Ken’s Comments (group member since Jan 21, 2020)

Ken’s comments from the The Obscure Reading Group group.

I finished five minutes ago.

I have a few more quotes from Parts Third and Fourth to share, then will unload beginning Friday when the last thread (for Parts Fourth and Fifth) go up.

Jan wrote: "I know I missed some of my spoilers when I revised and edited over these past 30 minutes. Please pardon those! I haven't read to the end of the novel, but now I am honestly nervous for Jude. Honest..."


Jan, I loved the four questions you posed in your "charity" post. Ha-ha, like a mondegreen with songs, that!

Anyway, about your pregunta numero uno: "How many times do we find stories of people trying to rise above their lives (or merely survive) yet find themselves cut short after having traveled (literally or metaphorically) so far? Like Jude experiences, they can even see their dreams so near yet so far away."

It reminds me of my all-time favorite quote---one, in fact, that I used as an epigraph to my first book of poems, The Indifferent World (note how title matches quote)---Henry David Thoreau's "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

Damn. That quote seems to work on 80% of all literature (excepting those books with NOISY desperation). Certainly it fits Jude to a tee.

And, despite that teaching schedule, you've been doing yeowoman duty, Jan. Thanks for your charity toward our clarity! ;-)

Deep connections to nature is a link to Romanticism as well.

Also, if you compare the Sue v. Jude discussion here to art, you might consider the chasm between Classical Art and Medieval Art. In the one, a celebration of the body, nudity, realism. In the other, elongated bodies or bodies bigger if they are more important (Jesus, Mary primarily), clothes everywhere, and a rather flat look all around, as the point is religion, not human.

Maybe Sue, then, is not so much pagan as classical (the "ancient" works that way, too). If we look at the "Dark Ages" (or, as E.H. Gombrich called the Middle Ages, the "Starry Night" in honor of the pinpoints of life maintained by monks in their scriptoriums) as a Death Valley Days for knowledge (kept, at the time, by the Muslim and Byzantine scholars), we can see that Sue's attraction to pre-Medieval times might be an example of the deep past being intellectually superior to the not-as-deep past.

John wrote: " Ken wrote: “...Jude is behind his times, and Sue is ahead of hers”...

I think there’s a large truth to this without a perfect fit. One of the things I think Hardy is trying to do is to see how th..."


Perhaps Sue and Jude represent clashing social views in England during Hardy's times. Or maybe during all of our times: that longing for glories of the past (often a pipe dream and often made up) vs. that yearning for a better future free of the past's shackles.

Diane wrote: "I haven't even gotten started on the final 2 sections yet, and am hoping that Jude gets smarter and/or Sue settles down a bit. But it's a tragedy so.......probably not. I sincerely hope Arabella re..."

I just finished Part Fifth and loved it---a definite pick up in pace from the guttering plot in Parts Third and Fourth (which make Sue look worse than she is). So take heart and damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

John wrote: "I'm a bit late to the party this week (busy weekend) but here we go:

I thought the Melchester chapters the weakest in the book so far. Both Jude and Sue's constant circling was and lack of progres..."


So, in your view, Sue is ahead of her times, and Jude is behind his times.

Also, your comparison to The Prelude reminded me of Rousseau and The Noble Savage.

That said, in reading this book, Jude has not necessarily come across as a capital-R Romantic in the purest sense. Some elements are there, but others, not so much.

So glad you liked it so much.

And yes, when we're done here, we might discuss the merits of staying together as a reading group that reads one or two times a year. Not one of these every month groups, though. I like reading on my own too much.

Act I, Scene 2 of A Midsummer Night's Dream. I taught it six ways to Monday and thus know a lot of lines.

I am still sitting on p. 1 of Part Fifth. I had intended to start a few days back, but we've had company this weekend and I'm coming down with my umpteenth cold now.

Tonight, for sure, I will begin at last, as I read each night in bed as a soporific. We'll see how long I last.

Sandra wrote: "I’m reading every comment. Thanks for all the critical thinking! I notice the men have dropped out of the dialogue; I hope not permanently. I like the in-depth analysis of the female characters. Wh..."

Here, Peter Quince!

I do think the range of opinions here on characters is reflective of the way Hardy wrote them---purposely, so they could not easily be bar-coded and shelved. (Wait, did they have bar codes in Victorian times?)

Anyway, Hardy himself pitches in for Sue through the POV of Jude, so I do believe he wants us to react to her kindly (if we feel for Jude), even if some readers confess to mixed feelings.

One paragraph I noted was Jude's reaction right after Sue mailed him a letter announcing her marriage to good old Phillotson. It gets interesting in the middle:

"Could it be possible that his announcement of his own marriage had pricked her on this, just as his visit to her when in liquor may have pricked her on to her engagement? To be sure, there seemed to exist these other and sufficient reasons, practical and social, for her decision; but Sue was not a very practical or calculating person; and he was compelled to think that a pique at having his secret sprung upon her had moved her to give way to Phillotson's probable representations, that the best course to prove how unfounded were the suspicions of the school authorities would be to marry him off-hand, as in fulfillment of an ordinary engagement. Sue had, in fact, been placed in an awkward corner. Poor Sue!"

What's always interesting is how some readers take a paragraph like this and read it as offering the author's view as much as the character's. They read that "Sue is not a very practical or calculating person," and buy low, hoping to sell high later.

What sucks us in is the first judgment: She's not practical. I feel many of us would agree hands down. But then, hiding behind that truth, comes "not calculating."

Hardy is having some fun here, really, because you can either accept Jude's view or you can pity Jude or you can be amazed at how ill-equipped he is to understand women (or certainly Sue).

Up to this point, I think Sue is indeed impractical, but I also think she is very calculating. Of course, those calculations don't always work out in her favor or as she plans, but she earns point for trying (or, as they say in math class, "She shows her work, whether the answer turns out correct or not.").

S'OK, Carol. I can handle it.

Yes, Darrin. Hardy is definitely using his fiction to soap-box, as they verbify.

Here's a quote I marked where Sue tries to explain herself. It reads oddly in 2020, but that's no fault of Hardy's. Still, I think it is relevant to Sue's character:

"My life has been entirely shaped by what people call a peculiarity in me. I have no fear of men, as such, nor of their books. I have mixed with them---one or two of them particularly---almost as one of their own sex. I mean I have not felt about them as most women are taught to feel---to be on their guard against attacks on their virtue; for no average man---no man short of a sensual savage---will molest a woman by day or night, at home or abroad, unless she invites him. Until she says by a look 'Come on' he is always afraid to, and if you never say it, or look it, he never comes."

What jumps off the page are the words "no average man...will molest a woman...unless she invites him...by a look."

Modern-day readers must find this incredulous. Hell, maybe even some Victorian readers did.

Apparently Sue has lived a sheltered life and grown up around only Jude and Phillotson types. How she's avoided the wolves (as many then as now) is hard to say.

Still, Hardy gamely tries to impress upon us that this is a "new woman." It's just that he bends the suspension bridge of belief in doing so.

Wait... Jude has a CHILD? In Parts 3/4 and I missed it???

I'm in agreement about Arabella. If most of us were contemporaries and lived in Jude's/Sue's/Arabella's social circles, we'd probably take a dim view of her. Hardy makes it easy, especially with that polygamy stunt. (But hey, when you live THAT far away, who's to say?)

Still, there's some complexity to the girl, and if she truly reviled Jude, she could do worse than she did in Parts 3/4 where, as Carol points out, some redemption comes out.

Like Darrin, I found myself often frustrated by Sue, too. I'll have to chase down the quote, but at one point Jude all but calls her a tease and a flirt who purposely plays men. I can see that line of argument. By both words and actions, she can be maddening at times.

So, Arabella is not all bad and Sue is not all good, which is as it should be. As for Jude, the guy is hopelessly run by his emotions. Sue plays him like a fiddle.

Today we begin discussion of the second third of Hardy's book: Parts Third and Fourth. What happens in this section? In two words: a lot.

Have at it!

To be or not to be, is it? Jude as descendant of the Prince of Denmark?

Pass the Danish while I chew on that one. I surely like your points about Jude being reactive instead of proactive. Is this true of many dreamers, who seem more proficient at wu wei than anything practical?

As was true with the birds, Jude shows compassion toward the pig. Yes, it must be slaughtered, but Arabella says, to do it right, the pig must bleed slowly (and thus die an agonizing death).

Jude purposely ignores her expertise and plunges the knife deep into the throat to ends its misery.

The description, to my mind, was some of the most powerful in Parts 1 and 2, and boy did it work wonders not only as description but as characterization delineating the differences between man and wife:

The blood flowed out in a torrent instead of in the trickling stream she had desired. The dying animal's cry assumed its third and final tone, the shriek of agony; his glazing eyes riveting themselves on Arabella with the eloquently keen reproach of a creature recognizing at last the treachery of those who had seemed his only friends.

'Make un stop that!' said Arabella. 'Such a noise will bring somebody or other up here, and I don't want people to know we are doing it ourselves,' Picking up the knife for the ground whereon Jude had flung it, she slipped it into the gash , and slit the windpipe. The pig was instantly silent, his dying breath coming through the hole.

'That's better,' she said.

'It's a hateful business!' said he.

'Pigs must be killed.'

The animal heaved in a final convulsion, and, despite the rope, kicked out with all his last strength. A tablespoonful of black clot came forth, the trickling of red blood having ceased for some seconds.

'That's it; now he'll go,' said she. 'Artful creatures---they always keep back a drop like that as long as they can!'

At which point Jude knocks over the pail of blood making a red mess of the no-longer-innocent-looking snow.

Arabella comes to life by bringing this pig to life as she helps kill it. Really. The fact that it stares reproachfully at HER. The fact that she yells for Jude to "make the pig stop" (like it was a vengeful human), and finally the fact that she comments on how pigs "always do that," referring to that final kick, that final clot of black blood popping out as the pig's last payback. (And I'm sure pigs would consider this assertion a gross generalization, as each pig probably has its own creative means of pre-bacon payback!)

Bottom line? Sorry, Jude, but pig and wife (and author!) steal the show here!

Thank you, Fergus & Sandra. If only I could appoint you both as editors of big glossies with big budgets (wait, do they even exist anymore?). ;-)

And Sandra, there's something about music that validates poetry to the young. They don't necessarily make the connection between the two, even though it seems obvious, maybe because, in their minds, their teachers ruin poetry for them but not music, which is seldom allowed through the school door, anyhow, spare in music class slash band.

I can remember my 8th grade English teacher playing in its entirety the rock musical Jesus Christ Superstar. Though it wasn't assigned (or maybe because), I wound up memorizing the damn thing, start to finish, and can still reel off extended parts of it at random moments.

Talking of music reminds me that it is let through the door in THIS book, but alas, that is for next week's discussion, which will be opened in two days on Hallmark Day (a.k.a. "Valentine's Day" in some parts).

As a kid in the 70s, I owned the Emerson, Lake, & Palmer album, Brain Salad Surgery. One of my favorite cuts was their rendition of the poetic excerpt from Blake, "Jerusalem." Later I played it for my classes when I taught the poem to teach poetic elements.

Here's a link from YouTube: "JERUSALEM" by E, L, & P.

Back in 2016, I even connected it to the movie Chariots of Fire and wrote a blog post for teachers about it.

Yes, the Sue stuff heats up BIG time in Parts 3 and 4, but there's a lot of interesting clues about her earlier on, like this seemingly innocent quote from Section 2, Part V after Phillotson refers to her as "clever":


"No, Mr. Phillotson, I am not---altogether! I hate to be what is called a clever girl---there are too many of that sort now!" answered Sue sensitively. "I only meant---I don't know what I meant---except that it was what you don't understand!"

"I know your meaning," said Jude ardently (although he did not). "And I think you are quite right."

"That's a good Jude---I know you believe in me!"


This exchange was interesting on a few counts.

1.) Sue resents being called "clever" because she apparently considers it a pejorative. Why? And why does she judge so many of her fellow females to be "clever"?

2.) Is it me, or is Hardy especially heavy-handed with exclamation points when Sue speaks? Intentional, or oversight? It doesn't come across as flattering.

3.) Notice that both Phillotson and Jude come across as clueless compared to Sue. The authorial voice in parentheses says as much about Jude, and Sue says as much about Phillotson. (This scene is the debate over a model of Jerusalem the school children have seen.)

Yes, Arabella's out of the way, opening the door for... a cousin/cousin romance?

At first I wondered if the taboo against that did not exist in Victorian society. Nowadays, we'd say, "Ew."

(I'm not sure where the stigma stops... second cousin? third? fifth twice removed?)

For me, Aunt Drusilla is more of a useful literary tool for Hardy. Plot-wise, she is the one common relative between Jude and Sue and thus, reason to manipulate those two characters' movements and discussions.

She also serves as foreshadowing device (Cassandra-like, admittedly, but still).

And yes, Diane. She's a crusty old sort, and I am well familiar with that type of old-school curmudgeonette, especially in more rural areas of Maine.

Fergus, can you find no positive for poor old Arabella? None? Is she completely a stock caricature of female evil tempting poor mankind?

I suspect we will revisit her next week, but mum's the word right now.