets who viewed him as a mentor. After his death his poems were lauded by Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden and Philip Larkin.
Many of his novels concern tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances, and they are often set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex; initially based on the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Hardy's Wessex eventually came to include the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire and much of Berkshire, in southwest and south central England.
Central message of the novel:
Jude Fawley a studious eleven year old schoolboy who lives in the village of Marygreen with his Aunt Drusilla, a baker. Jude is the only student who is upset when the village schoolmaster, Mr. Richard Phillotson, leaves to pursue a college degree in the nearby university town of Christminster. However, Mr. Phillotson’s leaving inspires Jude to romanticize the city of Christminster, and he gets into the habit of climbing a hill outside the village to get a view of the city. He hears from some laborers that Christminster isn’t a good place for working-class people like him, but he ignores these warnings. Jude decides that he will become an academic. After a failed attempt to procure some Greek and Latin textbooks from Physician Vilbert, the local quack-doctor, he writes to Mr. Phillotson who gamely sends him some texts. For the next three or four years Jude diligently studies the classical languages. He also takes an apprenticeship in stonemasonry so that he will be able to save money for his studies.
At age nineteen Jude wants to leave for Christminster but is distracted by a romance with Arabella Donn, the flirtatious daughter of a pig-butcher. Arabella wants to marry Jude but worries that he will move to Christminster without her. Her friends, Anny and Sarah, advise her to get pregnant so Jude will have to marry her. Arabella goes along with this plan and seduces Jude. Just as he is about to break up with her and leave for Christminster, she reveals to him that she is pregnant, and they marry the following week.
Back in Shaston, Mr. Phillotson loses his job when it gets out that he let his wife elope with another man. The stress of this makes him ill, and Sue goes back to visit him briefly. On her visit, Mr. Phillotson agrees to grant her an official divorce. Jude has also divorced Arabella, so that Arabella might legally marry her Australian husband.
By the following February, Jude and Sue have both completed the divorce process, but Sue is reluctant to marry Jude. Arabella comes to Aldbrickham, and although Sue prevents Jude from seeing her, she writes later with major news: she and Jude had a child before she went to Australia, and now she needs Jude to take care of the boy because he will get underfoot at the bar she has with her husband, Cartlett. Jude and Sue agree to adopt the boy, who is known as Little Father Timedue to his grim, prematurely aged demeanor. They try to marry several times for the sake of the boy, but they can never go through with it due to their worries that getting married will poison their relationship.
Rumors spread that Jude and Sue are living together unmarried, and they are shunned by the people of Aldbrickham. Jude cannot get employment, so he, Sue, and Time are forced to move frequently from city to city, so that Jude can get freelance work before people get to know him. They do this for two and a half years.
One day, Arabella encounters Sue selling baked goods at a fair. She has had two children with Jude and is pregnant with a third. Jude is suffering from health problems, so he bakes and Sue sells his products gingerbreads shaped like the university buildings at Christminster. Arabella realizes that she still loves Jude. After this encounter, Jude and Sue decide to move back to Christminster, since Jude still loves the city and they hope that Time will one day attend the university.
Meanwhile, Cartlett has died and Arabella is crafting a scheme to get Jude to remarry her. She shows up at Jude’s apartment and asks to spend the night, explaining her father has kicked her out. Jude reluctantly agrees, and gets so upset when Arabella tells him that Sue has married Phillotson that he goes to the bar. Arabella joins him and gets him very drunk, then takes him to her father’s house. For the next few days, Arabella keeps Jude intoxicated, and throws a little party at which she manages to extract a promise that Jude will remarry her. The morning after the party, she insists that Jude keep his promise in order to maintain his honor and her own.
Jude marries Arabella, but their marriage is no happier the second time. He goes to Marygreen to try to convince Sue to elope again. Although she admits she loves him and not Phillotson, she feels duty-bound to stay with her first husband. Jude returns to Christminster, and his health only worsens. He dies alone while an uncaring Arabella attends a boat race with Physician Vilbert, her new love interest.
Marriage as a social custom:
It could be argued that the rejection of marriage is the central didactic point of this novel. Hardy repeatedly emphasizes that marriage involves making a commitment that many people are emotionally unequipped to fulfill - this sentiment comes from the narrator, but it is also expressed by Sue, Jude, Phillotson, and Widow Edlin at various points in the novel. Whether the institution of marriage can be saved is open to interpretation. Jude and Sue are clearly a good match for each other, so Jude wants to get married. Sue, however, feels that marriage will poison the relationship. The narrator does not seem to favor either side; it is left up to readers to decide how the problems with marriage might be solved.
Education play a leading role:
Hardy highlights many kinds of education in this present novel.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. Although the narrator seems to admire Jude's willingness to teach himself, he also points out the limits of autodidacticism, noting that despite Jude's near-constant studies, he cannot hope to compete on the university entrance exam against richer men who have hired tutors.
Social class as an enemy:
In addition to his points about education, Hardy also criticizes the rigidity of social class more generally. Jude is limited in his career options because as a working-class man, he cannot hope to be promoted beyond a certain level, even in fields like the clergy that are supposed to be open to all. However, Jude and Sue also benefit from their low social class in that their respective divorces are processed quickly and without inquiry and they can get away with living together unmarried for quite some time. Even this is a mixed blessing - they are caught eventually, and the reason they weren't caught sooner is that they are unimportant to the people around them.
Religion as rule:
As Jude the obscure can be interpreted as critical of the institution of marriage, Hardy is equally as possessed with the church. Throughout their relationship, Jude and Sue have many conversations concerning religion, the former being initially more devout than his intellectually curious cousin. At a diorama depicting Jerusalem, the major characters' feelings on religion crystalize. Sue wonders why Jerusalem rather than Rome or Athens is deemed important, Phillotson counters that the city is important to the English as a Christian people, and Jude is utterly absorbed by the work - though he also strains to agree with Sue. Later, Sue mentions a friend who was the most irreligious but also the most moral. Hardy points out that these concepts are not mutually exclusive.
Jude's faith is tested by Sue. He realizes his sexual attraction to her makes him a hypocrite. Rather than suppress his natural physical desire, he burns his books, marking his break with Christianity. This makes Sue's reversal later in the novel all the more shocking. Jude likens her conversion in the wake of her children's death to his partaking in alcohol during difficult times. Here Hardy calls into question the motivations behind faith. Through Sue's self-punishing adherence to her Christian duties despite her true nature, Hardy suggests those motivations are not always pure.
Women's rights as professional leaders:
Sue Bridehead is a strikingly modern heroine in many ways - she lives with men without marrying them.she has a rich intellectual life. she works alongside Jude. Hardy criticizes the social conventions that prevent her from fulfilling her potential as an intellectual and as a worker. However, he also reinforces some of those social conventions unintentionally by portraying Sue as anxious and hysterical, Hardy perpetuates a common Victorian stereotype about women being especially emotional. Also, we are expected to accept Sue having lived with the Christminster undergraduate because they were not having sex, despite his professed liberalism, Hardy upholds traditional values by offering this piece of information and expecting it to color our judgment of the character.
Old versus new
The narrator of this novel often laments the ways that old things are replaced by the new, especially when it comes to urban architecture. Likewise, the Widow Edlin suggests that older, more laid-back attitudes toward marriage are better than prudish Victorian norms. Nineteenth century British society was, in many ways, more conservative than the historical periods that preceded it, so Hardy's admiration for the older aspects of English culture ties in to his social liberalism and his reverence for intellectual inquiry.
Disappointment and Frustration:
Disappointment crops up over and over again in this novel: Jude is disappointed by his career; he is disappointed in his marriage to Arabella and then his cohabitation with Sue; he is disappointed by Mr. Phillotson, who never achieved his dream of getting a university degree. Even Time's assertions that he never asked to be born suggest a certain disappointment with life. Since most of the novel's tragedies come as lost opportunities, the ways that the characters deal with disappointment contribute to their characterization. For example, Phillotson takes a relatively mature perspective when he is disappointed in his marriage to Sue, and allows her to be with Jude. Arabella, in contrast, deals with her disappointment in Cartlett by spying on Jude and scheming to get back together with him.
Itinerancy:
Jude the obscure features many kinds of nomads. Some of these are minor characters like the traveling laborers in Shaston. However, Jude himself is a kind of nomad and the novel's structure reflects this. It is not divided into arbitrary chapters or thematic groupings but rather is divided into sections based on the characters' location. This geographical mobility speaks to the new freedom but also rootlessness that came with the advent of rail travel which revolutionized the lives of working people like Jude who could now travel long distances affordably.
