Jude the Obscure

This is the title of the last of Thomas Hardy’s twelve or so published novels, depending how you count them. He also published many short stories and volumes of verse, and regarded himself principally as a poet. Among the major themes in his writing is a sense of loss for the old traditions and the devaluation of the rural ways of life as many moved from the countryside to the towns and cities. In Jude the Obscure, Hardy offers a biting critique of the rigidity of the law and social attitudes on marriage and the obstacles to social mobility due to poor education and snobbery. Jude went to a village primary school and learnt to read and write (as did I), but after that he was on his own. He was ambitious, nevertheless, and knew that a key to bettering himself was a knowledge of the Classics (see previous post), an insurmountable hurdle devised by the higher social classes to ensure their offspring didn’t end up working down a mine. Jude had his sights on Oxford (called “Christminster” in the novel) and was able to purchase cheap or second-hand editions of the books he needed, from Latin primers to Anglican tracts. He kept these books by his bedside and dreamt of joining the “great thinkers” while burning the midnight oil in private study even after a long day’s labour as a stonemason. But when he arrived in Oxford, his only way into the colleges was to repair their crumbling masonry. When Jude writes a letter to five heads of college, only one bothers to reply, and his curt advice that Jude should be content to stick to his trade.

I read the novel only recently for a book group and confess that I was disappointed in it. Having admired Hardy over the years and having been prepared to put up with the pessimistic endings to many of his stories, I felt this one verged on the melodramatic and that Jude’s decline into obscurity offered too bleak a vision of the future. In personal terms I have been better treated in life than Jude. I got a decent education, including some Latin, despite the bookless social class I was born into. Moreover, no-fault divorce became British law earlier this year. Hardy might be smiling quietly to himself in his tomb in Westminster Abbey that his hope for a fairer world has come to pass. Jude got some vicious critical reviews and Hardy never wrote another novel. In a postscript to the original preface, written 16 years later, he indicated that he had been creatively wounded by the hostility of the response to what one critic called "the most indecent book ever written". But I have a suspicion that perhaps Hardy felt he had written himself out and was secretly happy to call it a day.