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 6 - Part Sixth
Jan wrote: "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? "I like that. And in the end, isn't it the characters we find most unsympathetic who are the ones who survive the best, and the ones we find most sympathetic (especially poor Father Time) who are destroyed?
Mod
Actually, he wrote more than you might realize, both novels and short stories (and, of course, poetry..."
I am actually aware that Hardy wrote more. In fact, one of my favorites is Two on a Tower which most people don't know it exists.
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to read on the train. I have become a complete Hardy addict, and can't get enough...."
I don't think Hardy was saying this was what was needed to survive in the world because there are clearly other characters that survive without the deviousness. I think he was saying there are people like that in the world and one must be aware.
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For me the answer to this would be not necessarily.
I think Hardy is expressing bitterness at the world that one like Arabella survives while the sensitive, thoughtful ones have all their hopes dashed. Of course he's not advocating that we should be like that, rather saying that we should look at how cruel life can be. He also had a social agenda and was showing that there is a lot of unfairness when those who would like to better themselves have little opportunity to do so.
Deborah wrote: "I am actually aware that Hardy wrote more. In fact, one of my favorites is Two on a Tower which most people don't know it exists. ."Oh, good. I mentioned it exactly because, as you say, most people don't know that there are other Hardys. But I should have known that you would.
Everyman wrote: "...I think Hardy did believe in the inexorable and uncontrollable workings of fate. I think he did see fate as something more than the equivalent of a hurricane or tornado, just an event that happens to you and passes; whether he thought here was intentionality behind it I don't know, but I think he saw it as an overwhelming force that one can struggle against, but in the end will always struggle in vain...."I agree that Hardy portrayed a very fatalistic view towards life. I don't know if he viewed that the end would always be a struggle in vain, unless that included death itself. I am inclined to detect an intentionality in his depiction of fate, but your skepticism on that may be the more careful read.
Everyman wrote: "And in the end, isn't it the characters we find most unsympathetic who are the ones who survive the best, and the ones we find most sympathetic (especially poor Father Time) who are destroyed?"I would join others in saying that it is not necessarily the unsympathetic characters who survive best, in fact, in real life, I find it also a mixed story.
But why do you say "poor Father Time"? While in one level he had been an abandoned child and is deserving of more love and affection than he probably received, still it seems to me that he was old enough to realize murder and suicide are drastic responses to adversity.
Lily wrote: "Everyman wrote: "And in the end, isn't it the characters we find most unsympathetic who are the ones who survive the best, and the ones we find most sympathetic r..."I would join others in saying that it is not necessarily the unsympathetic characters who survive best, in fact, in real life, I find it also a mixed story.
I was talking only about Jude, not about literature generally. Didn't make that clear, obviously.
When my comment is applied only to Jude, do you still disagree with it?
I agree that Jude himself is a sympathetic character who really did not fare at all well. I had a fair amount of empathy for Phillotson (sp?), little for Sue, and was ambivalent about Father Time. I don't think any of those fared particularly well, but I guess that all sort of fit your criteria. Certainly dear Arabella fared about as well as anyone, although she still had a hard life.
Mod
I'm amazed that you've made it here at all, Deborah, with all that moving house and everything...but I'm so glad that you did. Father Time is a person in the story, but is he perhaps a symbol as well? A symbol for time passing, and the Grim Reaper, who will cut short all hopes and dreams in the end?
Deborah wrote: "Sorry Everyman if I came off as harsh in my note about reading other Hardy books. I'm very tired, and may not be communicating at my best. There's no way you could know how extensively I've read ..."Not a problem at all. I enjoy you, and that's what matters.
Jan wrote: "Father Time is a person in the story, but is he perhaps a symbol as well? A symbol for time passing, and the Grim Reaper, who will cut short all hopes and dreams in the end? "It certainly seems that with a name like that Hardy did intend him to be a symbol, but of what I must admit I'm not at all sure.
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Deborah wrote: "In my earlier post (the long one), I mentioned that Father Time was the grim reaper."I saw that, but I'm not convinced one way or the other. He also may just represent old age and the solemnity which often comes with it. I don't know whether the image of the infant replacing old father time each New Year had taken hold in the late 1800s, or whether it was a later development. In that image, Father Time isn't the grim reaper, but represents the passing of a year.
But at this point I'm not latching on to any particular interpretation, nor rejecting any. I'm still contemplating.
Or if you prefer, just call it wishy-washy indecisiveness!
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Deborah wrote: "In my earlier post (the long one), I mentioned that Father Time was the grim reaper."Deborah, sorry for pinching your idea. I had forgotten that you said that first. I do think you're on to something as Hardy's work is loaded with symbolism.
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Deborah wrote: "You can pinch my idea anytime. Makes me feel like the ideas are valuable ;-)"Thanks Deborah, and they are.
Just found this on the web, vis a vis Old Father Time and The Grim Reaper (remember the references to the crows early in the novel...):-'The image of the Grim Reaper bearing a scythe is believed to have derived directly from chronos (=time). Both of these modern figures...Father Time and the Grim Reaper...are sometimes accompanied by a crow and there is speculation that the word chronos and the subsequent associated God may have actually been representative of this bird, which was symbolic of both fertility and death. However, this hypothesis could again be as a result of confusion concerning similar-sounding words since the Latin for crow is 'cornix'. By the Middle Ages there were many engravings of the Grim Reaper which depict a skeletal figure holding a scythe and hourglass with a crow nearby.
Hardy must have been drawing upon his classical references again.
Time, the silent companion, who will eventually rob you of everything you hold dear.
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It was truly stunning to read through the first time, Madge. The second and third time through I have honestly tried to think it through more intellectually, and see if I could conceivably place myself in Arabella's shoes. I cannot--it just isn't in my DNA to be that callous. However, I have known people just like this in life--i.e., just like Jude and Arabella.
I still come back to the point that I made early on in our read/discussion and that was that I believe that Arabella is a survivor. Regardless of the impact to people around her, Arabella Donn does anything and everything to ensure that she makes it--that she survives. I am not judging her, I am simply describing what I think she is as a person.
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Lily, I think I agree with you generally, but I also think that both of those topics (i.e., education and marriage) were hugely important to him at a very personal level. Clearly, at least according to the biographies of Hardy I've read, his inability to gain a university education; and his inability to fully address and/or cope with his marital issues influenced his fiction and poetry.
I think Hardy consciously entered writing "Jude" with the notion of attacking the establishment regarding the university system excluding entrance to the working/lower class. I also have to believe that the double-standard applied to men and women associated with the marriage contract offended the hell out of him. Finally, I also think that Hardy also knew exactly what kind of a s**t-storm he was stepping into with the writing and publication of "Jude". It was just too 'out there' for late-Victorian sensibilities.
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Deborah, I have to agree with Madge, these are a collection of incredibly insightful comments. I especially agree with your description of "Little Father Time" as the 'Grim Reaper'. One could almost see what was coming from the get-go. I had to wonder how much of his psychological make-up was also due to the influence of his mother--Arabella? Yes, Sue made some off-hand comments that one can look back to, but his sense of fatalism, at least to me, is deep-seated and something ingrained over time.
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"Jude the Obscure" = Job
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to read on the train. I have become a complete Hardy addict, and can't get enough...."
Jan, I think you are onto it here with Hardy's view of Arabella. Whilst we may not like her, or approve of her, we have to recognize that she is an integral character and an important part of the plot. And what a juxtaposition--the sensitive and intellectual Jude, and the deeply philosophical and asexual Sue are completely and utterly destroyed, and the earthy and sensual Arabella ends up on the arm of her latest beau, the doctor.
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"Things are as they are,This gets exactly to the heart of our observations about Hardy's view of Fate. In the Robert Fagles' translation (1966) of the "Agamemnon" these lines are transcribed as,
and will be brought to their destined issue."
"And now it goes as it goes
and where it ends is Fate."
Great comments Christopher - thanks a lot! Have you anything to say about the bildungsroman of Jude about which you commented at the beginning of our read?
Christopher wrote: "The second and third time through I have honestly tried to think it through more intellectually, and see if I could conceivably place myself in Arabella's shoes. I cannot--it just isn't in my DNA to be that callous. "To what extent might that be because your DNA is that of a 20th century male? You have been raised in an environment where you were, I assume, encouraged to think that you could be anything you wanted to be, that you could go places, see things, meet people, go not only to school but to college, and all the things that are imbedded in the DNA of a (I say this not to be racist but because it describes what at the time was a significant aspect of being) white American middle-class male.
Arabella was the daughter of a pig farmer. She was a lower working class woman, uneducated, probably never even once told with any sense of belief that she could be anything she wanted to be, but realistically having
nothing to look forward to but marrying another uneducated, probably boorish, pig farmer or the social equivalent and raising a brood of children who would also never go to school beyond maybe our equivalent of sixth grade. No wonder you don't have that DNA!
I don't like Arabella, but I sort of admire her for finding a way out of the life that was all, had she not been the kind of woman she was, she would have had to look forward to.
Christopher wrote: "I think Hardy consciously entered writing "Jude" with the notion of attacking the establishment regarding the university system excluding entrance to the working/lower class.."I am tempted that way, but I think he doesn't put all the fault on the side of the university system. After all, Jude is not an exemplar of a rural person who should have had the chance to crash the university system. He had good intentions, but he was also easily led astray from them; as he walks down the road contemplating the great thinkers of the past he very easily gets distracted from his thoughts by a buxom young woman. the next day as he contemplates his studies he decides to go instead back to see Arabella, he dallies with her when he should be at his books. In his mind, getting a university education is his goal, but is he really as committed to it as he would need to be to deserve entry to Oxford?
It think perhaps Hardy isn't being as simplistic as saying "here's this system which shuts out deserving people like Jude," but perhaps is saying "these are two different worlds. and even good intentions are not enough to cross the bridge between them; just as, at least in his day, a commoner could not reasonably aspire to marry a king, so a yokel could not reasonably aspire to the university; it just isn't in his DNA, however much he may dream of it.
Everyman wrote: "...it just isn't in his DNA, however much he may dream of it..."Not clear to me what DNA has to do with this particular line of argument. It seems to me that a lot of "privileged" from the "right families" have long had and continue to have access to fine educations at leading institutions with habits no better or worse than those we see Jude exhibit. Some of them even broker the relationships inherent in those backgrounds into positions of the highest responsibilities in our societies. (And I am not saying but what some of that may be entirely appropriate.)
Christopher wrote: ""Jude the Obscure" = Job"I know. The intertextuality is valid; yet, they are still two different stories. Also, the Book of Job has undoubtedly received more scrutiny and more interpretations than even Hardy. Both can be interpreted to proclaim the innocence and moral integrity of their chief protagonist, although Hardy perhaps lets us see the feet of clay of his Jude more than those ancient authors do for Job.
Is there any character in Jude that we have not considered callous, i.e., unconcerned about the welfare of others, at some point, even poor young Father Time? Certainly Arabella is callous. But, Phillotson? Sue? Even Jude?Is Hardy somehow creating his conception of Fate with these characterizations, albeit possibly unconsciously?
I agree with Christopher on most of these points, especially in regards to Hardy's view of marriage. Very early on in the text, when Jude and Arabella are getting married he says:"And so, standing before the aforesaid officiator, the two swore that at every other time of their lives till death took them, they would assuredly believe, feel, and desire precisely as they had believed, felt, and desired during the few preceding weeks. What was as remarkable as the undertaking itself was the fact that nobody seemed at all surprised at what they swore."
And later, when Jude and Sue are contemplating getting married:
"Sue still held that there was not much queer or exceptional in them: that all were so. "Everybody is getting to feel as we do. We are a little beforehand, that's all. In fifty, a hundred, years the descendants of these two will act and feel worse than we."
It's clear to me that Hardy felt that the institution of marriage was somewhat ridiculous, and a way for society to keep people (especially women) in check.
I thought that Arabella represented the woman of that era, manipulating society and men to get by the best she that she could, using her womanly wiles to get the upper hand. She certainly fares better than Jude and Sue in the end.
Despite the American Dream, I think you will find that there are still plenty of Jude's from the wrong side of the tracks in America (and other Western countries) today. Where you are born, who your parents are, what your education was etc will still prevent you getting a higher education, without a huge dollop of luck. One of the points made very forcibly by Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Outliers, a story about the context in which success takes place, is the importance of family, culture, friendship, childhood, accidents of birth, history and geography. "It's not enough to ask what successful people are like," Gladwell writes. "It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't." Outliers is a frontal assault on the great American myth of the self-made man. (And they mostly are men. There aren't a lot of women outliers in Outliers.)..Gladwell also suggests (and gives evidence for) that the key to success in any field has nothing to do with talent. It's simply practice, 10,000 hours of it — 20 hours a week for 10 years.'
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/...
Jude was not only from the wrong side of the tracks, he had ill fated parents and was born in the wrong country at the wrong period of history. The Fates were not with him or if we use a more religious turn of phrase, God did not smile upon him as he eventually smiled upon Job.
Just today I heard about a report into equality of opportunity in education in Australia...12% of children are born into homes where there is no adult with a job. It is very rare for these children to enter university. Meanwhile 65% of university graduates had fathers who also had a university education. The situation does not seem to be improving.
MadgeUK wrote: "It's simply practice, 10,000 hours of it.'http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/con..."
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/...
Not exactly Jude (but then again, maybe it is), but an interesting link from the page on Outliers Madge provided.
Incidentally, if I calculate correctly, 10,000 hours to top drawer is also only 6 1/4 years of 200 8-hour days (or 10 years of 20 hour weeks).
Everyman wrote: "...these are two different worlds. and even good intentions are not enough to cross the bridge between them..."George Gissing -- another interesting study on the "DNA of being worthy of educating"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_G...
I had looked him up because I do not know the work of George Gissing, but have been noticing several people reading him. This article compares him with Thomas Hardy and George Meredith as among the greatest novelists of his day.
Jan wrote: "Just today I heard about a report into equality of opportunity in education in Australia...12% of children are born into homes where there is no adult with a job. It is very rare for these children..."The last Labour Government here made great efforts to get 40+% of our youngsters into university but that is now likely to be reversed as 1 in 5 of them are now out of work due to the current government's harsh policies. Many of those who graduate in the next few years, like my grand-daughter and her friends, are saying they will seek work abroad. And high tuition fees will mean that they will come out of university with huge debts, thereby hampering their start in life, just as Jude's was hampered.
In the UK it is only in my lifetime that working class children have been able to afford to go to university and that opportunity seems likely to be snatched away from them after only 50 years. There are likely to be more Jude's in my grandchildrens' lifetimes:(.
Plus ça change (plus c'est la même chose).
Another article on the current state of educational opportunities as reflected in college admissions:http://www.time.com/time/nation/artic...
Similar situation here, Madge. I was fortunate to go to university when it was free. For both myself and my husband, we were the first in our families to attend university, our parents having left school at 14 or 15. I don't really know why opportunities have narrowed so much over the years. When we graduated houses cost about four times the average annual wage. Now it's a multiple of ten, making it almost impossible for our children to buy a house, unless they have double income, no kids. In the seventies, we expected things to keep on improving, but they haven't, and nobody quite knows why.
Jan wrote: "Meanwhile 65% of university graduates had fathers who also had a university education. The situation does not seem to be improving."
Not improving compared to when? That's 35% with fathers who didn't have a university education. In Jude's day, that would have been close to zero percent.
My daughters went to a college where the large majority of students were first-in-family to attend college.
College and university are certainly getting more expensive these days, and elite colleges are harder to get into than they used to be, but at least in the US, community colleges are proliferating, and virtually anybody with a high school diploma or a GED can get into a community college for their first two years at a very reasonable cost. Whether they can then transfer to a four year institution really depends on how well they did at CC.
When the first in the family are attending tertiary education, the system is working. When two thirds come from the educated elite, you wonder if some are missing out. Of course, if this was a reflection of a highly educated society, it would simply reflect a society of tertiary educated parents. So I guess you do need more information to get the whole picture. We do pride ourselves in Australia on having an egalitarian society, but it seems to be becoming less so.
The situation in the UK is much the same as you describe Jan and I suspect that it is very similar in the US if the same sort of national (as against state) figures are available. The signs are still that the rich are getting richer and that there is a huge gap betwixt rich and poor, and it is this disparity in wealth which influences society and educational outcomes. Of course things have improved since Jude's time but that is because political efforts, like the affirmative action mentioned in the Time article, have been made to try to get more working class, more women and more ethnic minorities into higher education. If that momentum ceases because of political changes or changes in public attitudes, then access to higher education for these people will inevitably slow down and that is what we see happening at the present time. In this country we certainly seem to be taking steps back to Jude's time:-http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2...
One of the things that was being recognised in Jude's time was that educating only an elite was a huge waste of the country's resources, just as not educating women was. We can see in the Islamic world, for instance, how many of those countries lag behind the West economically because only half of their population, the men, are educated.
Just happened to run across this blog entry today, and thought of Jude and his monument carving work. http://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/Me...
Everyman wrote: "Just happened to run across this blog entry today, and thought of Jude and his monument carving work. http://www.toolsforworkingwood.com/Me......"
Thanks for the link. I have been in this churchyard in the days when I worked downtown.
Now, my current church in NJ will be celebrating some 300 years of existence in a few years. We have a historic graveyard that includes many old stones of various materials, but I am not certain about slate, which must have been exceeding difficult to carve given its propensity to flake in sheets. I shall have to ask some of those who care for our graveyard. It is full of wonderful stones and stories.
The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910
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I don't disagree with you, but I think Hardy did believe in the inexorable and uncontrollable workings of fate. I think he did see fate as something more than the equivalent of a hurricane or tornado, just an event that happens to you and passes; whether he thought here was intentionality behind it I don't know, but I think he saw it as an overwhelming force that one can struggle against, but in the end will always struggle in vain.