The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion
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Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy Collection
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Jude the Obscure: Week 3 - Part Third
Deborah wrote: "Arabella on the other hand seems to me to have no conscience. She just does what she wants no matter who it might hurt in the long run. I don't think she has a sincere bone in her body, and has no problem using anybody for something she wants or needs.."
I agree.
Mod
For women, there were no good possibilities. You had to marry because you could not easily find work to support yourself. If you had sex, pregnancy was always a possible outcome. Unmarried and pregnant, you now had no chance of finding a job so many gave their babies away or went to the workhouses. Married, because husbands sought prostitutes for those things a "good woman" would never do brought the ever threat of STD's.
For me, Sue is pulled between her needs/desires/talents and what society says she must do. While a few women lived with men, their reputations were usually lost forever. Few had the strength to deal with the outcome of that.
Arabella frustrates the modern woman in me because she manipulates with no care of impact on others to get what she wants. There are some cultures even in our modern world that still rely on this method for women to achieve what they want with men. Part of me feels somewhat vindicated as she did pop back into the story as I expected. But the other part of me wants to slap her for her lack of concern for others. Her lack of concern for others is intentional while Sue's lack of concern is more society driven. I'm not sure I'm stating this very clearly.
Deborah wrote: "For women, there were no good possibilities"I think you overstate the issue. There were plenty of women in Victorian times who lived quite happy lives -- some of my ancestors among them. Life could be hard for both genders, but there were plenty of people, both men and women, living cheerful and fulfilling lives.
From our modern perspective they certainly didn't have the choices that modern women have (nor did men), but I know a number of modern women who are overwhelmed by the roles they are expected to play and are are no more content with their lives and choices than my Victorian ancestors were.
Deborah wrote: "Do you think it's possible that Sue's awareness of the world around her is due to the limitations that society put on women? Sue would have bumped into restrictions from the outset - when she wanted to be educated for example. Jude, being male, wouldn't have had that same type of response from society..."Yes I would agree with that. What Sue wishes to achieve for herself, primarily her education would have been even more difficult and seemingly an impossible task than Jude's own desires. While his background and his station in life he may have just as much probability in achieving his ambitions and desires and Sue does, speaking of gender and the ideas of society, as a woman Sue would have been discouraged from the get go against endeavoring in such a task. She would have been made to understand the hopelessness of her case and likely would not have any form of support to encourage her. As well there would be no, or not very likely to be any other female examples for her to follow.
While Jude on the other hand, as a man would not have been made to feel that the quest of education was such an utterly impossible feet, a man he would not have been discouraged, and he did have the figure of Philotson to look up to as a young boy. In addition he had countless examples of fellow men who were educated and achieved great things.
This may lend to part of the reason why Sue may have more of an acknowledgment of the reality of her situation than Jude does. As a man he has no reason to believe he cannot acquire the goals in which he seeks.
Silver wrote: Arabella frustrates the modern woman in me because she manipulates with no care of impact on others to get what she wants. There are some cultures even in our modern world that still rely on this method for women to achieve what they want with men.But given that Arabella was an uneducated Victorian woman with few opportunities, is what she does so bad? Men were then supposed to be a woman's 'protector' and she would have been brought up to treat them as such and to exploit their weakness, especially sexual weakness. Her parents, for instance, were not unhappy with the way she 'snared' Jude ('catched un, my dear?') because it ended in marriage to a respectable working man:-
'Those who guessed the probable state of affairs, Arabella's parents being among them, declared that it was the sort of conduct they would have expected of such an honest young man as Jude in reparation of the wrong he had done his innocent sweetheart....The parson who married them seemed to think it satisfactory too.'
Arabella was only doing what thousands of women in her position would have done at that time. Being 'manipulative' was just a survival technique for women who needed to make a good 'catch'. Sue has had an education so she does not need to use these age-old tactics and I think Hardy is showing us these distinctions between an uneducated and an educated woman.
I think you overstate the issue. There were plenty of women in Victorian times who lived quite happy lives -- some of my ancestors among them. I think you overstate the issue Everyman. People like your ancestors were in the minority, especially women, and history shows us this quite clearly, which links and posts here have shown. It was my ancestors in the mines and the mills, including children, who were in the majority and who lived their lives in squalor, toiling underground or in the mills which Gaskell describes. Dickens was not writing fiction when he wrote Hard Times and his other graphic novels showing the working lives of the majority of the people and Hardy was not writing fiction either when he portrayed the lives of 'fallen' women, of which there were thousands. Jude is written at the end of the Victorian era when times were changing but earlier in Victoria's reign there were many campaigns about the plight of women, children and labouring men. Of the Victorian authors we have read not one shows an easy life for working class women and the lives of middle class women, like Dorothea or Jane Eyre were very restricted.
The many societies which a few enlightened upper class women started to help other women, the many orphanages started by Barnardo and others, are testament to the difficult lives ordinary people, especially women, had at that time, as are the figures for death in childbirth and infant mortality. 'Roughly one quarter of all children died in their first year and pregnancy and childbirth became the most dangerous time in the life of a Victorian woman. Maternal mortality, the deaths of women during pregnancy, labor, or post-partem, found itself as the main cause of death among women during the nineteenth century. The 1850's had an average number of maternal deaths per day of 8.5 while this number reached a peak during the 1890's with 12 maternal deaths per day.(Kippen.) And the long fight for women to gain divorce rights, led by upper class Caroline Norton, showed the plight of many women trapped in desperately unhappy and abusive marriages.
'Happiness' is another matter - people manage to be happy under the most extraordinary circumstances. No doubt slaves were happy a lot of the time, my mining forbears, despite the danger of their work and the regular accidents they were involved in, were happy. My working class Suffragette grandmother was happy, despite losing her job as a cook at the age of 30 because she had TB, which killed her at the age of 45.
A book well worth reading is Victorian People and Ideas : A companion for the modern reader of Victorian Literature in which Richard Altick writes of middle class Victorian women:'Women's serfdom was sanctified by the Victorian conception of the female as a priestess dedicated to preserving the home as a refuge from the abrasive world. Convention dictated a rigorously stereotype personality. She was to cultivate fragility, leaning always on the arm of the gentleman who walked with her in a country lane or escorted her in to dinner. The woman of the well-off middle class lived, in effect, under one of the capacious glass domes which protected parlour bric-a-brac - stuffed birds, ornate shells, papier mache constructions [etc] from dust. She was Dora Spenlow (in David Copperfield), Rosie Mackenzie (in The Newcomes) she was the Angel in the House from a verse praising domestic sainthood and the mystical, non-fleshly institution of marriage.
But underneath all the pretence, middle-class women had a real grievance. It was understood that, as Tennyson's neurotic hero in 'Locksley Hall' put it:
Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a
shallower brain
Woman is the lesser man, and all her passions,
matched with mine,
Are as moonlight into sunlight, and as
Water into wine'
Putting aside woman's lack of sexual passion, which is clearly implied in the lines and was universally accepted as a biological fact because to assume otherwise was indecent, there was the wider implication that woman was inferior to man in all ways except the unique one that counted most (to man), her femininity. Her place was in the home, on a veritable pedestal if one could be afforded, and emphatically not in the world of affairs. In Our Mutual Friend Bella Rokesmith told her husband 'I want to be something much worthier than the doll in the doll's house'. But the Victorian woman was allowed no such privilege.' 'Be good sweet maid and let who can be clever' opined Kingsley. As Thomas Huxley wrote 'girls were educated to be either drudges or toys beneath man, or a sort of angel above him'.
Mod
I think you overstate the issue. There were plenty of women in Victorian times who lived quite happy lives -- some of my ancestors amo..."
I have to agree to disagree Everyman. Women couldn't own property; it belonged to their father and then their husband. Because of this, the woman could bring great wealth into the marriage, have her husband die, and be left penniless because the husband left all the $$ to the son. The widow could then be asked to leave the house and basically be homeless and penniless.
If they had to work, it was servant or governess or teacher (maybe). No birth control. If they got pregnant and were not married, they had no way to earn money. None of these positions would take a woman with a child. If pregnancy did happen, it was the woman's fault and loss of reputation that then made her used goods and unable to marry.
Not seeing a lot of great options here.
Mod
Madge also mentioned illness/death in pregnancy and birth. Many died from infection as the doctors would go from one case to another without washing. He may have been working with somebody who died, and then deliver the baby with dirty hands. The midwife was being pushed aside by the male doctors who worked hard to enact laws to abolish the field because it was female dominated. I could go on, but I will step off my soapbox now.
Mod
Madge - I wrote this, not Silver. Anyway, I can see your point and my view may be too strongly colored by being a woman of this age instead of that (although some have asked if I had a previous life in the Victorian age). I guess I'll always be more like Sue, trying to learn and grow despite obstacles and very direct. ;-)
Sorry Deborah - I know from your other posts that you have Arabella's welfare at heart:D. Your post No 139 about the medical difficulties women faced was excellent. Not many people realised that a form of clitorectomy was practised in Victorian times:(. Penile cauterisation was also practised as the link in my post 89 mentions. Your point about inexperienced male midwives replacing the experienced female midwives is a good one too - that was when unsterilised forceps and other horrible obstetric instruments began to play their part in female mortality:(, before the practice of good hygeine became widespread.
Up until the early part of the Victorian era it wasn’t unheard of for women to be whipped to induce labour or, in more affluent families, for servants to be whipped to help their mistress go into labour. There is a story of a Medieval German empress in whose labour room 20 men were whipped, two to death! Once the woman started pushing, it was expected that the baby would arrive within 20 contractions. If this didn’t seem likely to happen, everyone in the household might try to help things along by opening cupboards and drawers and untying knots; acts symbolic of the opening of the womb.
When the baby had been born, the midwife would bathe it in warm water or, in more affluent homes, in milk or wine. The infant would be swaddled in linen strips in order to help its limbs grow straight and strong and then laid in a crib in a dark corner, as it was thought that bright light could damage a baby's eyes. And of course there were no anaesthetics to relieve pain until Queen Victorian popularised the use of chloroform in 1853, during the birth of her seventh child, which then became available to wealthier women.
Those were the days, eh?!
BTW I will put a poem about Victorian child labour by Lady Caroline Norton in Poem for the Day - it is rather long but vey sad:(.
MadgeUK wrote: "I think you overstate the issue Everyman."
Of course you do. But I just don't find the "virtually everybody was miserable" principle in either the literature or the journals, letters, histories, etc. that I read. But obviously we read different things, because you do.
Deborah wrote: "I have to agree to disagree Everyman. "But perhaps because we're talking about different things. You're talking about the social environment women faced, which I agree was undesirable compared to modern Western society. But I'm talking about happiness and contentment. I think people even then, and in fact throughout history, for the most part find ways to live happy lives despite what we see from a modern perspective as living in a disadvantaged social environment. I focus on the internal, while I perceive your focus as mainly on the external. That may be who we differ.
Bill wrote: "Do you think the social environment for women nowadays would have been much more desirable to a very significant majority of Victorian women?--if we could take a time machine back, explain it clearly to them, and poll them. "Probably not. And in 300 years when we have conquered Cancer, cured all mental illness, eliminated war as a means of attempted conflict resolution, learned to stop hurricanes and tornadoes so that nobody has to suffer through them ever again, cleaned up the environment, developed totally safe and limitless fusion energy, and so on, people will ask the same question about us. Does that mean that we aren't happy today? Maybe you aren't, though I believe you are, but I certainly am.
My point is that most people work within the social environment they find themselves in and create happiness in it. I believe the Victorians did, I believe we do, I believe our grandchildren will, even though all three will live in very different social environments. That doesn't mean that any of us thinks our social environment is perfect or can't be improved. But it means that we don't wait for the improvement to come before we allow ourselves to be happy.
In the 1960s I worked in the Civil Rights movement in the South. I worked with people who lived in what you and I today would consider horrible conditions, both physically and socially. The limitations Blacks lived under then were, I believe, though quite different, even more restrictive than those Victorian women lived under. They were eager for things to get better. But at the same time, the vast majority of the people I worked with were happy and led what they viewed as successful and fulfilling lives.
My sister went for the American Friends Service Committee to work with rural people in Tanganyika. The people she worked with and lived with lived in not even third world, really fourth world conditions. They washed their laundry in the stream. They had, if they were lucky, two room shacks with dirt floors and glass in at least some of the windows. Then had, of course, no electricity, no running water, stoves, refrigerator, supermarkets, none of what we take for granted as basic essentials for civilized living. Yet the women sang cheerfully as they walked six miles a day to gather firewood, the children played just as happily (and much more healthily) than children in the US who have TVs and cell phones and X-Boxes and all the other luxuries of modern Western children.
I agree with you that if Victorian women could choose the benefits of their lives vs. those of modern life, many would choose modern life. But that has nothing to do with whether they were happy with the lives they actually had.
Everyman wrote: "Christopher wrote: "But to your point--first, for the sake of discussion let us accept that Jude is on some "godly trajectory"; if this is the case, then why is it Arabella's fault that he is knock..."Those lines from King Lear have come to me several times reading Jude. So far, each time Jude thinks he's making a sound decision or taking agency for his own life, external forces, events or circumstances thwart him.
You all have been focusing on the women's lives. So far I am seeing the restrictions on Jude's life particularly acutely. I am reminded of a colleague early in my career who said to me, "Men face the same challenges," one time when I was exasperated with a situation I considered particularly egregiousness. I'm simply not sure that people see either woman as deterring Jude from a "godly trajectory." I see more evidence that people did not consider Jude either worthy or capable of being on such a trajectory in the first place. He was supposed to settle, to know his place. I find those conditions and Hardy's articulation of their folly towards human lives as powerful as and parallel to the gender issues. It looks to me as if our taken-for-granted concepts of accepted, let alone expected, considerable upward mobility are still a few decades into the future. (The industrial revolution had still not created the job opportunities needed. Edith Wharton's Buccaneers has some interesting comments about the need for engineers creating a path for second sons other than the military or the clergy.)
P.S. Thanks to all for your most interesting discussion.
Cathleen wrote: "Everyman wrote: "Christopher wrote: "But to your point--first, for the sake of discussion let us accept that Jude is on some "godly trajectory"; if this is the case, then why is it Arabella's fault..."Hardy's idea of fatalism may be getting some scientific support, not in an external power of fate but in the understanding of just how little of our brain functioning is under our control.
Here's an interesting recent article on the issue.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/84...
Notable quote: "The first lesson we learn from studying our own circuitry is shocking: most of what we do and think and feel is not under our conscious control. The vast jungles of neurons operate their own programs. The conscious you – the I that flickers to life when you wake up in the morning – is the smallest bit of what’s transpiring in your brain. Although we are dependent on the functioning of the brain for our inner lives, it runs its own show. Your consciousness is like a tiny stowaway on a transatlantic steamship, taking credit for the journey without acknowledging the massive engineering underfoot. "
But I'm talking about happiness and contentment. No one doubts the capacity of human beings to be happy under all kinds of extraordinary circumstances. Happiness not been the issue here, the social conditions of women, The Woman Question has.
Lily wrote: You all have been focusing on the women's lives. So far I am seeing the restrictions on Jude's life particularly acutely.This is because Jude is the novel in which Hardy's attitudes toward The Woman Qustion came most under fire and because he poses many controversial questions about sex outside marriage and marriage itself, as it affected women. Although there were many restrictions on Jude's life and on the lives of Victorian men I think that most commentators would agree that women had a raw deal at that time - hence The Woman Question pervades Victorian literature and there isn't an equivalent Man Question.
Literature on the lives of labouring men and women began to proliferate during the rise of the Trade Union movement and Dickens and Gaskell were the first to touch upon working conditions in factories and mines. In the 1840s evidence to the Royal Commission into Child Labour, given by Trade Unions and others, drew attention not only to the terrible working conditions of children in mines and factories (and up chimneys) but to those of their parents too. Hardy was not writing about industrialised parts of England and so his concerns are mainly with the changes to rural and small town life and the opportunities that mobility, especially by railway, created for working people. However, physical mobility was one thing, social mobility was another and getting access not only to institutions of learning but to other professions was still extremely difficult at this time, as Jude find out.
From 1823 onwards Mechanics Institutes were being formed to provide adult education to working men, particularly in technical subjects. They were often funded by local industrialists on the grounds that they would ultimately benefit from having more knowledgeable and skilled employees. By the mid-19th century, there were over 700 institutes in towns and cities across the UK and overseas, some of which became the early roots of other colleges and universities. My grandfather attended a Mechanic's Institute to learn his trade as a painter and decorator and my father became an engineer by the same route. The Institutes also had very good lending libraries and I think it is to them that I owe the love of reading which they instilled in the male members of my family.
Bill wrote: [I] have seen most abject poverty among very happy and friendly people. Absolutely no one disputes this Bill but that does not make the ills which are present in their social environment any the less. That they were 'happy' was one of the reasons given for not abolishing slavery, especially when coupled with the Victorian argument that God 'ordered' things that way. It has been the reason that many British colonialists have given for not improving the lives of their 'subjects'. It is a patriarchal argument.
Thanks Bill - no I hadn't seen your edit because your post had disappeared off this page! I agree with it now that I have read it:). A patriarchal argument is one that argues for the status quo, particularly as it relates to women, and it worries me that often those who argue that, say, Victorian lives were OK or that they would like to live in those times only seem to look at the lives of the comparatively wealthy. They do not look at the life of someone like Tess who lived in a hovel and hoed turnips in a muddy field summer and winter, or at the life of a ten year old chimney sweep, or an 8 year old female factory hand, or at the sewage running in the streets, the frequent outbreaks of cholera and smallpox, the sewage running in the streets, the fleas, bed bugs, cockroaches and rats which infested working class houses. Nostalgia - phooey! :)
Hardy, who lived in those times, was not arguing for the status quo and in Jude he did his best, within the constricts imposed by his editor, to expose what evils he could about his society. Have you had any thoughts about his portrayal of Jude's working life, which Lily was drawing our attention to in post 146?
MadgeUK wrote: "Absolutely no one disputes this Bill but that does not make the ills which are present in their social environment any the less. That they were 'happy' was one of the reasons given for not abolishing slavery,"Total straw woman. Nobody has ever argued that.
Where the discussion came up is whether women in Victorian England were so misused by the laws limiting women's rights as we understand them today that they couldn't be happy. I think we have established that that theory doesn't hold water. I haven't seen anybody arguing -- certainly neither Bill nor I have argued -- that the opportunities for Victorian women were as good as they are for women today. But some people were arguing that because of the limits on them, Victorian women couldn't feel happy or fulfilled, that because of their social environments neither Arabella nor Sue had the chance to live happy lives. It seems now that we are in agreement that that argument, while there almost certainly were some exceptions, isn't the rule. Which is all I set out to establish in the first place.
Your argument that they were 'happy' was the straw man Everyman - Deborah, in post 131 was arguing that there were 'no good possibilities for women' and cited a number of reasons. I concurred in post 135. In post 137 she again listed reasons and said 'not seeing a lot of options here'. You countered in post 132 that we were 'overstating the case' and gave arguments about your relatives and others being happy, which wasn't the case in point. Even though they were happy there were still no good possibilities and few options for them as women. We did not state at any time that there was no happiness or fulfilment.There are always exceptions to the rule. Perhaps at least one Victorian woman was a fully qualified lawyer.
MadgeUK wrote: "Your argument that they were 'happy' was the straw man Everyman - Deborah, in post 131 was arguing that there were 'no good possibilities for women' and cited a number of reasons. In post 137 she a..."If one is happy and content with life, what does it matter whether one has more or fewer options?
If you think the point of life is to have options, fine, but I don't think that.
I think that the goals of life are to live a virtuous and happy life (in the Aristotelian sense of happy, not in the pop psych sense of happy which can come from smoking too much weed).
At my age and state of health, there are many, many options that are closed off to me. Deborah could write a whole volume on the options I don't have. So what?
In fact, not only Victorian women but also Victorian men also have many, many fewer options than we have today. Am I supposed to feel sorry for them? Because I don't.
I think we all know perfectly well that Victorian women had fewer options than modern women. The question is, so what? That's what I was addressing, and it's highly relevant to the issue.
But if options are all you think are important in life, fine. You're free to think that way.
Mod
Also women faced many many health risks that men did not face (i.e. the mortality and illnesses associated with pregnancy). They were also the ones who were the nurses of the sick in their home, and thus more exposed to infectious diseases. They were exposed to STD's that their husband brought home to them. It wasn't their choice to sleep with a prostitute but they paid the price.
The woman question, as Madge has stated several times, is in most of the Victorian literature. Women were not even taught to read in many cases. Many could not even sign their names. Even the wealthy women's schooling was such that it taught her to paint, play the piano, and make a nice home.
Did the men have restrictions? Absolutely, but theirs were mostly class based. Women had class based PLUS society based. A widower was not likely to be thrown out of his home, where a widow easily could be (think Sense and Sensibility). Not only had the woman lost her husband, but her financial security and possibility even the roof over her head as well. Could she solve those issues alone by getting a paying job? Nope. Not if she had children and wanted to keep the children.
I've never said that they couldn't be happy. I've never said that options are the only thing important in life. I know I work well within the limitations in my own life, but how can you not applaud Hardy and others for trying to change what they see are ills in their society? How can you not wish that these women had the opportunities to be who they were instead of what society said they had to be?
The question is, so what? That's what I was addressing, and it's highly relevant to the issue... I could write a whole volume on the options I don't have. So what?
The 'so what' is that, within the context of the novel, we were discussing the options of Victorian women like Arabella and Sue, not yours, not mine, not people in other countries. We were not discussing the virtuous life, Aristotlean or otherwise, admirable though it may be, because in this context it would be another straw man.
Nor were we suggesting that anyone should feel sorry for such women, just, as Deborah states, 'applauding Hardy and others for trying to change what they see are ills in their society.'
Good post Deborah. You have put a very good case for Victorian women - Hardy would be proud of you:). Moving on, how do you see Jude's life from the p.o.v. raised by Lily?
Deborah wrote: Everyman I think I haven't made myself clear. When people have less options, they can learn to live around those options. I've done it, we've all probably done it. That's not the point. The point is the limitations themselves. "Everybody who has ever been alive in any society, including ours, has limitations imposed by the rules of society, many written, many unwritten, some arising from age, some from gender, some from physical ability, some from intelligence, others from all sorts of other things beyond our control.
Nobody ever questioned that Victorian women had certain restrictions based on their gender. So did Victorian men. That's a given for any society, any period.
We may see them as "ills" today. I'm not at all sure that the average women of their time saw them as ills any more than I see not being able to regrow a severed arm as an ill of our society (though I think in several hungered years, maybe a lot less, that will be routine.)
Deborah wrote: "Also women faced many many health risks that men did not face (i.e. the mortality and illnesses associated with pregnancy).."And men faced many health risks that women didn't -- risks of war, the more dangerous labor that many men had to undergo, years at sea away from home in incredibly dangerous conditions, illnesses that women didn't get, and on and on.
I know that feminists, including feminist critics, have made it fashionable to put forward the case that women were disadvantaged and men were advantaged. In reality, there were advantages and disadvantages on both sides of the gender gap - women, for example, were not subject to being conscripted into the military or pressed into naval service.
It's not at all clear to me that, realistically, Jude had more opportunities and options than Sue and Arabella did based on his gender rather than his innate interests and capabilities. Sue is clearly literate; in that, she had the same opportunity to read and learn Latin and Greek that Jude had -- more, perhaps, since it appears that she had more income than Jude and therefore more chance to buy books. Sue worked in a shop which was apparently "kept entirely by women." So women here had the same chance to run a shop as any man would. Arabella was able to work as a barmaid, work she apparently enjoyed; she wasn't restricted to being just a wife or a governess, as was suggested earlier.
Jude has trouble finding work. Neither Sue nor Arabella seem so have had this same problem.
Yes, women had restrictions. Yes, men had restrictions. In the context of this book, I don't see that their options and opportunities were, in the scheme of their lives, any more restrictive than his. In fact, I think that is part of Hardy's point. All the characters, male and female, are constrained and limited and hemmed in by forces beyond their control, and their only real option is to decide how to deal with these constraints, whether to let them make them miserable or whether to be happy in spite of them.
Deborah - shall we move on and discuss the book further, before the straw men become haystacks? I came across this Abstract the other day about Jude himself and wonder what you think of it:-
'An analysis of Jude the Obscure reveals Thomas Hardy's major intention as demonstrated throughout his career as a novelist. Hardy's wish was to portray "an honest picture of human nature," and in doing so Hardy created, or tried to create, writing of the magnitude and scope of the epic. The essential qualities of epic writing are described and demonstrated as relevant to Jude the Obscure. Understanding that Hardy is writing a modern epic, a story of destiny in a world without God, explains why Jude the Obscure (and other novels) is not a tragedy, but is a lament. Jude is the epic hero, lacking divine intervention, who becomes one of the first anti-heroes of existentialism and able guide to the realities of twentieth-century life.'
Do you see Jude as an anti-hero. Is that what his failures so far add up to? Does he elicit the sympathy and/or admiration which anti-heroes are supposed to do? We are now half way through the novel and I get the feeling that it may all be downhill from here, that Jude's Bildungsroman has entered a critical phase. Even in Part I Hardy was prophesying that Jude's life will not be happy: 'he was the sort of man who was born to ache a good deal before the fall of the curtain upon his unnecessary life.'
Hardy seems to express pity for Jude's suffering perhaps because in creating Jude as a stonemason and church restorer aspiring to academia, Hardy is paralleling his own life and profession and yet his own life was a successful one. Does he see a stonemason's life, a working man's life, as a difficult one, as I think perhaps Lily was suggesting?
Perhaps the continuation of this discussion upon the position of women within the Victorian society and with regards to if in fact they were happy, and what that says about the society of the day, or people in general and so forth should be moved/continued within the Offshoot discussion thread. We are moving more and more away from the content of Jude in of itself and spending more and more time in debate/analysis of Victorian society and the role of women.
Let us refocus our attention here on the actual discussion of Jude, while the issue of women and society are relevant to Jude this discussion as begun to diverge away from discussion of the actual book.
MadgeUK wrote: Do you see Jude as an anti-hero. Is that what his failures so far add up to? Does he elicit the sympathy and/or admiration which anti-heroes are supposed to do? ..."I think the question of Jude as anti-hero is an interesting one. Though I will admit that I had found it difficult to sympathize with Jude myself, and he had a tendency to irk my nerves a bit particularly in regards to Sue, and his automatic presumption that Sue must feel for him what he feels for her.
But I do think that it was Hardy's intent to create Jude as being a sympathetic character. I am not sure how admirable Jude really is, though perhaps one can view his going against the odds, and his determination to try and seek a higher education for himself, and his actually making the move to Christminster, while unknowing of what to expect can be seen as admirable.
There has been a lot of talk about Jude's inability to really function in the real world, and his detachment from realty, the way in which but perhaps a more positive way to view it, is his unwillingness to just give up and accept for himself a life within a small village or to simply accept failure for himself.
He does try against all odds, even if it does not work out, he could have just retreated back to Marygreen and forgotten all about his dreams and desires but he doesn't. He keeps going and he does not simply accept the world for what it is.
Thanks Silver, I agree. I find Jude exasperating and at times want to put him in a bag and shake him up! His Romanticism keeps getting in the way of reality, he is a dreamer not a doer. Somehow I expect a worker in stone to be more concrete:). I agree that he is a tryer but is he trying the right things? He has served a good apprenticeship, why doesn't he abandon his academic dreams and become a master stonemason, which would have been a very good profession, perhaps even paying more than clergyman or schoolteacher in a cathedral town like Melchester. He worries me because he seems to be banging his head against stone walls!However, although I would like Jude to become a master stonemason, in his 1912 Preface to the novel Hardy wrote: 'The difficulties down to twenty or thirty years back of acquiring knowledge in letters without pecuniary means were used in the same way [as he discussed marriage laws/institutions]; though I was informed that some readers thought these episodes an attack on venerable institutions, and that when Ruskin College was. subsequently founded it should have been called the College of Jude the Obscure.' So he obviously intended to frame the story around Jude's aspirations to become a scholar. Ruskin College was, BTW, founded at Oxford as a Working Men's College (but not part of the University):-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruskin_C...
In his 1895 Preface Hardy described the novel 'addressed by a man to men and women of full age; which attempts to deal unaffectedly with the fret and fever, derision and disaster, that may press in the wake of the strongest passion known to humanity; to tell, without a mincing of words, a deadly war waged between flesh and spirit; and to point out the tragedy of unfulfilled aims'.
I expect all of us have had some unfulfilled aims which can help us have sympathy with Jude, and with Phillotson too because his ideals have not been realised either.
Bill wrote: Tragedy seems reserved for those people who give it their all and yet something outside them stops them. The only thing stopping Jude from becoming a man of God--is Jude...."I am curious as to in what why you see Jude himself primarily responsible for his inability to achieve his goals?
He was turned away from the college, and it is not as if there really are a whole lot of opportunities out there for a man with his background, and lacking any formal education, and having little to no money.
Exactly what could Jude himself do in order to achieve what he wants, which he has not already attempted?
Bill wrote: I would have a hard time seeing the inability to attend a college as tragedy to start with. But, when Jude has this attitude about his former ambition, it becomes impossible to see it as such."In retrospect I agree that I myself had a hard time viewing the story as being "tragic." Having goals, desires, ambitions that go unrealized, and are not achieved are something that I think are a part of everyday life and experienced by just about everyone to some degree.
So it may be true that his inability to attend college, or to make more of himself, while unfortunate does not make a tragedy.
And I am the sort of person who does not have much patience or sympathy for unrequited love, so I do not find his pining for so to truly be very much of a tragedy.
But to play the role of the devil's advocate and see the story perhaps in the way in which Hardy meant to present it I could argue that the tragedy does not lie so much in the fact that Jude's failure to achieve his dreams, but in the fact that society was structured in such a way that he is not even given the opportunity to make an honest attempt at it.
He is not granted the ability or the option to honestly try or fail upon his own merit but it has been decided for him by others that he is not deserving, or that it is a waste of his time to even attempt and so they will not even give him a fair chance at it.
While today there are still plenty of cases of people not being able to truly do what they want with their lives, and perhaps having to settle for something else, as Jude forsakes his ambitions for the college and turns his mind to just becoming a man of ministry. But in today's world a person still at least has the opportunity to genuinely try for what they want.
Someone growing up in a poor neighborhood, would not be automatically barred from entering into a university and acquiring a higher education and becoming successful in life. They may have many obstacles in their way, and many difficulties and hardships, but there are ways if they are willing to work at it, and can find support that it can be done, there are scholarships which can be given and so forth.
In the case of Jude. It does not matter how hard he is willing to work at it, or what he is willing to do, it has already been predetermined that a finer education would be wasted upon someone like him. So I think the tragedy is not Jude's failure, but the fact that he is never actually given to the chance to fail on his own.
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Bill wrote: As I said before, I understand his inability to attend college is not his fault. I just don't see it as a tragedy, particularly in light of the quote I gave in my last post. Anything else I'd have to say on it would merely be a repeat or rephrase of my post 168. .."In regards to the quote, personally I see that as Jude simply acknowledging that he will never be able to enter into the college, I do not believe that he sincerely no longer has the desire to do so, but he recognizes that nothing will make it so.
He has no choice but to revaluate his hopes and dreams and try and set his eyes upon something that would be more achievable.
I do not personally think that Jude honestly has forsaken in his heart the desire for the college, but he might just as well wish he could sprout wings and fly as continue down that path.
Silver wrote: "Let us refocus our attention here on the actual discussion of Jude, while the issue of women and society are relevant to Jude this discussion as begun to diverge away from discussion of the actual book. "That's what I tried to do by raising the question whether Jude in reality had no more opportunities than Sue or Arabella, and whether that was part of Hardy's intent, to show that the controls and limits of society and the concept that we are as much or more controlled by outside forces ("fate") as by our own attempts to control or manage our own lives.
Bill wrote: I disagree here. I think that quote at the end of part 2 shows that he has fully accepted that he isn't going to college and chapter 3 shows him fully engaged in his new course, with some distraction, but without regret for the old one. But perhaps the book will later prove me wrong on this..."I think that the acceptance of not being able to do something and the desire to still want to do it are two separate things.
Jude accepts that he cannot attend college, but that does not by default mean he has completely lost the desire or the wanting to do so.
As with the example I gave earlier, a person may accept the fact that they will never grow wings and be able to fly, but this does not mean they still do not want to do so.
Jude has no choice but to commit himself to his new course, and to try to put his old dreams behind him, because it would come to nothing to continue to try to do something which simply cannot be done. So he must find another course for him to take and he must accept that course if he wants any hope of doing anything at all with his life.
A person can acknowledge the impossibility of doing something, while still in their heart wish they could do it.
Not certain at which levels you are applying "not really a tragedy" to Jude. Don't overlook 2a(2).Main Entry: trag·e·dy
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): -es
Etymology: Middle English tragedie, from Middle French, from Latin tragoedia, from Greek tragomacridia, from tragos he-goat + -omacridia (from aeidein to sing); probably from the ancient Greek tragedy's having been influenced by the Peloponnesian satyr play, in which the satyrs were represented as goatlike rather than horselike creatures; akin to Greek tromacrgein to gnaw -- more at ODE, TERSE
1 a : a medieval narrative poem or tale (as Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde) typically describing the downfall of a great man b (1) : a drama in verse or prose and of serious and dignified character that typically describes the development of a conflict between the protagonist and a superior force (as destiny, circumstance, society) and reaches a sorrowful or disastrous conclusion that excites pity or terror -- compare CATHARSIS, COMEDY (2) : a nondramatic work (as a novel) that resembles a tragic drama in character, development, and conclusion c : an ancient Greek lyric poem sung by a chorus d : a literary genre consisting of tragic dramas
2 a (1) : a disastrous often fatal event or series of events : CALAMITY (2) : an unfortunate, sad, or discouraging occurrence or situation : bad luck : unhappy fate : MISFORTUNE b : an unqualified failure : FLOP, DISASTER
3 obsolete : LAMENTATION, JEREMIAD
4 : the tragic quality or element
"tragedy." Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (9 Apr. 2011).
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Lily wrote: "Not certain at which levels you are applying "not really a tragedy" to Jude. Don't overlook 2a(2)."In terms of Aristotelian tragedy or Shakespearean tragedy, Jude not getting to go to college is not a tragedy.
In the more general use of the term, what happened in Japan is a tragedy; what is happening to Jude is not.
It is perhaps misfortune, but IMO to apply the term tragedy to it diminishes the meaning of the term for real tragedies.
And what happened to Job, before his possessions were restored, in the Biblical story?
Hang fire folks! In terms of Jude's bildungsroman we are only part way through his life and half way through the book - a nemesis has not yet been reached. (NB: Part Fourth starts on Monday.) However, I think Bill may have picked up on a catharsis when he quoted 'Now I know I have been a fool, and that folly is with me,.....'http://www.victorianweb.org/genre/had...
To follow up Lily's post 177, I think that Hardy may be following the classical format of a Greek tragedy in dealing with his main character. This would entail Jude going through a whole gamut of emotions/experiences between the beginning and the end of the novel. Therefore, during his bildungsroman we can perhaps expect to see some of the following (in alpha, not plot, order):-
Anagnorisis Startling discovery; moment of epiphany; time of revelation when a character discovers his true identity.
Apotheosis When a tragic hero acheives a god-like status, usually after death.
Arete Pursuit of excellence.
Ate"Soul blindness", the ability to see the fate of others, but not of your own.
Catharsis The purging of feelings experienced when the protagonist finally sees his relationship to the gods, or his errors.
Chorus Observes and comments on the action of two or three actors, forwards the action of the plays, garners sympathy for the protagonist.
Hamartia Character flaw or judgment error of the protagonist.
Hubris Overweening pride in one's accomplishments, such that one feels invincible.
Hypocrit—one who is insincere, who professes to have characteristics he/she does not have.
Nemesis - Retributive justice in its execution or outcome, just punishment. Usually signifying the end.
Pathos When the audience pities the characters.
Tragic Irony The contrast between appearance and reality, blessings which are really disasters, strokes of luck which are really curses.
I quite enjoy looking out for examples of Greek tragedy in Victorian novels. Sometimes a good Glossary will pick up on them.
Lily: Do you mean 'The Lord blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the first. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys.' ? Gosh - Jude would have a hard job looking after those in Christminster/Melchester or even in Marygreen:).
Further to my post 182: A classic Greek tragedy has the following elements although not all may be followed by a modern author such as Hardy. I think I see some of them in Jude though:'Unification of plot, character and setting. All must be needed and important to the play, all events must be related and intertwined, and the setting must be limited and in real time.
The theme must involve the relationship between man's fate and his free will.
The tragic hero must have a tragic flaw–a strength which turns into a fault.
The tragic hero must be of high station and suffer death, downfall or defeat.
The result of the play must clearly show the hero sin of hubris (pride) caused his downfall.
The play must be about important themes, such as the role of man in the universe, the relationship of man to the gods.
The plot must have shame or horror, suffering which generates insight, knowledge derived from suffering and affirmation or re-affirmation of a moral order.'
MadgeUK wrote: "Lily: Do you mean 'The Lord blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the first?..."No, Madge, I meant is the story of the first part of Job's life a tragedy -- at least his life before the rather incongruous restoration of his wealth at the end, which could be interpreted as negating the first part. (I have always considered it a tragedy, but given the earlier discussion here, I wasn't certain others would agree.)
Everyman wrote: "I agree with you that Sue is not the sweet, kind person some here have seen her as. She is very capable of getting what she wants without any regard for the feelings of other people. The suggestion some have made that the man should have moved out disregards the fact that it was his home she moved into; yes, he could have kicked her out, but it would seem likely that the reason he didn't is that he kept hoping, and that would make sense only if she gave him some reason to hope. And then she marries for her own reasons, not for love or that much concern for him.
I see her as more manipulative than some others here do."
Yup, I agree. I've lived with a male room-mate as friends with no problem, and I've turned down male room-mates when I was worried there might be sexual tension there, because that's a recipe for unhappiness. Obviously I have a lot more choice in my life than Sue does, but really, Sue, really?
I recognize that she is confused and unhappy and searching, but she reminds me powerfully of an adolescent- confused, unhappy, searching, and massively self-absorbed.
Granted, I don't like Jude much better. UGH. (But that's why I haven't really been keeping up with this discussion . . .)
The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910
Books mentioned in this topic
The Return of the Native (other topics)Jude the Obscure (other topics)
Nowadays ..."
I think that if you put the onus on the woman in a non-reciprocated relationship, you are making that woman responsible for somebody else's needs or desires. I don't think that's true. If a man finds a woman sexually desirable, is it the fault of the woman? I don't think so.