(RJELAL) Research Journal of English Language and Literature Vol.2.Issue.1.;2014 A Peer Reviewed International Journal - http://www.rjelal.com RESEARCH ARTICLE LITERARY EVALUATION ON THOMAS HARDY’S JUDE THE OBSCURE Dr.V.SUDHAKAR NAIDU Asst. Professor of English, Faculty of Languages, Department of English, University of Tripoli, Libya ABSTRACT Thomas Hardy is a tragic novelist of eminence. Jude the Obscure is his last novel and in it Hardy has explored all that he has to say in the novel form. It is the story of human sufferings and feelings during hard time. Hardy was so distressed by the readers of his generation on his presentation of unconventional treatment of Victorian marriage law and academic snobbery. He gave up novel - writing after Jude and concentrated solely on poetry. The present article attempts to evaluate literally on the different aspects of Jude the Obscure. Article Info: It studies primarily on the tragedy of Jude’s unfulfilled ambitions. In the Article Received:04/02/2014 course of the novel, there is a force of education and self-advancement Revised on:27/2/2014 on one side, and of love and marriage on the other side mysteriously Accepted for Publication:28/02/2014 combine to destroy the life of Jude. It is observed that the question of marriage is more central to the novel than the theme of Jude’s scholastic ambition. The social ostracism in Jude and Sue is more tormenting than anything else. In addition, the roles of Phillotson, Father Time, Sue and Arabella in the tragedy of Jude are closely studied. The tragic predicament in Tess, Henchard and Jude are studied as pictures of both comparison and contrast. Besides, it studies Jude as, ‘the poor puppet’ – a plaything in the hands of fate and the people around him. The other ‘problems’ raised in the novel are the subject of close scrutiny. KEY WORDS Unfulfilled ambition, Love and marriage, Social ostracism, Self- advancement, Poor puppet, tragic predicament. @ Copyright KY Publications INTRODUCTION economic shifts, and the reconstruction of social Popularity of Jude the Obscure relations. It is derived from Hardy’s refusal to bow to Among the last novels of Thomas Hardy, Jude the the demands of the Victorian reader. Hardy Obscure (1895) is considered to be the best which probably felt that he had said all that he had to say appeared since Tess of the D’urbervilles (1891). The in the novel form, and after Jude he gave up novel novel is set out against the Victorian society, a fierce writing. transitional period involving industrialization, 181 Dr.V.SUDHAKAR NAIDU (RJELAL) Research Journal of English Language and Literature Vol.2.Issue.1.;2014 A Peer Reviewed International Journal - http://www.rjelal.com 1.2 Jude is ‘the obscure’ orphan, his parentage is almost unknown, his If the protagonist of The Mayor of Casterbridge mother and father having quarrelled or separated. (1886) is ‘a man of character’, Jude is ‘the obscure’ Besides, Jude is lonely throughout the novel, almost one, even according to the title. Irving Howe has unsocial, and is little known to anybody. He is an labelled Jude as Hardy’s most distinctly modern obscure personality who rarely communicates with work. Even at first reading, the novel strikes the anybody. Consequently, his character and outlook is reader as an uncompromisingly stark and gloomy, full of contradictions. As Irving Howe puts it, ‘He not permitting even a faint ray of light. Every accomplishes nothing to his heart’s content – his prospect of hope is immediately stalled by some desires are only partially fulfilled. Jude is a study of adverse turn. John Butler points out, ‘Jude the failure rather than success. Obscure is the first modern novel. Balanced as it is 2.2 Jude is Hardy’s poor puppet between the nineteenth century and the twentieth, The reader wonders what is Hardy meant when he it is inevitable that it should select elements from referred to Jude as ‘my poor puppet’. The ‘my’ is the old world that point towards the new’. obviously an epithet of endearment and the word, According to D.F. Hannigan, ‘Jude the Obscure is not ‘poor’ is suggestive of Hardy’s sympathy for him. only his greatest work; but no other living novelist Hardy’s characters are generally helpless puppets in could have written it’. the hands of destiny. Here, in particular, Jude is a 1.3 Critical appreciation of ‘Jude the Obscure’ plaything not only of his ironical destiny but also by In Jude the Obscure, there is a grandeur of people around him like Sue, Phillotson, Arabella and conception, a completeness of commitment, which even the physician Vilbert. Like a puppet, he acts has all been transmuted into art, and yet the reader when impelled or driven by the people in his life. feels to discover a good deal of the author’s 3-PLOT CONSTRUCTION OF JUDE personal ideas: his own doubts, hopes and fears. It is 3.1 Jude: Similarities with Tess and The Mayor the only work of Hardy which can be aptly defined The plots of Tess and Jude are apparently similar, as ‘a novel of ideas’, with a good deal of discussion with one novel depicting a woman destroyed and argument, often progressing at cross-purposes. between two men and the pattern reversed with The book shows ‘the novelist as sage’. Also it makes Jude destroyed between two women. The conflict the reader think of ‘the novel as process’, a between ‘flesh and spirit’ is common to the two description that implies a multiplicity of techniques novels. The pattern of appearance and which go along with many-sided points. In Hardy’s disappearance of characters like Alec in Tess and own words in the preface to the novel – it conveys ‘a Arabella in Jude is recurrent. But the comparison series of seemings, or personal impressions’, rather cannot go beyond this. The purity and innocence of than convictions. Tess has no resemblance to Jude who is simple and 2-SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TITLE, JUDE THE OBSCURE trusting. In both novels, the novelist discusses 2.1 Hardy’s use of ‘Obscure’ heredity determining their natures. Hardy’s The reader experiences difficulty in finding out what admiration and sympathy for Tess is unlike his ‘pity’ the novel is precisely about. The title ‘obscure’, in a for this ‘poor puppet’ whose negative qualities drive sense, suggests something that is ambiguous and him to desperation and ruin. In both these novels difficult to understand. Ian Gregor says that it tells one wonders whether Hardy could say all that he so many things – ‘a malevolent universe, an outworn desired to express. About Jude, Hardy himself felt system of education, the rigidity of the marriage that the book fell short of his expectations. Hardy laws’, or as one of the recent critics has put it, ‘the also referred to the rectangular pattern of the plot. sheer difficulty of human beings living elbow to As in The Mayor of Casterbridge, there are reversals, elbow and heart to heart; the difficulty of being comings and goings of characters who appear and unable to bear prolonged isolation or prolonged disappear. Events and even human nature are closeness’. unpredictable, fate seems to govern character. Further the word, ‘obscure’ is obviously a reference Jude the Obscure is a different kind of book from to Jude’s poor and miserable background. An Tess of the D’urbervilles. In Tess, the entire interest 182 Dr.V.SUDHAKAR NAIDU (RJELAL) Research Journal of English Language and Literature Vol.2.Issue.1.;2014 A Peer Reviewed International Journal - http://www.rjelal.com of the novel is attached to the life of a woman. In and ends devoting herself to an imaginary god of Jude, just as in The Mayor of Casterbridge, it gathers worth whom she believes has destroyed her round the career of a man. The history of Jude’s children to bring her to repentance’. Sue’s retreat ineffectual efforts to obtain a university education is into fanaticism shows her pathetic vanity and her intensely pathetic. Indeed, the first part of Jude the refusal to admit that she can’t control her life Obscure would be held up by the critics as one of terrible sufferings and has emerged with a stronger the most touching records in all literature. The sense of his own identity. Finally, the plot of Jude is character of Sue is fascinating as that of Elfride in A based on contrast, with pains too long to list: Sue Pair of Blue Eyes (1873). and heathen gods, Jude and his Greek Testament, 3.2 Movement and exodus Jude the theological student and Jude the adulterer, Movement and exodus becomes the basic pattern of the early Arabella and the saintly Sue, the colleges the plot. In every section Jude moves from one place and slums of Christminster … so on. to another, always searching for something he 4-MAIN THEMES OF JUDE THE OBSCURE wants. Every chapter title is the name of a new place 4.1 Jude’s unfulfilled scholastic ambition – Marygreen, Aldbrickham, Christminster, Hardy in his well-known letter to Edmund Gosse Melchester, and like a ‘grand chain’ pattern, he himself pointed out the main themes of the novel returns to Marygreen where the tragic plot has it’s which are mainly two-fold. Laurence Lerner says, ‘It end. Such a reckless movement is suggestive of the is concerned first with the labours of a poor student insecurity of self-exile; it is the ‘ache of modernism’. to get a university degree, and secondly with the The most illogical part of the novel is Jude’s return tragic issues of two bad marriages’.