Hardy’s birthplace.
Hardy’s Pessimism
Of all Thomas Hardy’s novels, this is perhaps the darkest and the most controversial. A story of two cousins who fall in love and find their lives cursed as a result, the initial reception was divisive to say the least. Although H.G. Wells said the novel was enough to ensure Hardy’s place at the forefront of English novelists, it was burned by priests and reverends for its illicit subject-matter and world-weary tone. For those unfamiliar with Hardy’s other works, Jude the Obscure serves as a conduit to the pessimistic poetry of his later years, as well as his earlier, more uplifting novels.
What makes this novel so good is how Hardy prefigures and defines that all-too-modern sentiment of rebelling against social convention. As in all great novels, his characters struggle against Fate to meet their wants and needs only to fail and succumb to death or the society they are forced to be a part of.
Part of what makes it so good is the descriptions of country life and the changing world. Despite the way change comes, Jude and Sue are unable to fit their desires for stability into a successful modern life. They recognize they have been born too early, but they can do nothing about it except to give in to what society wants of them.
D.H. Lawrence’s Take
D.H. Lawrence is all about the power of the phallus. In his essay on Jude the Obscure, it’s easy to see that he considers himself an inheritor to Hardy‘s writing about a rural past slipping away. He sees that Jude is weakened by love, the power of Sue to drain him of his, and the phallus’, power to create. But Lawrence was not a misogynist—he appreciates the strength of Sue’s character and admires her femininity as it glitters and leads Jude across the English countryside.
To say that this is a great novel may be an overstatement; though it is certainly an important novel, one which departs from the Victorian sentiments of the late 19th century and hints at the coming changes of the 20th. For any writer or reader who prides himself on understanding English literature, this is a must-read.
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