13
Apr
2009
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Holy shit, this is one of my favorite books. The first time I read it, I already knew the ending, having read about it in Helen Simpson’s short story, Heavy Weather. Let me be explicit in saying that that did not ruin it for me. In fact, knowing the ending made the lead up that more painful. But by painful I mean that in a good way. If we didn’t enjoy pain, sorrow would be nixed out of all forms of entertainment, when it fact it seems to be the central theme for thousands of years’ worth of it. So, yes, tragedy is never as exquisite as in Thomas Hardy’s world.
Jude is sort of a simple man. He has a simple goal: get an education. A born intellectual, he teaches himself the classics in preparation for University training. Roped into a marriage by a real bitch, and inevitably separated from her, he cannot attend University due to the strictures of the time. He ends up an architect, who, a few centuries earlier in England may have been in the highest of higher learning, but are not now. Jude falls for his cousin, who is also separated and cannot marry her because of their sordid pasts.
It’s a sucky life and only goes downhill from there. These are not the romantic intellectual artists-these are the destitute laborers who know that there is a better life out there but are prevented from it. Struggling to feed a family is not Bohemian. It just sucks.
Hardy is a naturalist author, meaning his stories are character-driven, and as such the plot is driven by the characters. Naturalists let (or say they let) their characters make the decisions that they write about. Mired in the time in which it was written, Jude is still what I like to call “accessible”. The problems Jude faces may not be universal, but the themes are. You can’t read it without considering the problems of class and gender in 19th century England, but you can understand the conflict between intellectual and working life, the frailty of relationships, the blurred line between personal and work life, and at least to some extent, the biases of class and gender.
Really, I can’t write too much about this without giving away a ton of stuff. So let me just say that the saddest note ever written is:
Because we are too menny
If you have indeed read this book, your heart is now ripping into pieces anew having remembered this goodbye. If you haven’t read it, well, go read it, but don’t read that part in public, because crying over a classic is still sort of embarrassing.
Buy Jude the Obscure on Amazon
If you like this book/author, you might like:
(my reviews in blue)
Nana by Emile Zola
Dear George And Other Stories by Helen Simpson
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet
Thomas Hardy by Claire Tomalin
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The Longest Journey by E.M. Forster
Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays by D.H. Lawrence
Other works by Thomas Hardy:
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Under the Greenwood Tree
Wessex Tales
The Dynasts: Parts I, II, III
Wessex Poems and Other Verses
A Changed Man and Other Tales
Life’s Little Ironies
Desperate Remedies
The Return of the Native
Poems of the Past and the Present
Far from the Madding Crowd
The Trumpet-Major
The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved and The Well-Beloved
Our Exploits at West Poley
The Woodlanders
A Pair of Blue Eyes
Time’s Laughing Stocks
Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses
Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries With Miscellaneous Pieces
The Famous Tragedy Of The Queen Of Cornwall At Tintagel In Lyonnesse
Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Winter Words: Poetry and Personal Writings
Human Shows Far Phantasies
Thomas Hardy: The Complete Poems
A Laodicean
