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Jude the Obscure: Week 6 - Part Sixth
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Chapter 2 is horrific isn't it: 'Done because we are too many':(:( Thomas Malthus essay on the 'Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society' was widely read and preached about in this era. He argued that 'because of the natural human urge to reproduce human population increases geometrically (1, 2, 4, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, etc.). However, food supply, at most, can only increase arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, etc.). Therefore, since food is an essential component to human life, population growth in any area or on the planet, if unchecked, would lead to starvation.' This was the part of the essay which 'caught on' and to which Little Father Time responded. However, Malthus also argued that there are preventative checks and positive checks on population that slow its growth and keep the population from rising exponentially for too long, but still, poverty is inescapable and will continue.Malthus' example of population growth doubling was based on the preceding 25 years of the United States of America. He felt that a young country with fertile soil like the U.S. would have one of the highest birth rates around. He liberally estimated an arithmetic increase in agricultural production of one acre at a time, acknowledging that he was overestimating but he gave agricultural development the benefit of the doubt.
According to Malthus, preventative checks are those that affect the birth rate and include marrying at a later age (moral restraint), abstaining from procreation, birth control, and homosexuality. Malthus, a religious chap (he worked as a clergyman in the Church of England), considered birth control and homosexuality to be vices.
Following Father's time's suicide the doctor expresses the view that 'it is the beginning of the coming universal wish not to live' which again takes up the pessimistic views of the late Victorians mentioned in our discussion in Part Fifth.
Sue confirms the pessimism by saying 'It was in his nature to do it. The doctor says there are such boys springing up amongst us -boys of a sort unknown in the last generation - the outcome of new views on life'.
Father Time's act is very symbolic and therefore appears unreal and melodramatic. IMO only if we look at it as being the outcome of the thinking of a time when people were pondering ideas like 'God is Dead', 'Nature red in tooth and claw' and 'the Survival of the Fittest' can we begin to understand it.
MadgeUK wrote: "The doctor says there are such boys springing up amongst us - boys of a sort unknown in the last generation - the outcome of new views on life'."Perhaps to us in the 21st century, the story feels less like the consequence of vast ideas and more like the pressures on a family that has suffered blows to its identity and not had the resources, either in extended family or in the community, to cope. It reads like a Columbine (deranged shooting in a school or a shopping mall) or a mother driving off a wharf with children on-board, and from those perspectives, only too real, too possible. (Which, in some ways, is a sensitivity/expectation created by modern media.)
The other contrast that springs to my stream of consciousness this morning is all the young men of the Middle East who have survived partly because of the progress in reducing infant mortality, have even had some chances at education, but do not live in places where the infrastructures and processes exist to create economies/jobs/work/... that can sustain.
With Internet and Twitter and email, we understand how ideas reach vast parts of the world today, albeit with weird perturbations. But, is it believable that a boy like Father Time knew about Malthus and Darwin, even with parents like Sue and Jude, or is Hardy using him as a literary device? (As Madge suggests: "Father Time's act is very symbolic....) The way they had been moving about, would there have been laws that would have required schooling? (I believe there are some passages about Father Time being taunted by other children, but on the streets, or in a schoolyard?)
I read Chapter VI-i last night. It felt like a thread wrapping tightly around a needle, like a series of events building in prediction of doom. I don't know if I would have felt it quite so much if I hadn't known what was coming, but just having followed the stories of Easter week, from the jubilation of waving palms to the dreadful reality of Golgotha, it had for me that same build-up of tension.
But, is it believable that a boy like Father Time knew about Malthus and Darwin.It was well reported in the newspapers of the time Lily and a great talking point so LFT could have heard about it just through adult conversation but it is no doubt a literary device too.
This perhaps belongs in the background information as much as here (and it may already be there -- I have not mined all provided thoroughly), but I came across this morning, found it insightful, and hence share it here:http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cgi/v...
"Did Hardy read The Odd Women in 1893, or when it was reissued in 1894, when he was thinking about Jude and writing the final draft? I think it is probable that he did. The evidence is not conclusive, but it is suggestive, and the similarities between The Odd Women and Jude do show that Gissing directly anticipated both the element in Jude which had the greatest notoriety in 1895-96 and the character who has since been recognized as one of Hardy's most provocative and best-Jude's views on marriage and the psychology of Sue. We can attribute the similarities to coincidence or to the ambience that surrounded the marriage problem novel of the '90's. Or without having to discount either entirely, and without at all questioning the greater achievement of Jude, we can postulate the likelihood that Hardy, who knew Gissing well, would have read The Odd Women and would have been affected by it."
Thankyou Lily, very interesting. Hardy did read several of the New Woman novels, including The Woman Who Did, and commented on them to Florence Henniker and Milicent Fawcett. One thing that the article doesn't mention is that Sue's character is thought to be partly based on Emma, particularly the puritanical religiosity which affected Emma at the end of her life, which so upset Hardy. So was Gissing writing about Emma too - he is reported as having 'loathed' her?
In looking again at the text I am wondering if Hardy is also portaying alcoholism/laudanum addiction or TB in Chaps 7/10/11 (Hardy's close friend, Horace Moule, was a depressive and alcoholic who committed suicide.): Arabella plied him with alcohol in Chap 7 and in Chap 10 'Despite himself Jude recovered somewhat, and worked at his trade for several weeks. After Christmas, however, he broke down again.' '...he was compelled to lean against the wall to support himself while coughing'. He spoke to phantoms [delerium tremens?], he mumbled, 'His face was now so thin that his old friends would hardly have known him...Jude had hitherto taken the medicines of that skilful practitioner [Vilbert] with the greatest indifference whenever poured down his throat by Arabella...She brought him a bottle and a glass, and he drank.' Or did he have TB, another Victorian scourge:[Arabella] looked again at Jude, critically gauged his ebbing life as she had done so many times during the late months., '...she saw that Jude was apparently sleeping, though he was not in the usual half-elevated posture necessitated by his cough...' Although I think that TB would have meant that he died coughing up a great deal of blood.
It is a very tragic ending and I cannot believe that Hardy thought that somehow they deserved it because they did not have enough faith in a god or were not brave or stoical enough. Others might judge them thus, with motes in their own eyes, as the Victorians did but I do not think that Hardy did so. I think he had empathy with them.
What do folks think to Arabella's reaction to Jude's death? She reminded me of my first husband's mistress (my home help!) who persuaded my husband to emigrate to Australia with her, leaving me in hospital and my four children in foster care. She was very much an Arabella sort of a person in looks and actions. She even once worked at a pig farm!
The most obvious interpretation is that she is callous...more interested in her afternoon of pleasure than in what is happening to Jude. A more kind interpretation might be that she's in denial. She blocks out from her mind that Jude is really ill (after all he recovered last time) and even when he is plainly dead, she still heads out, almost as if it hasn't quite sunk in...one part of her brain hasn't quite accepted the reality of his passing. (I don't expect many people will give credence to the second option).Whichever explanation you choose, the most interesting question is what is Hardy trying to tell us here? That the sensitive, thoughtful souls are the ones who will be battered by this world, while the uncaring, less reflective will sail on through regardless?
Deborah wrote in Part Fifth, re a discussion on depression: If we think mental illness is misunderstood today, which it is, imagine what it would be like for Jude and Sue?Laudanum was often prescribed for depression which, of course, was opium and quickly became addictive and was a depressant in itself when withdrawal symptoms set in. It also caused respiratory problems - was this the cause of Jude's cough and what was in the 'philtre' that Vilbert prescribed and which Arabella helped to procure?
Jan - good question: I have thought of Arabella throughout as an 'earthy' sort of a gal, a country lass and I think she acts from instinct and not much thought. I see Hardy as portraying her (and Widow Edlin) as a representative of the old country life that Phillotson, Sue and Jude left behind, a healthier life perhaps and one which will better survive the ravages of time.
I promised a segue from some comments in Part 5 to here. Not certain this is smooth, but let me mention another quotation from the Richard Benvenuto article in the Colby Quarterly: "On the basis of changes which Hardy made in his manuscript, John Paterson concludes that Hardy shifted his center of interest in Jude from the education theme to the marriage theme-a move which would indicate, despite his later remarks, that Hardy consciously joined the ranks of the marriage-problem novelists."
I think I might have preferred Hardy to stay closer to that education theme. Or is that theme really still there, just drummed into the background by the marriage theme?
Given how much my family valued education, I find it hard to see its potential denied to Jude. Even into these last pages, that Jude was turned away as a young man still rankles, even elicits a sense of pain.
Interesting quote Lily, thanks. It would have been an entirely different novel if he had stuck to the education theme though because a good education, which would have probably enabled him to become a minister or a teacher, would have changed Jude's life entirely. Even if he became a failed minister or teacher because of his pessimism, his life would have taken a different turn. Phillotson perhaps represents the education theme but even his life turns out badly because of his contact with Sue. He was though, someone who had escaped from the working class and eventually became a teacher in the city, even though he did not achieve his earlier ambition to be a clergyman.Sue did have an education and yet she suffered vicissitudes too, presumably because of the anti-marriage ideas which affected the New Woman Hardy was portraying. He had replaced the theme of the Fallen Woman, for which his earlier novels were renowned, for the New Woman.
I would quite like to read a novel by Zola whilst Jude is fresh in our minds because Zola dealt with many of the same social topics as Hardy but in France he was able to be more forthright. George Gissing, whom you have already mentioned Lily, emulated Zola's 'realistic naturalism' but Victorian propriety denied him the freedom which Zola and other mainland European novelist of the time. However, reading a bleak Zola after a bleak Hardy might not be a good thing to do.
In her book about Hardy A Literary Lynching Dorothy Bryant writes:-'Why this fresh outrage at Hardy? [After the publication of Jude.] Could it have been the times? There actually had been some modifications in marriage law to make women and children not quite so completely the property of men. A few women of a higher class than servants, prostitutes, and factory hands were supporting themselves as well as agitating for the vote. (Emma too marched in suffragette parades.) Darwin had had half a century to trickle down to the most narrow creationists, shaking the power of churches. There were visible cracks in the old certainties. Was it possible that divorce would become available? that women would demand their own money and work and—eventually—even sexual pleasure? while socialist agitators and unions would rouse the workers against their betters, who weren't even attending church regularly? Most amazing change: a few poor men had gotten into Oxford and had been elected to minor offices. England was unknowingly on the brink of even more vast changes and losses—including her empire. The fury of the attacks against Jude tell us less about the content of the book than about the obsessions and insecurities of many who read it—and many more who did not.
Hardy wrote more and more poems, sometimes venting his anger about the ongoing attacks. In "Lausanne" (1897), he imagines the ghost of Gibbon appearing to him with a question:
"How fares the Truth now?—Ill?
Do pens but slyly further her advance?
May one not speed her but in phrase askance?
Do scribes aver the Comic to be Reverend still?
"Still rule those minds on earth
At whom sage Milton's wormwood words were hurled:
'Truth like a bastard comes into the world
Never without ill-fame to him who gives her birth'?" (Hardy's emphasis)
In his diary, he wrote, "To cry out in a passionate poem that (for instance) the Supreme Mover or Movers, the Prime Force or Forces, must be either limited in power, unknowing, or cruel—which is obvious enough, and has been for centuries—will cause them merely a shake of the head; but to put it in argumentative prose will make them sneer, or foam, and set all the literary contortionists jumping upon me, a harmless agnostic, as if I were a clamorous atheist, which in their crass illiteracy they seem to think is the same thing. If Gallileo had said in verse that the world moved, the Inquisition might have let him alone."
He never mellowed in his feeling about the reaction to Jude. In 1912, sixteen years after the initial publication of Jude the Obscure, he wrote his Postscript to the new edition, recounting his experience in which "the sad feature of the attack" was that the story he told, that of "shattered ideals of the two chief characters . . . was practically ignored by the adverse press of the two countries." Critics later "discovered that Jude was a moral work—austere in its treatment of a difficult subject," but it was too late, "the
experience completely curing me of further interest in writing novels." All could be summarized by saying, "We Britons hate ideas."
Bryant goes on to ask 'Should we regret Hardy's decision to write no more novels?' Tillie Olsen includes Hardy in her book Silences, stating that some of the poems he wrote over the next thirty years, "cry out for fuller, broader treatment"—presumably in a novel. On the other hand, Lytton Strachey called Hardy's poems "compressed dramatic narratives" which gave the reader "in that moment the tragedies of whole lives." In other words, they don't cry out for broader treatment, they accomplish what poetry is supposed to do—suggest volumes.'
Do readers here regret that Hardy stopped writing novels?
Yes. Absolutely. As I mentioned in part five.http://goodreads.com/topic/show/53543... message #61
He seems to not have expected the vehemence of the reaction. But surely he must have had some idea of what a radical idea it was to question the idea of women's happiness in marriage in an era when they were meant to 'lie back and think of England'? Did he really not know he was opening a can of worms?
Do go back and read what Jan wrote(Part 5, Msg 61), but I'll repeat a bit of it here:"It's not to show that these are people who can't cope with life. What Hardy is painting a picture of is ordinary people, with internal conflicts. Surely he is showing that you can't just judge people by what you see...divorced, unwed, whatever the label. These are not horrible people. These are people who had dreams and aspirations. People who have a tender side. People who love art and architecture. Ordinary, fallible, confused, loving, emotional, caring, perplexing, good-natured, frustrated, sometimes frightened, sometimes hopeful human beings.'
Here is a passage I encountered this morning that seems so very much in line with what Jan calls to our attention:
"Sue, Sue -- affliction has brought you to this unreasonable state! After converting me to your views on so many things, to find you suddenly turn to the right-about like this -- for no reason whatever, confounding all you have formerly said through sentiment merely! You root out of me what little affection and reverence I had left in me for the Church as an old acquaintance.... What I can't understand in you is your extraordinary blindness now to your old logic. ... How you argued that marriage was only a clumsy contract -- which it is -- how you showed all the objections to it -- all the absurdities! If two and two made four when we were happy together, surely they make four now? I can't understand it, I repeat!" VI-iii
(I dropped out the chauvinist sentences where Jude questions the reasoning power of women in general.)
In the whole scene surrounding this passage, I sensed the trembling humanity of these two, just having lost four children, one adopted, two their own, and one in a miscarriage. Jude still so clearly loves this strange, seemingly asexual wife of his. How misplaced some of the following sounds to our 21st century ears, yet even after all Jude has just listened to from Sue, Hardy still has Jude call her his wife. And yet he does not let her off lightly. How many ways an actor could portray those words!
"'No -- it was I. Your wickedness was only the natural man's desire to possess the woman. Mine was not the reciprocal wish till envy stimulated me to oust Arabella. I had thought I ought in charity to let you approach me -- that it was damnably selfish to torture you as I did my other friend. But I shouldn't have given way if you hadn't broken me down by making me fear you would go back to her.... But don't let us say any more about it! Jude, will you leave me to myself now?'
'Yes.... But Sue -- my wife, as you are!' he burst out; 'my old reproach to you was, after all, a true one. You have never loved me as I love you -- never -- never! Yours is not a passionate heart -- your heart does not burn in a flame! You are, upon the whole, a sort of fay, or sprite -- not a woman!'" VI-iii
I posted this first on the background thread, but am moving it here where I need not worry about spoilers. The perspective is a bit rough, but thought some of the insights might be of interest. (Note especially the last sentence quoted here.)An excerpt from a panel attempting to define the noir genre of novels:
"Noir Is Where You Find It." Bill Ott. The Booklist. Chicago: Sep 15, 2005. Vol. 102, Iss. 2; pg. 104, 1 pgs
"Perhaps the most interesting portion of the Bouchercon panel involved a discussion of noir's antecedents (we may not know what it is, but we know where it came from). Ardai noted that King Lear was perhaps the first noir hero and that Thomas Hardy was a quintessential noir novelist. He's on to something here, and I think it says much about the various shades of noir and possibly even about the difference between a hard-boiled world and a noir world. There's no doubt that Lear is a dark play, and that Lear raging on the heath may be the ultimate case of the alienated individual imploring the universe to give him its best shot. But, in Shakespeare's view at least, the Elizabethan world is an ordered place; the Shakesepearean tragedies concern temporary fissures in that structure, fissures that are rejoined in the last scene when the cavalry arrives and sets about rebuilding. I'd argue that Parker, John D. MacDonald, and a host of other hard-boiled writers fall into this same camp. Their worlds get severely out of joint on a regular basis, and the hero is charged with setting it right, at least temporarily. Unlike in the noir world, where darkness is all, in the hard-boiled world, there are states of order in between bouts of evil.
"Shakespeare may not quite be a noir writer, then, but Thomas Hardy definitely is one. I'd argue that Jude the Obscure posits a universe as unremittingly alien as anything in Jim Thompson. [Jude Fawley, an uneducated stonemason, dreams of attending Oxford and ruins his life trying to get there, hooking up along the way with a stone-cold bitch called Sue Bridehead, perhaps the only femme fatale in literature with no sex appeal. From the love of learning comes unmitigated poverty and misery, culminating with the death of Jude's young son, who kills himself so Jude's other children can have more to eat. His suicide note does Jim Thompson proud: 'Done because we were too menny.'
"You don't need postwar city streets or Venetian blinds or a Veronica Lake look-alike to produce noir. It's not about stage setting or lighting or unfiltered cigarettes. It's not even about crime. It is about poor saps, sometimes deeply flawed saps, going one-on-one against a world holding all the aces...."
I love that last paragraph Lily - so true and very American!
Jan re post 16: I get the impression that because Tess was eventually such a resounding success, after all the bad reviews, that Hardy thought some of the prurience he had encountered with that novel had dissipated with time and that this change of heart in the public and his success as a writer would enable Jude to be received in a more enlightened way. He was proved wrong and that, I think, was the shock.
More on the symbolism of Little Time and the relationship to Jude being a "realistic" novel:Little Time's unrealistic nature is partially revealed in his approach to time, which is very different from either that of his father, Jude, or of his natural mother, Arabella.2 Jude's life is guided by his love of the past, and this love is the very basis of his unfailing desire to be a scholar. As Moore puts it, "Jude takes to studying the outdated grammars of ancient languages. His books fall under the double rubric of the belated; they present dead mythologies for learning dead languages" (261). Jude's fascination with Christminster is also connected to his love of the past. Indeed, he lists as Christminster's most notable feature its history of having been home to the dead greats of old (104). By contrast, Little Time's mother, Arabella, is future oriented, so much so that she is practically prophetic. As the narrator puts it, she is "always imagining and waiting" (55), concocting plans that will set her up for her future life. One of these plans is to lie to Jude about being pregnant so that he will marry her, thereby ensuring her future comfort. Her deception is eventually revealed, but as the existence of Little Time eventually shows, she correctly guessed the future in her lie. She looks out for the comfort of her future self through marriage later in the novel as well, deciding that she wants Jude back only six weeks after her other husband, Cartlett, dies (327) and courting the attentions of Vilbert the physician while Jude is still warm in his deathbed (429). Furthermore, it is from this same doctor that Arabella buys future "immunity from the ravages of Time" in the form of pills (308). Unlike his parents, though, Little Father Time is not guided by his relationship to time, for he is time. He therefore approaches life without the usual limitations of time, "regarding his companions [on the train] as if he saw their whole rounded lives rather than their immediate figures" (343). Supernaturally, Little Father Time represents all moments of time, being both aged, as he is called Father Time and "preternaturally old" (347), and young, for he is a child.
Fantastic as this character seems to be in the terms outlined above, he is also presented as signifying a realism that contrasts with Jude and Sue's idealism. The harsh realism of Little Time is revealed in Hardy's first description of him: his "saucer eyes seemed mutely to say: `All laughing comes from misapprehension. Rightly looked at there is no laughable thing under the sun.'" (290). Moreover, the child's spoken words reveal his practicality, as his first complete sentences in the novel impart a harsh sense of imperative: he announces, "`I've got to go there"' and "'I must walk"' (291). He is a boy of few words, to be sure, and because of this characteristic, Jude and Sue are often "hardly conscious of him" (296). Yet, Jude and Sue are not only unwitting of Little Time's person, but also of that which he represents. In short, Jude has the unrealistic dream of rising out of the lot into which he was born and redefining himself as a great scholar, or even a bishop. In his idealism he is similar to Sue, who tries to thwart one of society's most cherished contracts, marriage, without the expectation of retribution. For a while, Jude and Sue do live together in an unwedded state of "Greek joyousness" (312), but Little Time eventually destroys their world after taking Sue's sad pronouncements on the state of their family too "literally" (357), as one would expect of a realist. He kills himself, as well as Jude and Sue's two children, for a starkly practical reason, which he reveals in his note to be "because ... [they] are too meny" (355)....
"Hardy's Jude the Obscure." Michelle Faubert. The Explicator. Washington: Winter 2002. Vol. 60, Iss. 2; pg. 76, 3 pgs
Note: please realize that I post these quotations only to share what my own exploration has found of interest. Do consider them, as I do, just another set of contributors to our conversation here, with no more or less value than that of any other.
Thanks Lily and very good contributors they are!
I finally finished reading Jude this morning. No final sentiments yet, but Arabella is piece of work, with her advances to the doctor, her sally to the boat show, and self-protective visits on her way home!Sue sounds like the type of "frigid" woman who spurred the work of Masters and Johnson almost a century later. I rather wanted to be angry with her for the hurt she brought to the two men closest to her in her life, especially Jude, and for her failure to protect the children, but there was still a part of me that felt sorry for her.
As far as Jude and Phillotson are concerned, I don't have a clear set of feelings, except deep sadness for the plight of Jude and perhaps questions about "what might he have done differently and when?"
I thought of the contrast of this novel with the pageantry and messages and changes (and lack of changes) surrounding marriage as I watched the ceremony and festivities in London this morning. At least segments of humankind/society do still broadly proclaim to the world that public profession of commitment has value. (I liked the passages from Romans used at Westminster. Also, having visited there, albeit years ago now, added to the pleasure of watching.)
I finally finished reading Jude this morning. No final sentiments yet, but Arabella is piece of work, with her advances to the doctor, her sally to the boat show, and self-protective visits on her way home!Sue sounds like the type of "frigid" woman who spurred the work of Masters and Johnson almost a century later. I rather wanted to be angry with her for the hurt she brought to the two men closest to her in her life, especially Jude, and for her failure to protect the children, but there was still a part of me that felt sorry for her.
As far as Jude and Phillotson are concerned, I don't have a clear set of feelings, except deep sadness for the plight of Jude and perhaps questions about "what might he have done differently and when?"
I thought of the contrast of this novel with the pageantry and messages and changes (and lack of changes) surrounding marriage as I watched the ceremony and festivities in London this morning. At least segments of humankind/society do still broadly proclaim to the world that public profession of commitment has value. (I liked the passages from Romans used at Westminster. Also, having visited there, albeit years ago now, added to the pleasure of watching.)
Lily wrote: "I finally finished reading Jude this morning. No final sentiments yet, but Arabella is piece of work, with her advances to the doctor, her sally to the boat show, and self-protective visits on her..."Towards the end of the novel my feelings for Sue and Jude had begun to shift and I found myself becoming more sympathetic for Jude, and more irritated with Sue.
Though while on the one hand I was frustrated with the way she was behaving, and the way in which she was sacrificing everything she formerly believed in, on the other hand I can understand why in her state of grief she was driven to feel the way she did, even if I did not agree with it. After all the tragedy she had endured in her efforts to buck against society as well as religion, the gruesome horror with the children had finally broken her sprit and so she was forced to acknowledge the wrong of what she had done (Mind I am not saying I personally belief it was wrong, but this is the conclusion Sue was driven to come do in the face of all of her suffering). After all she has endured, and having it driven into her by all those around her, she could only be left to feel the Fate/God was truly punishing her.
In the case of Philotson I have to admit I was a bit disappointed in him. While on the hand some part of me could feel for him considering his own sufferings in his efforts to do what he thought was the right thing, on the other hand, I do not know if he truly was right to take Sue back. In spite of her telling him that is what she wanted, he most have hat heart known that she truly would gain no real pleasure in coming back to him and that she was doing it as an act of punishment upon herself. And I do not know if it is truly noble to allow a grieved woman to use you as the device of her own punishment, for the sake of your own selfish desires.
Silver wrote: "And I do not know if it is truly noble to allow a grieved woman to use you as the device of her own punishment, for the sake of your own selfish desires."I'm no expert on social history, but I suspect that perspective and sensitivity are ones that tag you as belonging to the 21st century rather than the 19th.
I too was torn between exasperation and sympathy for Sue. She reminded me of my maternal grandmother who solemnly told me on my wedding morning that neither she nor my grandfather had ever seen each other naked even though they had thirteen children!I think there is an 'elephant in the room' regarding Sue's frigidity and that is lack of birth control and fear of childbirth. Given the maternal and infant mortality statistics at this time, many women must have been petrified of having sex for fear of having a child. Her intellectualising of marriage could have been a cover for such fears.
There is something in me which admires Arabella, who perhaps represents the ordinary woman, without the 'hang-ups' that educated women like Sue have. Life goes on despite everything for people like Arabella. If everyone stopped to philosophise over their life and circumstances the world would have come to a stop long ago.
Re the relevance to the Royal Wedding Lily, it is perhaps significant that the royal couple have lived together 'in sin' for 10 years and so knew each other very well before making a commitment, something that was not so easy for our protaganists. Masters and Johnson did us all a service.
Lily wrote: I'm no expert on social history, but I suspect that perspective and sensitivity are ones that tag you as belonging to the 21st century rather than the 19th..."Yes I imagine that so. In the eyes of the 19th century Philotson would be doing the right thing, and his decision was approved of by most. He is seen as "saving" Sue from her sins in welcoming her back in what would have been regarded as her natural and proper marriage.
Yet I think Hardy does recognize that this thinking may not in fact be correct and the figure of the widow acknowledges that it may not be the right thing for Philotson to do and does try and convince him that he should reconsider his actions.
...and the figure of the widow acknowledges that it may not be the right thing for Philotson to do...Yes, Widow Edlin plays the Greek chorus very well at the end of the novel in traditionally bringing information highlighting the protaganists problems and fears, as when in Chap 10 she tells Jude that Sue has begun having sexual relations with Phillotson:
Mrs. Edlin hesitated. "Well, no--it's different now. She's begun it
quite lately--all of her own free will."
"When did she begin?" he asked quickly.
"The night after you came. But as a punishment to her poor self.
He didn't wish it, but she insisted."
And her last words in the novel were to tell Arabella that Sue thought Jude had forgiven her before he died: 'Well--poor little thing, 'tis to be believed she's found forgiveness somewhere! She said she had found peace!'
Was this redemption for Sue?
.
MadgeUK wrote: "Laudanum was often prescribed for depression which, of course, was opium and quickly became addictive and was a depressant in itself when withdrawal symptoms set in. It also caused respiratory problems - was this the cause of Jude's cough and what was in the 'philtre' that Vilbert prescribed and which Arabella helped to procure? "No deep thoughts, but I thought Jude died of TB.
Lily wrote: "I'm no expert on social history, but I suspect that perspective and sensitivity are ones that tag you as belonging to the 21st century rather than the 19th. "Good point. If we look at the characters from the late 19th century viewpoint, their motives look different from the way they would if the same acts took place today.
Philoston did what he and most others, in the context of the times, would have thought was the noble thing, to redeem Sue from a life of sin.
I thought Jude died of TB. I wondered about this but there was no mention of blood? Were you thinking of the line in 6:5 'He went in an opposite [direction], to a dreary, strange, flat scene, where boughs dripped, and coughs and consumption lurked, and where he had never been before.' This event, where Sue went in another direction [to Phillotson], also parallelled the tale of the graduate who Sue left earlier in the novel, who died of consumption. Do you think Hardy was drawing a parallel and suggesting that Jude too will die of consumption? There are certainly quite a few references to him coughing.
There was mention of him drinking quite a lot, I think in 6:7, so I plumped for alcoholism allied to depression, mainly because there was no blood mentioned.
I note that in the final chapter Jude's last words were s a repeat of the words from Job: 'Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man-child conceived' which is what Jude said about Little Father Time when Sue said that they should adopt him in 6:3. There seems to be another parallel between Father Time's infanticide and the poor nurturing Jude and Sue received as children. This bad parenting haunts the novel, linking three generations of Fawleys. Each generation executes a death sentence in the name of the parents so there is a lot of Oedipal angst and guilt there, both harbingers of depression.
At the beginning of our reading I wondered whether Jude was a bildungsroman but I have come to the conclusion that because Jude does not achieve his goals and is thwarted by an 'unbending social order', he is more of an anti-hero. What do folks think about this aspect of the novel?
http://www.victorianweb.org/genre/had...
I'm so reluctant to leave the discussion of this great novel. I just wanted to post one more thing. Something Chris raised earlier on, but we didn't really get back to, was the question of Jude the Obscure as a tragedy. I found a few things on the net about classical tragedy, which I thought might be of interest.Characteristics of Greek Tragedy.
1. Position. The hero is royal or noble with great power, usually a king. He is a good, respected man who acts out of good intentions. He has much to lose.
2. Tragic flaw (hamartia) In spite of his good intentions, the hero makes a tragic error which causes his reversal. The error usually stems from a character flaw, such as pride.
3. Reversal(catastrophe) Because of his tragic error, the hero suffers a downfall from his happy, envied position to suffering and misery.
4. Recognition (catharsis) The hero realises that his own flaw or error caused his reversal. This recognition always occurs too late for the hero to prevent or escape his reversal.
This source also states that in the modern tragedy, as opposed to the Greek, the protagonist is often common or middle class.
Another online source suggested that there is typically an internal struggle of the hero/heroine between what he thinks is good and the laws of the gods.
Yet another source described various characteristics of different writers:
Aeschylus....emphasises forces beyond human control
Sophocles ...emphasises individual characters, showing their complexity and that they are psychologically well-motivated. His characters typically undergo a crisis leading to suffering and self-recognition, with an emphasis on the choices people face.
Euripides...dealt with subjects usually considered unsuited to the stage which questioned traditional values.
In the above I see a lot of characteristics which suggest that Hardy drew on his knowledge of the classics to write Jude the Obscure as a modern tragedy.
I am not much interested in arguing the academic categorization of Jude. but it certainly meets many criteria for being called tragic, if not technically a "tragedy."
Jan wrote: "This source also states that in the modern tragedy, as opposed to the Greek, the protagonist is often common or middle class."Nice post on classical tragedy.
Yes, tragedy did take on a different character after the Greeks. This was primarily a Roman development, particularly works by Plautus, Pacuvius, and Accius and, a bit later, Seneca, from whom we get Senecan tragedy. The Romans drew in part on Greek tragedy, but Romanized it. Seneca was particularly influential on Shakespeare, who drew his ideas of tragedy more from the Roman than the Greek traditions, despite his writing tragedies largely involving influential characters.
Thanks for reminding us about the Greek classification of tragedy, which I had posted about in early April Jan. I agree with you that Hardy does appear to follow the classical definitions, which isn't surprising because Victorians were much more versed in the classics than we are now. However, I do not see Jude as a classical hero because he isn't noble and doesn't recognise his errors. The definition which is missing in your list is nemesis which is the spirit of divine retribution. I think Jude's sad end from TB or alcoholism was his punishment, his Fate, his nemesis. He was either a modern hero or perhaps an anti-hero.Nor does Jude fit the classic bildungsroman (the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood) definition as he never finds a place in the society in which he lives, he remains an Outsider.
Jude also predates the Byronic hero in that he is a sympathetic character who rebels against society by rejecting virtue.
It has been a great discussion and like Jan, I am reluctant to leave it. Thanks for your input everyone! I hope too that Chris will find time to post his final thoughts.
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I have finally finished! I've had a problem with Arabella from the beginning because to me she seemed very manipulative and self-centered. She always always always focused on what she wanted to attain without any consideration of what she was doing to others. Her complete lack of concern for Jude while sick truly illustrates this better than anywhere else in the book.
For me, I read it as if any time Jude started to become sober, Arabella poured more alcohol down his throat to the point where his health began to decline. TB went through my mind too as well as possible lung cancer due to stone dust or other inhalents most likely used during his career as stone mason. I truly felt like his illness might not have happened as quickly as it seemed to without her dowsing him and keeping him on a drunk. She even managed to ensure he was not coherent for the wedding ceremony. Pretty nasty and manipulative to me.
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I think Hardy did not allow Jude to achieve the education he always desired because it wouldn't be realistic. If nothing else, his novels always try to depict the "faults" of his day. To do that, they had to be believable. Do you really think the everday reader of the time would believe Jude would be able to get an education? I don't think so, but you guys are right, it would be a completely different novel.
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Sue - I feel sympathy for Sue. Yes she had the education, but she didn't have the strength of character to survive with her personal belief system and integrity intact. She was beaten by life when the children died. I think it is extremely difficult to lose a child. While I can only guess at this, my great-grandmother who was a very strict, strong woman, sat down in a chair and according to family history "seemed like she would never get back up and out of the chair" with the loss of her only son. He was 21, not a child at all really. Still the lose devistated her to such a degree that she sank into a complete nofunctioning depression where the entire family did not think she would survive.
Jude - I feel great empathy for Jude. Maybe because in a lot of ways I am like him, and my dreams were the same. He works so hard to teach himself things like Latin so he can go to University and be educated. He is completely rejected. He tries to do what is honorable by marrying Arabella the first time, and he is taken for a ride. He falls in love with Sue but is not strong enough to control his passion (yet she is somebody that is hard for me to imagine anybody being passionate about). He fails there too. He goes back to where he is from and they literally berate him at the train station for dreaming big and accomplishing, in their opinion, nothing. He constantly is trying to improve himself and his life while taking responsibilities very seriously and is thrown to the floor by life each and every time.
Father Time - In a previous post I indicated that he seemed death-like to me and somebody said yes he seems very much like the grim reaper. Turns out - he was. It does bring our modern day school masacures, etc. to mind. The only difference that seems to exist is Father Time is trying to help his family in a very warped way - modern kids are getting even or doling out justice in their opinion. To me, Father Time is the ticking time bomb and the grim reaper. Maybe that is exactly what death is to all of us. We know the hours are flying by (the time bomb) and the ultimate ending.
All in all, I truly enjoyed the book and tended to see the motivation behind Jude's choices and decisions. I know many of you voiced your seeing the bleakness earlier, and I indicated I didn't see it. What is strongest for me in this novel is the fact that no matter what happens to Jude, he tries to pick himself up and try another route/voyage/dream whatever you want to label it. I have to admire that because only a truly strong person can continue to do that over a lifetime.
Thank you for those last so seemingly deeply heartfelt comments, Deborah. Much insight you articulate.Let me clarify that I don't think moving the major theme from marriage (or the "women question", whatever that was) to education would necessarily have meant Jude succeeded in obtaining his dreams, at least in their entirety. But, at some point it becomes futile to dwell in "what ifs". Perhaps the question I should ask is what writers did explore the "education question" in what novels.
Deborah wrote: "Here are my thoughts about this novel. Yes I wished Hardy had written more. ."Actually, he wrote more than you might realize, both novels and short stories (and, of course, poetry). Not all his novels are well known, but he wrote I think 14 novels -- more than twice the output of Austen and only one fewer than Dickens, even counting the unfinished Edwin Drood. (Thackeray is another novelist who is known really for only two novels, Vanity Fair and the History of Henry Esmond, which Trollope considered his greatest novel, but who wrote nearly 20 novels in all. There were many prolific Victorian novelists now sadly fallen by the wayside.)
Deborah wrote: "[Jude] constantly is trying to improve himself and his life while taking responsibilities very seriously and is thrown to the floor by life each and every time. "I think it's important not only to recognize this, but to recognize why Hardy makes life so hard for him. I see it as coming from two sources. First, of course, Hardy, even late in the 19th century, is still presenting a highly stratified and class-structured world which totally lacks the more modern concept of working hard to get ahead. Women could get ahead by marrying up, but men had virtually no way to rise above the limitations of their birth. I see Hardy as emphasizing this strongly. The interesting question is whether he intended his role to be that of social reporter, a realist presenting life as he observed it, or whether he intended his role to be that of social reformer, setting out Jude's struggles and failures as a condemnation of the social order. We know that Dickens saw himself as a social reformer. I also know that many like to see Hardy, also, in this role, but I'm not totally persuaded that this is the case.
The other aspect, I think, is Hardy's view of fate. He seems to me a strong believer in the role of fate, that certain things are simply fated to happen and you are helpless to change or overcome them. This is a very Senecan approach, also reflected strongly int he Book of Job. It is, again, an approach to live which most contemporary Westerners reject, but that's still a fairly modern development in intellectual thought.
It is also possible to interpret the Book of Job from the perspective that bad things can happen to one, even if one does all he/she can to live rightly or opportunistically. (Rather like Midwestern or Southern tornadoes -- unlike avoiding hurricanes or earthquakes, which is possible to some extent, those dang things are pretty unpredictable.) That doesn't necessarily mean those things are "fated" to happen, it simply means they do happen. I think those are significantly distinguishable interpretations.
Very insightful posts Deborah. I think I agree with your interpretation of Jude and I too admired him for trying so hard in the face of adversity and social prejudice. You are right to point out that Arabella and his tendency to drink were part of his downfall and she certainly was a 'nasty piece of work' who showed her true colours at the end when she virtually left him to die:(. Sue is very much the 'New Woman' Hardy set out to write about, as evidenced in his Letters, and one of many women in his novels whose predicaments he explored as his way of making a contribution to the Victorian Woman Question, which Rosemarie Morgan writes about in her biography of him. There seems no doubt, judging by his Diaries and Letters, that he cared about what he saw as the injustices to the women of his day and hoped that his novels might make a difference. Like you, I also wish he had written more novels and that his attempt to 'make a difference' by writing about a 'modern' couple like Jude and Sue had not ended so unhappily for him.
Just got back from town, where I couldn't resist buying Wessex Tales
to read on the train. I have become a complete Hardy addict, and can't get enough.Although you disliked Arabella, Deborah, did you not think that Hardy was saying something through her character.... Here is this self-centred, uncaring woman...this is what it takes to survive in this world...this world which does not nurture the sensitive soul with artistic and intellectual aspirations?
That is a great way of putting it Jan and in a way that is what I meant by describing her as 'earthy' - the salt of the earth - one of the ordinary people who survive whatever happens to them.
MadgeUK wrote: "That is a great way of putting it Jan and in a way that is what I meant by describing her as 'earthy' - the salt of the earth - one of the ordinary people who survive whatever happens to them."Well, I'd agree with "earthy", but Arabella wasn't exactly the type of person to whom I usually hear the phrase "salt of the earth" applied! LOL!
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/sa...
I take your point:). I can't think of the phrase I mean.
Down to earth? Grounded? Soiled? :)
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Books mentioned in this topic
The Complete Poems (other topics)Wessex Tales (other topics)
Wessex Tales (other topics)
Wessex Tales (other topics)
Waterland (other topics)
