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    Jude the Obscure
    Jude the Obscure
    Jude the Obscure
    Audiobook17 hours

    Jude the Obscure

    Written by Thomas Hardy

    Narrated by Neville Jason

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Sexually innocent Jude Fawley is trapped into marriage by seductive Arabella Donn, but their union is an unhappy one and Arabella leaves him. Jude's welcome freedom allows him to pursue his obsession with his pretty cousin Sue Bridehead, a brilliant, charismatic free-thinker who would be his ideal soul-mate if not for her aversion to physical love. When Jude and Sue decide to lead their lives outside marriage they bring down on themselves all the force of a repressive society. This fearless and outspoken story caused a furore on its publication, and was Hardy's last novel.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNaxos Audiobooks
    Release dateMay 1, 2013
    ISBN9781843796794
    Author

    Thomas Hardy

    Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in Dorchester, Dorset. He enrolled as a student in King’s College, London, but never felt at ease there, seeing himself as socially inferior. This preoccupation with society, particularly the declining rural society, featured heavily in Hardy’s novels, with many of his stories set in the fictional county of Wessex. Since his death in 1928, Hardy has been recognised as a significant poet, influencing The Movement poets in the 1950s and 1960s.

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    Reviews for Jude the Obscure

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    • 2/5
      Tess has to be one of my favorite novels of all time. I devoured it. Devoured Far From the Madding Crowd after that and you can just imagine how much I was looking forward to Jude."The masterpiece," I was told. "Classic!" "Like Tess, only better!"Imagine my horror when going through my LibraryThing account looking for books to tag, star, and review, when I can across Jude and realized I had forgotten I was reading it.Sure, sometimes I'll be reading one book, and one that has more claims on my time will come along (obligated to read and review, has holds on it at the library), but I don't think I've ever put a book down before, and simply forgotten about it.And that pretty much sums up the problems I had with Jude. Maybe the ending is magnificent, but the middle is so dreadfully dull that it is awfully hard to get to. I don't mean it is bad, I just mean it is, well, forgettable. If you want to read a good Hardy novel of self-destruction, I'm afraid I'm still going to have to recommend Tess.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      The narrator made a great job of separating the characters with voices and intonation changes. The story overall is a really good one although it is quite long.
    • 4/5
      Of all the classic European authors, Thomas Hardy is my favorite. I just love his themes of despair and bitter social commentary. "Jude the Obscure" was the last book that he ever wrote, and it was received with such controversy and scandal that he decided to write only poetry afterward.It is the story of Jude Fawley, a studious and intelligent young man who aspires to become a scholar, a writer, and a professor. Instead of running and playing with his peers, he spends his time reading, and he teaches himself Greek and Latin. (How could I not love him?) However, his organized plans are interrupted when his sweetheart, Arabella, announces that she is pregnant. Compelled to do the honorable thing, Jude marries her at once. But upon finding that Arabella has tricked him into wedlock, the two fall into disagreement and part ways. After this, Jude becomes aware of the existence of a cousin of his named Sue, and after seeking her out, falls deeply in love with her. But before he has a chance to reveal his feelings, she agrees to marry another man. She and Jude begin a long affair together, always mindful of the words that Jude's aunt so sternly warned him, that their families were not made for marriage, and their unions were fated to meet an unlucky end."Jude" is typical Hardy, and his writing is at its best here. It is the culmination of his success and progress as a writer, and if you have read other books of his, it makes it even easier to see how strong this last one is. His invented English region of Wessex is a very real place that Hardy brings to life seemingly effortlessly. By now, I would imagine that he knows his Wessex inside and out, and no longer has to think up new details about it, as he already knows them all. It seemed very natural, and I loved the focus on Christminster (based on Oxford) as a sort of dreamy paragon of aspiration to Jude, one that is always in reach but never attainable. Jude travels around the Wessex area quite a lot in the book, so we get to see quite a few different towns and cities. It made looking at the familiar map of Wessex on the first pages even more interesting.I loved our hero, Jude. From the beginning, he shows himself to be a thoughtful, bright, and good-hearted young boy. He is, perhaps, a bit too good, and ultimately it ruins him. A foreshadowing of this is in the first couple pages of the book, when as a child he is hired to scare birds off the grain fields by throwing stones at them. But Jude is so tender that he cannot bear to see a rock hit one of the birds, and imagines them hungry, so he lets them eat the grain. He is promptly fired, and his crusty aunt scolds him exasperatedly "If ye can't skeer birds, what can ye do?"His strong sense of honor and morality (perhaps developed due to reading so many books about dashing heroes?) also begin and set in motion the long series of events concerning women, love, and marriage that are to take up most of his disappointing life.He forces himself to marry Arabella after she tells him she is pregnant, even though he acknowledges that it ruins all his dreams, and he knows she is "not worth a great deal as a specimen of womankind."Later, his attention and concern for womanly sensitivity prevent him from telling Sue of his feelings for her, and once she announces that she is engaged, Jude politely congratulates her rather than speaking his mind.I liked Jude very much, and I loved his scholarly attitude toward things. I kept hoping that things would work out for him in the end - that he would have a true, happy marriage and fulfill his dream of being a learned professor. But the further the book goes, the more sharply we see how unlikely this is.Sue Bridehead, the most prominent and memorable of the female characters, was the only woman that Jude ever truly loved. From the first time he sees her, he is fascinated by her. Unlike many women of her time, Sue is worldly and well read, and she makes a living off teaching jobs. She and Jude have many discussions about scientific and philosophic matters. However, Sue was also quite immature and often quite silly. She occasionally does tiny things that may or may not mildly annoy Jude, and then bursts out in dramatic guilt, begging Jude to forgive her and saying that he must hate her now. She does this often, and it started to really irritate me, though Jude seemed to view it as almost charming. Sue was unpredictable and prone to sudden mood changes, and I didn't actually like her.Men want Sue, but cannot have her, and that is exactly how she wants it. She often mentions a young man who was her dearest friend at college, who was desperately in love with her. Sue did not return his feelings, but that didn't stop her from moving in with him (in an entirely separate bedroom, of course, she makes sure we know). The poor man, always having Sue so close, sleeping a few steps away from him, but never able to have her.When Sue first develops her friendship with Jude, she does not realize at first how much he cares for her. She flirts a bit, she likes the attention he pays her. But once she learns of his feelings, she taunts him even more drastically - but whether purposefully or without thought, I couldn't decide. She tells him one moment that she is going to be married to Phillotson forever, and in the next moment she is kissing Jude. Next, she asks Jude to come to her wedding. Though he knows how painful it will be, Jude, being honorable to a fault, agrees. And if this isn't far enough, Sue requests that Jude be the one to give her away as a bride.Upon living with Phillotson, Sue does much the same thing, letting her husband have her legally but making it clear that she does not love him. She even begins sleeping in a broom closet with spiders in it, rather than sleep in his bed.Sue is in love with attention, and underneath she is something of a cold-hearted woman. She wants to be desired but not had, loved but not in love herself.Even though I never warmed up to her, I was sympathetic with her. She is an interesting character, and I think that part of why Jude was so fascinated by her is that he can never quite figure her out, or predict what she will do next.Of course, marriage is a revolving theme here. In general, the public was shocked by the way it was treated by Hardy in these pages. We see a lot of married couples leaving each other - Arabella leaves Jude, Arabella refers to leaving her 2nd husband in Australia, Sue leaves Phillotsen... Interesting as well that it seems to always be the women who are leaving the poor men behind, even rarer in 1896 Europe.Sue and Jude almost marry many times, but for some reason, they are never quite able to bring themselves to do it. Why must they obey society's rules? they say. They tell themselves that their love for each other makes them as married as the next couple.In the end, Sue abandons this view she has pressed so insistently on Jude and becomes over-zealous about the restrictive bonds of marriage. I just loved reading this book, in which Hardy is at his most mature and detailed. His characters are so real and memorable, that I think I would remember them forever without ever having to pick up his book again. It has been over a month since I finished "Jude the Obscure," but it is still so fresh in my mind. It is a very impressive story.It's Thomas Hardy, so of course - highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      Door en door naturalistisch: uitzichtloos leven, vooral bitter door de ambities om hogerop te komen; tegenstelling: aantrekking van de geest tegenover aantrekking van het vlees; debat over liefde en conventie, band en binding; beste roman over huwelijksband!; Christminster als symbool van hypocrisie en verstarring, ook gestold in de stenen en gebouwen van de stad; Thema van de noodlottige overschrijding van de klassegrenzen en van de loden druk van de maatschappelijke conventies; Wel geen determinismeSue verkent de grenzen van de individuele bevrijding in de Victoriaanse samenleving (voor een deel vergelijkbaar met Angel Clare in haar opvatting, maar veel onconventioneler in haar gedrag), maar haar vrijheid is negatief ingevuld en zelfs destructief (ze kan zichzelf niet geven, zelfs aan Jude maar om hem van Arabella weg te houden); haar gedrag is inconsistent en daarom geloofwaardig, maar niet sympathiek. Jude is de lieveling van het verhaal, maar ook de speelbal; hij assimileert de denkbeelden van Sue en gaat er mee aan ten onderOpmerkelijk achtergrond element: de nadrukkelijke uitwerking van de treinreizen.
    • 5/5
      A brilliant reading of a masterpiece. Neville Jason was one of the best interpreters we have had.
    • 5/5
      Such a tragical story that made me reconsider my thoughts about love and marriage.
    • 3/5
      It starts off grim and then gets really grim.
    • 4/5
      Hardy's last, and perhaps saddest, completed novel. While all who love the studied lyricism and social insight of Hardy will not find this novel wanting, the heavy burdens of institutional fatalism require me to caution readers about trying to bring this volume into bedside with your lovers for its romance--it has none. The main character is a well-developed as a pro(t)agonist. Jude Fawley is a stonemason who dreams of becoming a scholar. The other main agonist is his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is his recurring love interest. The novel brilliantly describes the 18th century Victorian issues of class, education, religion, morality and marriage which, for obscure and quite inexcusable reasons, remain robust today.Jude Fawley lives in a village and labors with the hope of entering university. Jude, like many of us, is born lonely, horny and relentlessly naïve. He is seduced by Arabella Donn, a bold but superficial local girl who traps him into marriage by pretending to be pregnant. The marriage is a failure, and Arabella leaves Jude and later emigrates to Australia, where she enters into a bigamous marriage. Hardy is highlighting the inability of the Poor to perform up to the pieties expected by "law" and society. After Arabella leaves him, Jude moves to Christminster. Still working as a mason, he studies subjects hoping to enter Oxford. He meets and falls in love with his pretty and spirited cousin, Sue Bridehead. Jude introduces Sue to his former school teacher, Mr. Phillotson, and he marries Sue, despite the fact that he is some twenty years her senior. She soon regrets this marriage. Sue is in love with Jude, and is horrified by the notion of sex with her husband. Curiously, Sue asks Phillotson for permission to leave him for Jude, and he grants this permission. Phillotson understands she cannot fulfill what her marital duties to him since she loves Jude. The marital rift is a scandal—but it is Phillotson's willingness to allow his wife to leave for another man—which forces Phillotson to give up his career as a schoolmaster. Wessex in 1890s.Sue and Jude live together without marriage or any sexual consummation. Sue apparently fears both sex and marriage. She "shudders". Soon after, Arabella reappears having fled her Australian husband, a hotelier in Sydney. Arabella and Jude divorce and she legally marries her bigamous husband, and Sue also is divorced. However, these legalizations resolve none of the anguish. Arabella reveals that she had a child of Jude's, eight months after they separated. The boy is named Jude and nicknamed "Little Father Time" because of his intense seriousness and lack of humor.Jude, back to the mason father, eventually convinces Sue to sleep with him and, over the years, they have two children together and expect a third. But Jude and Sue are socially ostracised. They are not married. Jude's employers dismiss him because of the illicit relationship, and the family is forced to move from town to town seeking employment and housing before eventually returning to Christminster. The child, Little Jude comes to believe that he and his illegitimated half-siblings are the source of the family's woes. The morning after the family arrives in Christminster, Little Jude murders Sue's two other children and kills himself by hanging. He a note that simply reads, "Done because we are too menny. " [sic] Shortly thereafter, Sue has a miscarriage.Beside herself with grief and blaming herself for Little Jude's actions, Sue turns to her religion long rebelled against. The children's deaths appear to be divine retribution for her relationship with Jude. Arabella discovers Sue's feelings and informs Phillotson, who proposes they remarry. Sue leaves Jude again for Phillotson, and she has sex with him as her punishment. Jude is devastated. Arabella plies Jude with alcohol and once again tricks him into marriage.In the middle of an ice-storm -- described brilliantly -- Jude makes one final, desperate visit to Sue. Jude becomes seriously ill and dies within the year in Christminster. His hopes for love and learning, and decency and family, are failures. Sue grows "staid and worn" with Phillotson, the lively spirit utterly annihilated. Arabella fails to mourn Jude's passing, but steeled by pragmatism, prepares to ensnare her next suitor.I highly recommend reading this, and all of Hardy's novels and poems, for their mix of clinically scientific observations and glimmering magic, always "rich and strange", glowing with consciousness. We need this vision.
    • 4/5
      Wow hardy was a feminist
    • 5/5
      As a young boy, Jude Fawley reads everything he can get his hands on and dreams of going to college. He’s an orphan living in the English countryside yearning to move to Christminster (based on Oxford). When he finally gets the opportunity to begin to make his way in the world he meets a saucy milkmaid, Arabella, and is lured away from his goals. Jude’s true love is his cousin Sue Bridehead, who shares his passion for intellectual pursuits. Unfortunately their timing always seems off. When he’s tied to Arabella, Sue is free and when he’s free, Sue is tied to a school teacher named Phillotson. Jude is such a tragic character. His every effort to attain a happy life seems to be thwarted by things that are out of his control. The tragedy seems unavoidable even when you’re hoping the characters make different decisions. Without Hardy’s beautiful writing this book would be unreadable because it’s so depressing, but he makes it enthralling. In some ways it reminded me of a more likeable version of Wuthering Heights. The same premise of two souls made of the same stuff, but both ill-matched in marriages and kept apart. Only in Jude there’s no crazy, selfish character and in Wuthering Heights there’s less religion. One of the novel’s main themes is marriage. The characters are constantly at odds with the union, which surprised me because it was published in 1895. I’m sure the book caused quite a stir when it first came out. This was my first foray into Thomas Hardy and from what I’ve heard his other books have similar themes. This one was hard to rate, because though I loved the writing, the story leaves you aching for Jude and wishing you could have made his life better. So it’s not a book I feel like I loved. I will definitely read more of his work, (I’ve got Tess of the D’Ubervilles and Far From the Madding Crowd on my TBR list), but I may have to wait a bit before diving into another heartbreaker.
    • 5/5
      This is a novel of despair. It paints a sad picture of a young man with a dream and what happens when that dream dies. Because of class, marriage, etc. because of circumstances Jude's hopes of a university education are crushed. The reaction to Thomas Hardy's last novel was fierce and swift. The book was banned, ostracized, and in a few cases burned. Hardy never wrote another novel, switching his focus to poetry.
    • 3/5
      Nobody turns a phrase like Hardy. The man has a true gift with language. As for the story, a lot is to be desired. That is not to say I don't appreciate what Hardy is doing. To perhaps a very large extent he is indicting religion by pitting faith against reason, sentiment against logic, the church against the human mind, dogma against the soul's inclination toward self-exploration. Suicide and martyrdom remain constant threads through the novel, threads I haven't quite studied enough to understand fully. And Sue: Is she an inconsistent, impetuous child? Or an example of what happens when the human spirit is stifled by the institution? She is, on one hand, the most exasperating character I have ever encountered in literature and, on the other, one with whom I completely identify.
    • 4/5
      I read this in 2009 and it was my first Hardy. I really liked it. I guess it was his last novel. The main character, Jude, wants to be a scholar. The other character is Sue, his cousin and his love. The novel is concerned with issues of class, education, religion, morality and marriage.
    • 5/5
      Tragic, heartbreaking. Either the last great novel of the 19th Century, or the first modern novel. I have not read this book in over 30 years, but my heart aches every time I think about it.
    • 4/5
      Hardy’s last novel was controversial in its time for reasons that are evident in the plot. Victorian morals are repeatedly transgressed, although life punishes the transgressors terribly. I confess finding Sue incredibly irksome even before the tragedy that strikes; her turn to religion just seems to put the final supreme touch of unpleasantness on her character. Jude’s passion for her is difficult to understand. Jude himself walks into trouble repeatedly. “Wait!” I kept thinking. “What are you doing now?” It’s hard to believe at the end that he is only about 30, as he seems to have lived several lifetimes of sorrow.
    • 3/5
      Thomas Hardy first gives readers an admirable Jude, his dreams set on becoming a Christminster scholar.Next follows a set of unusual marriages, a horrific tragedy, and the interminable resultant peculiarities of Sue Brideheadand Jude's unswerving love for her which lead the tale into a comedy of errors. Too Strange Indeed."She little thinks I have out-Sued Sue in this - all in the last twelve hours!"
    • 5/5
      Well, that was depressing.Beautifully written, scathing commentary by the author on religion and marriage in Victorian England... hard to believe Hardy wrote something so forward-thinking in this time period, and easy to see why it was so badly received then. The novel feels unflinchingly honest, brutal, and sad. Poor Sue. Poor Jude. If you like fun stories with happy endings, this is not the book you’re looking for.
    • 3/5
      With all the hype surrounding “Jude the Obscure”, I had high hopes, though sadly my hopes weren’t realised.I prefer some of Hardy’s lesser-known tomes to this one. I enjoyed parts of this novel, but it didn’t appeal greatly to me overall. I like the humour, but the depressing stuff really did depress me.Arabella is my favourite character. She’s very believable and it confirms my belief that Hardy’s female characters are better crafted than his male ones.Can’t remember many specifics, unfortunately, as I’m reviewing this nearly six years after reading it, but as it’s Thomas Hardy, I’d like to give it a second read some time.
    • 4/5
      This was what I expect from Hardy: excellent writing, brutal social commentary, and utterly depressing. This novel has a narrower set of characters than I remember from other Hardy novels I've read. Basically, there is Jude and his first wife, Arabella, and Jude's cousin, Sue, and her first husband, Phillotson. Both Jude and Sue end up separating from their first marriages and live together, loving each other but choosing not to marry. Well, Sue chooses not to marry. There is a lot in this novel about marriage and sex and whether these two things really must coexist. Is marriage without sex a true marriage? Is a deep relationship and love without sex enough? Can you cheat on a spouse without actually having intercourse? I was surprised at how explicit Hardy is in this novel about making clear that Sue was revolted at the idea of sleeping with her first husband and that she holds off with Jude for a long time too. And once she starts sleeping with Jude, things go down hill fast.There's also an exploration here of whether the legal act of marriage is necessary to a couple for them to have a meaningful relationship. And of course how society judges those who live together and don't marry. Interesting that this is still an issue today in America. Obviously, it's much more socially acceptable now for couples to live together before they marry and a small percentage choose to continue to live together and never marry, but it's tough legally.There is also the inevitable Hardy theme that upward mobility is all but impossible for the poor. Jude starts out a hard-working, ambitious young man. He makes mistakes, but most of his bad luck is imposed on him by society and culture of the time.Certainly not a pleasant read, but I'll keep coming back to Hardy every few years.
    • 4/5
      A criticism of the institution of marriage, education and religion in England. Unflinching and brutal in places. Enjoyed this much more than expected.
    • 4/5
      This book was published in 1895 to such adverse criticism that Hardy didn't write another novel. Clearly it wasn't the done thing to question the institution of marriage, the influence of the church on society and to speak up for the poor. Never mind the (extremely mild) references to sex, which by the standards of the day, were considered too much. The story focuses on a young man with ambitions to better himself by striving to make it to a college at the university town of Christminster. However, the mistakes he and (his cousin / lover) Sue, make in their youth are not forgiven in the eyes of the community - wherever they go. Unable to free themselves, things begin to spiral.

      Usually regarded as the most depressing of Hardy's novels but it would be wrong to dismiss it on those terms as there is a lot going on in this book and it keeps you turning the pages. But yes, it does contain probably the most shocking scene I have ever read.
    • 4/5
      This Hardy novel tells the tale of Jude, a rural stonemason whose ambition is to better himself through the higher education of Christminster (Oxford), and his tragic love affair with his cousin Sue. Their relationship made for an enthralling read, particularly as it was very modern, daring and unconventional for it's time. Sue is a fabulously complex heroine who derives both feelings of admiration and frustration in the reader as she stays resolute to her convictions however misplaced, whilst Jude is a typical Hardy protagonist who makes you root for him the whole way through the novel.Unlike the other two Hardy's I've read to date, this one felt like it took quite a while to get going, and I would say it was only about halfway in that I got properly hooked. For that reason I'm deducting a star, but nonetheless it was a great read and the second half was a definite page-turner. I enjoy that Hardy gives such a real sense of place in rural England through the eyes of the lower and middle classes especially, and he's the grand master of social tragedy.4 stars - not my favourite Hardy so far, but another wonderful Wessex tale.
    • 4/5
      Not just about 1895 social mores. Also applies to now. Sue Bridehead is an advanced woman .and the exploration of class issues is at ground level, as people experience them.
    • 2/5
      Once I realized I hadn't yet read any Thomas Hardy, I felt obliged to pick up one of his works, since Hardy is mentioned frequently enough that I'd put him into my mental category of Authors I Should Have Read. Jude the Obscure did not reward my decision. Characters, prose, plot, message, every element of this book was lackluster, to the extent that, even though it was the last of Hardy's novels, at times it seems downright amateurish.

      Every character in Jude the Obscure is frustrating, largely because Hardy usually doesn't provide any characterization. The titular character of Jude studies all the time, but is he smart? Does he grasp the material he's reading? Or is he just memorizing without understanding? This is not addressed at all for a long portion of the novel, and remains murky to the last. Later on Jude starts a relationship with Arabella, who decides at their first meeting that she wants a man like Jude for a husband- we aren't told why, nor are we shown why the pair is incompatible. Instead we get a not-at-all-subtle Samson and Delilah reference and then are told by Hardy that the marriage isn't working out, without ever getting a sense of why that is the case. For the rest of the book Arabella fills the role of "female antagonist," being vaguely petty and manipulative and slutty in ways that were boring and cliché long before Hardy put them onto paper. The character with the most characterization is Sue, who, despite getting more development, is still frustrating due to Hardy never having her articulate what she wants. For a long stretch of the book it seems as though she desires emotional companionship without physical intimacy, which would be fine, but Hardy never has her communicate this, so multiple male characters are strung along for dozens and dozens of pages trying to puzzle out what she wants. After a skip forward in time, however, Sue has evidently embraced physical intimacy in a way never previously indicated, making Sue's desires muddled to the point of indecipherability. There's also a child sociopath that seems like he's pulled right out of a horror film, who is introduced by being such a killjoy that it makes abundantly clear that his inclusion isn't going to be making the book any more enjoyable.

      And this is a book that could well use some added entertainment value. I can see how Dickens' prose might not be everyone's cup of tea, but in contrast I can't see how Hardy's prose can be anyone's cup of tea: it reads like the prose of Dickens stripped of any color or artistry. The best I can say about it is that it is functional, though archaic. This entire book feels like a remnant from a previous literary era, since, despite being written in 1895, it reads as overly formal and completely unexciting. It is stunning when you realize that this was a book written long after Stendhal, Austen, Gogol, and Flaubert had been published. All of those writers feel more modern and vibrant, both in their prose and in their exploration of their subject matter. Hardy sermonizes on the way the marriage system should be reformed through the conversations of Mr. Phillotson, in speeches that seem shoehorned in and which are painfully boring to read. It is of course true that the system of marriage in Hardy's era was far from perfect, but in Jude the Obscure he beats his readers over the head with his message instead of allowing them to come to the conclusion on their own. He also mentions some of the practical reasons behind marriage as a legal institution but never bothers to address or refute those reasons, instead sweeping the material considerations for marriage under the rug by having Mr. Phillotson and Sue essentially competing over who can take the least property after they agree to divorce (perhaps Hardy did not feel the need to address the reasons he raised because those reasons came out of the mouth of Arabella, and therefore are de facto lies). Hardy also undercuts his messages at times, like when he portrays Arabella as the one derailing Jude's scholarly ambitions, when it is clear that those ambitions were thwarted from the very beginning by the circumstances of Jude's birth. By inserting in poorly-crafted arguments Hardy not only makes Jude the Obscure more tedious to read, he also fails to convincingly support his positions as well.

      Hardy has the main characters fall on hard times at around the 4/5ths mark of the book in a way that feels inorganic and unsatisfying, so that he can give us a tragic ending to a book that doesn't much need one: you can illustrate the unfairness of the educational and social institutions without having your main character meet a cliché end, in fact I think the couple continuing on as a lower class family with all of their loftier ambitions frustrated would have been a more poignant and interesting ending than the melodramatic deaths that Hardy gives us. It doesn't help that Hardy's prose is unable to capture the emotions of the tragic scenes he paints. The low-grade groan that had been in the back of my mind since about fifty pages in got a lot louder at the scene where it is revealed that Jude Jr. has killed his half-siblings and himself, not just because it was so blatantly meant to shock the audience, but because I immediately knew that Hardy didn't have the writing chops to pull it off. Jude quoting Agamemnon on the next page confirmed this.

      This is one of those books that I'm giving 2 stars not because it did anything too terribly, but because it did nothing well. There is no line of prose I found impressive, no character that felt real, no theme or message that struck home. Just a lot of words and pages and a feeling of boredom throughout. Perhaps the highest compliment I can give this book is that it's themes at times made me think about The Red and the Black, a far better book that you should definitely read in place of this.
    • 4/5
      Socially advanced novel of marital relationships from 1895.. After the fuss aroused, Hardy never wrote another novel.Read in Samoa June 2003
    • 5/5
      I read Thomas Hardy: Behind the Mask by Andrew Norman earlier this year and it spurred my interest in rereading Jude the Obscure. I had read Jude the first time about 25 years ago. I had recollections of the book, but honestly most were negative. By negative, I do not mean a bad story or a poorly written book, instead, I mean a diffucult story to like. On the second reading (being 25 years older), I appreciate the book much more. Having read all of Hardy, I find this book his most caustic and critical. It is essentially an indictment of traditional (i.e. 19th century religious) marriage and it's inherent pitfalls to individual opportunity and improvement. The story revolves around Jude and Sue (his cousin) and their relationships, as well as their progressive view on society and marriage. Both Jude and Sue could be considered to be naive (I mean that in a good way) to their detriment. I will not detail the story here, as to not spoil it, but fair warning be given - this is a diffufcult book to digest. As always with Hardy, fate is a major player. I strongly recommend reading (and rereading this book). The characters are well constructed (especially Arabella, who typlifies much that Hardy dislikes). Again, Hardy's observations were keen, yet caustic (in an often witty and subtle way). Here are some of my favorite:- "optional dimples" - "ready to quarrel with the sun for shining on her"- "a nest of common place school masters whose characteristic is timid obsequiousness to tradition"- ... not their essential soundness, but their occasional outcomes"- "... pioneers..." (from page 348 - Part 6, Chapter 3)- "Their cup of sorrow is now full"- "The flowers in the bride's hand are sadly like the garland which decked the heifers of sacrifice in the old times!" (wow! this says it all)Overall, this is a cruel story of opportunities denied by traditions accepted blindly and often contrary to reason. Very thought provoking, it must have been revolutionary when first published.
    • 4/5
      This is a novel of contrasts, oppositions, and doubling. It's carefully constructed, which is surprising given its origination as a serial in Harper's Weekly. Because of the artifice, Hardy often hits the reader over the head with its themes and symbols (Sue is spirit/intellect/ethereal, okay, okay, we get it), and it can be difficult to not read it symbolically. I found some of the ideas - like social mobility and meritocracy - surprisingly American, but the outcome totally British. I think the big ideas of challenging social convention and the tension between what is right socially and what is right ethically would appeal to younger readers, but I think they would have trouble with the execution.
    • 5/5
      This is one of the few books I picked up in a college English class and never put back down.
    • 4/5
      I think Hardy was a man ahead of his times in regards to how he approached relationships in this book. I am not referring to the relationship of cousins, rather his outlook on marriage. I also believe he stated what many people probably felt or observed in the time period this book was written. True to his form, he stated it well and honestly if not always happily!
    • 5/5
      From the beginning, it were the occasional dissonant comments -- very brief -- that Hardy planted in his description of an ambitious schoolmaster leaving a tiny Wessex hamlet that gripped me and dragged me into the novel, promising a mildly cynical undercurrent to an everyman’s narrative. The novel starts there, taking its time describing curbed ambition and stunted growth amidst rural status-quo, but pretty soon it becomes interested in matters of morality and social opprobrium. Is marriage a socially sanctioned contract that ought to be cancellable; or is it a promise made to God, and therefore eternally fixed? At what point does social disapproval and the continuation of a community's mores turn into concerted bullying? Hardy is so very good at the plot archetype where bad things happen to good people: his main characters are unassuming people who mainly want to be left alone to pursue their own choices. Cue a crisis of faith, and a crisis of atheism, unsatisfactory work and life prospects; their resolve to pursue love and happiness is put to stringent tests unintentionally imposed by a society that simply does not get it. And Hardy uses this outline to examine a range of class issues as well as moral / religious disagreements in his idealized setting of rural Victorian England. Hardy reserves his most direct criticism for class differences: his tale of a working class layman with scholarly ambitions is excellent at conveying frustration with the closed mindset of a self-contained academia, at expressing the resignation of reaching university only through his children and their offspring. But in Jude, Hardy never explicitly chooses sides when it comes to the moral issues. The antagonists, embodied customs and societal taboos though they are, are never portrayed in an unfair light; everyone's behaviour is at all times understandable and (from their own perspective) entirely reasonable. Lack of education, self-interested moral shortcuts and privilege-induced blindness may be deplored, but cannot be demonized, much less personified in easy allegories.Hardy very skilfully makes readers care about his main characters -- Jude and Sue -- and then proceeds to relentlessly pummel his protagonists with all the disapproval that society and their notions of morality can muster. In this respect, [Jude the Obscure] reminds me of Eliot’s [The Mill on the Floss]: a tragedy inflicted by moral considerations that are at least partially self-imposed and that the protagonists feel unable to abandon without betraying their sense of self.As great as this book is in addressing moral and religious quandaries, the narrator’s voice is one of the best things about Jude. Most of the narrative is told fairly straightforwardly, without omniscient interference or explicit moralizing. But the narrator's voice sprinkles wry remarks on the text -- be they explicit comments or, more subtly, choice of words and connotations. It doesn’t often make an appearance, but when it engages in a little omniscient foreshadowing or offers a general comment about human nature, it is noticeably but not intrusively different from the surrounding narrative, and the effect is much amplified. To sum up: [Jude the Obscure] was a very engaging read, and felt like a mature novel, written by an accomplished and highly skilled novelist-- it is so satisfying to feel you're in the hands of a master at their craft. It offered moral complexity, protagonists to root for, and a world with no easy, blameable antagonists. I loved every page of it, because there was so much to keep me intellectually interested as well as emotionally invested.