Jude the Obscure - Part V

[Alana]

Discuss Part V.

[Alana]

I don't think I've read another book recently (except maybe the one I'm working on about the Donner Party, but that's a completely different vein of story) with so many completely disagreeable characters. I can't really root for any of them. Jude has virtually no spine (although I cheered him on when he finally planned to go out after Arabella and told Sue she wasn't his wife, so couldn't tell him what to do, even thought he acquiesced a minute later), Sue is the most wishy-washy, uncommitted person I've ever heard of, and Arabella... well, I probably dislike her the least, but she still irritates me. Everyone wants what the can't have. No one chooses to be satisfied with their surroundings and circumstances. Sue and Jude are so afraid of what MIGHT happen if they make their relationship official that they make it meaningless and miserable while fighting so hard against it. Sue especially leaves me scratching my head. I can understand the desire to fight against the institution, to live independently, not to have to do something just because society says to, but come on; isn't deliberately avoiding doing something society says, simply because society says it, just as bad? It's just another way of letting society control you.

And I don't know how Jude can go on caring so much about someone who hasn't shown in one moment that she cares about him one iota. She only agrees to marry him when she thinks she's going to lose him to someone else, but after the danger is past, she even yet backs off and won't go through with it, only dangling the thought of marriage in front of him to keep him from speaking with Arabella. What a thoughtless, selfish person!

I felt more sympathy with them during their time of persecution by others in their community, because if someone does good work, there's no reason not to hire them to do the work, despite whatever you may think of their living circumstances. Living in a town full of snobby people would be disheartening indeed.

And the poor child! Given no other name than "Little Father Time" and then given his father's name (which yes, was the custom, but still gives him really no identity of his own) to make him seem not even related to the story? Maybe HE'S the Jude that is so obscure, poor child. I'm afraid for what will happen to him in the story.

[Irene]

I agree with your dislike of these characters. Arabella was so unbelievably selfish. The way she treated her son was beyond explicable by the story line. Sue was just as selfish. The difference was that Arabella was overtly crude and cruel while Sue hid behind her pretense of loving Jude and being a victim of society. Jude had less of a back bone than a rag doll. He seemed to only want what he could not have and used that as an excuse for going no where with his life. I felt as if Hardy was not really writing a story but a treatise against society's expectation that marital union be the sole form of family life. In a sense, he seems to be arguing for our contemporary situation where co-habituating adults raising children, same-sex partners forming unions, blended families and so on is the norm. But, if you wanted to convince me that the insistence that people marry before sharing a roof and having children, you had better give me a better, more sympathetic situation. These folks should never be allowed to procreate, either in or outside marriage. Rather than convincing me that societal expectations were harming innocent folks, I came away with the sense that people who do not want to submit to this social institution are inherently flawed.

[Alana]

Irene wrote: "But, if you wanted to convince me that the insistence that people marry before sharing a roof and having children, you had better give me a better, more sympathetic situation. These folks should never be allowed to procreate, either in or outside marriage. Rather than convincing me that societal expectations were harming innocent folks, I came away with the sense that people who do not want to submit to this social institution are inherently flawed.
"

That's it exactly. It's like Hardy wanted to show that society shouldn't hold to these conventions, but in creating these tragic characters, he didn't make me sympathetic to them, just made me feel like shaking them all and telling them to grow up! It reinforced those societal norms, by punishing his characters, rather than making them seem like someone to root for. Mostly just feels pathetic.

[Irene]

Agree