Jude the Obscure in Reading the Classics

Mar 19, 2014 Henry Avila rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Thomas Hardy ended his brilliant career writing novels with this book, Jude the Obscure because of the adverse reaction in Victorian England , this was thought unseemly immoral not a decent product , you didn't parade such filth to the public but he did, almost fifty years too early yet liking poetry more , it was not a hard decision for him to stop back to his first love making exquisite poems.... In the tail end of the 19th century two intelligent but undisciplined rather immature first -cousi Thomas Hardy ended his brilliant career writing novels with this book, Jude the Obscure because of the adverse reaction in Victorian England , this was thought unseemly immoral not a decent product , you didn't parade such filth to the public but he did, almost fifty years too early yet liking poetry more , it was not a hard decision for him to stop back to his first love making exquisite poems.... In the tail end of the 19th century two intelligent but undisciplined rather immature first -cousins, meet and fall in love, Jude Fawley and pretty, independent Sue Bridehead Jude's great ambition is to better himself attend the university at Christminister, (Oxford) studying alone , friendless for ten long years Latin, Greek and ancient classical literature, in the small country village of impoverished Marygreen, the orphan living with an unsympathetic cold , great-aunt Drusilla the spinster, she warns him about the many bad marriages in the family, not caring but instead seeing the far distant glorious lights of the fabled city, the poor boy has the gift but lacks money or family connections, in a class conscious society he wouldn't be welcomed at school...Before encountering Sue, her mother dead and estranged from the father, Jude makes a tragic error in judgement marrying the scheming, coarse Arabella Donn, the daughter of a pig farmer she forces him to the altar by a lie, she was in trouble... sorry a mistake...he pursues a profession he hates being a stonemason, having learned earlier the skill as a boy still all his hopes, dreams, fantasies are crushed scattered to the wind his detested life in poverty will always be, for the would be scholar. Arabella exits, to the other side of the world Australia, they are not compatible no surprise, too many disagreements and Sue enters for a short time until Mr. Richard Phillotson Jude's old schoolmaster, mentor in Marygreen and only friend, gives Sue a job as a teacher in a nearby town, at the urging of Mr. Fawley she needed the job, people are not comfortably the cousins living together innocently they say, especially in the Christian city of Christminister...The school instructor twenty years Sue's senior asks her to marry him she agrees, even as her love for Jude grows, Miss Bridehead thinks it will be for the best into a respectable situation, live as a decent woman and not being a burden to Jude just one little problem arises, she loathes the kindly, thoughtful, unattractive gentleman something makes her skin crawl when he touches her and the feelings won't leave. Sue and Jude constantly meet, talk and kiss the passion is there but the complications are too . Every time Jude passes the university on the street, his sad eyes observe, the mind wonders the ache begins for what might have been, he can never forget... ...more

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