“Victorian Barriers and Human Yearning: Exploring Jude the Obscure”
Hello!! Myself Nidhi Pandya. I am currently pursuing my Master of Arts Degree in English at M K Bhavnagar University. Our professor Dr. Dilip Barad Sir, Head of the English Department, M K Bhavnagar University is always active in enriching students’ aptitude through (Google) classroom activities. One of such activities is Lab Activity on the topic of Novel "Jude the Obscure" by Thomas Hardy where we, the students majoring in English Literature have to read points to ponder on Sir’s blog and submit our responses by writing blog. So this blog is a response to the task assigned by Prof. Dr . Dilip Barad Sir on:Click Here
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“Hardy’s Biography and Its Impact on the Novel”
- Birth and Upbringing: Born in 1840 in rural Dorset to a stonemason father; grew up in modest circumstances, which influenced his understanding of rural poverty and class limitations.
- Education and Intellectual Ambition: Limited formal schooling but a strong passion for reading and literature; self-educated, reflecting Jude Fawley’s desire to attend Christminster.
- Career Choices: Trained as an architect but pursued writing, reflecting the tension between practical work (stonemasonry/architecture) and intellectual aspirations seen in Jude’s life.
- Personal Life and Marriage: Experienced an unhappy first marriage with Emma Gifford, whose later estrangement influenced Hardy’s exploration of failed relationships and the complexities of love in the novel.
- Religious Skepticism: Increasingly critical of organized religion and Victorian moral codes; influenced the novel’s symbolic indictment of Christianity and critique of social and moral hypocrisy.
- Victorian Society and Social Critique: Lived in a period of strict class structures, gender roles, and societal expectations; these realities are mirrored in Jude’s struggles with education, marriage, and societal acceptance.
- Public Reception and Later Life: Jude the Obscure (1895) caused public controversy for its frank discussion of marriage, sex, and religion, leading Hardy to abandon novels and focus on poetry. His experiences with societal judgment reinforced the novel’s themes of disillusionment and social critique.
Summary of Novel:
The novel, set in Wessex (Thomas Hardy's fictional version of southwestern England) in the latter part of the 19th century, traces the short and obscure life of Jude Fawley, a righteous man who loved deeply and suffered greatly.
Part 1: At Marygreen
Jude, an 11-year-old orphan, has come to live with his great-aunt, Miss Drusilla Fawley, who thinks he would have been better off to have died with his parents. Other than sharing her nihilistic views with the child, she is for the most part decent to him. Sensitive and intelligent, he feels the pain of his fellow creatures, including animals. Jude is one of Mr. Phillotson's night pupils and is saddened when his teacher leaves for Christminster, a town about 20 miles away that boasts a great university. Phillotson hopes to take a degree there and advance in his career by becoming a churchman. Jude, too, begins to dream about Christminster, which he can see if he climbs on a barn roof and looks out on a clear day. It seems to be a City of Light, and Jude decides he too will go there to study. Thus he begins to school himself, ambitiously trying to learn Latin, Greek, and mathematics.
At the age of 16 he apprentices himself to a mason to have a trade, but he expects to use it only as a stepping stone to his ultimate goal. One day, when he is about 19, he is waylaid by Arabella Donn, a pig farmer's daughter, who decides the nice-looking and earnest young man is a good catch. She ensures they quickly become intimate, and he marries her when she says she is pregnant, a ruse suggested by her friends, who see pregnancy as a means of entrapment, but altered to Arabella's convenience. Shortly after the wedding she tells Jude she was mistaken about the pregnancy. The couple soon begin having marital problems, and after a serious argument she leaves him and emigrates with her parents to Australia.
Part 2: At Christminster
When Jude finally moves to Christminster, he quickly finds work since he has a broad array of skills in his trade. He hunts down his cousin, Sue Bridehead, whom he already has a crush on from a photo his great-aunt showed him. Sue is his first cousin, the daughter of his aunt on his father's side. He convinces himself he is lonely and just wants a friend and intends to look her up, along with his old schoolmaster, Phillotson. Sue works as an ecclesiastical designer, most often on decorative lettering for religious objects. She finds him first, hearing he is in town, and they develop a friendship, which on his side immediately turns into love. Jude introduces Sue to Phillotson, who was unable to matriculate at the university and has gone back to teaching. After Sue loses her job and lodgings, Jude asks Phillotson to take her on as an apprentice teacher, and Sue goes to live with a widow near Phillotson's school. Sue is a "new woman," independent, well-educated (mostly through her own reading), agnostic, and wary of marriage. Not long after she goes to work for Philloston, the older man falls in love with her.
When Jude finally plucks up the courage to inquire about studying at the university, like Phillotson he finds he has neither the money to begin university training nor the educational background to pass a scholarship exam. One of the heads of college advises him to stick to his own class and trade. Jude is heartbroken and goes to the tavern to get drunk, making a spectacle of himself. He ends up on Sue's doorstep, and she takes him in for the evening. He sleeps in the front room and then slinks away early in the morning, embarrassed. He also loses his job and returns to Marygreen.
Part 3: At Melchester
Jude determines to become a lower-level clergyman and begins studying for this profession, which does not require university education. Sue writes to him from Melchester, where she is attending teacher-training college. She has taken a scholarship exam to get a place, which Phillotson helped arrange. He has proposed marriage to her, and she has tentatively accepted; he imagines they will be schoolteachers together when she finishes her training. Feeling lonely and miserable, Sue asks Jude to come to Melchester, and he immediately complies, thinking they can just be friends. Jude gets lodgings and work in Melchester.
One day he and Sue have a day out in the country and miss their train back to town. They are forced to stay overnight in the house of a shepherd, but they sleep in separate quarters. When Sue gets back to school the next day, she is severely chastised and segregated in her own room for a week. The other girls are forbidden to speak to her. Sue escapes from her isolation by climbing out of the window and walking through a river, ending up at Jude's lodgings. He takes her in for the night and gives her his clothes so she can dry off. Sue then leaves for Shaston, where Phillotson is to stay with a friend, hoping the scandal will blow over, but she is expelled from the college. She returns to Melchester to collect her things, and when she sees Jude, he finally confesses he is a married man.
Soon after Sue writes from Shaston to say she is getting married to Phillotson and asks Jude to "give her away" at the ceremony. A crushed Jude agrees to do so, and after Sue is married, he returns to Christminster. Aunt Fawley is very ill; he goes home to see her and writes to Sue offering to meet her train in Aldbrickham if she wants to visit their mutual relative. Sue agrees, but Jude gets sidetracked when he runs into Arabella by surprise, back from Australia. They have supper, and he ends up in bed with his estranged wife. The next morning Sue finds him in Christminster, and they travel together to Marygreen, both full of emotion. Sue admits she shouldn't have married Phillotson. Jude returns to Melchester, which is nearer Sue's home in Shaston, where she and Phillotson are teaching.
Part 4: At Shaston
Jude makes a visit to Shaston, and he and Sue have a heartfelt conversation, full of sexual heat and emotional compatibility. Later she writes and asks him not to visit again. Meanwhile Miss Fawley's caretaker, the Widow Edlin, writes to tell Jude his great-aunt is dying. Jude goes to Marygreen but arrives too late. He notifies Sue so she can attend the funeral. Sue and Jude again have a few painfully emotional scenes between them, and Jude confesses his love. When he takes Sue to the train station, they share a passionate kiss.
Back home Sue can no longer bear to have Phillotson near her, and he agrees to sleep separately, but then goes further by allowing her to leave him. She writes Jude, and he tells her to come to Aldbrickham, a larger town than Marygreen, where they can live in peace. He also tells her he has granted Arabella a divorce so she can legally wed the husband she married illegally in Australia. When the school board in Shaston learns Phillotson has allowed his wife to go to her lover, he is fired. He stands fast in his position, however, and even agrees to give her a divorce.
Part 5: At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere
Sue insists she and Jude remain in a platonic relationship. This state of affairs continues for several months, and both are happy, although Jude feels sexually frustrated. Arabella appears on his doorstep one day, and Sue, terrified of losing him to Arabella's trickery, immediately enters into a sexual relationship with him. As it turns out, Arabella wants only to turn her child over to Jude's custody. Called Little Father Time because he seems to be an old man already rather than a child, he was born to Arabella in Australia eight months after she left Jude. Arabella's parents no longer want to care for him, and Arabella cannot keep the child with her new husband. Jude and Sue take the child and continue happily until one day they decide to get married in a civil ceremony.
At the last minute Sue backs out of the marriage, fearing the effect of a legal contract on their freely given love. As a result of their filing papers to marry, however, the townspeople learn they are not. Jude and Sue are thus ostracized and forced to leave to find work. They begin a three-year period in which they move from place to place, following the work. At the end of this period Sue runs into Arabella, now widowed; soon after the meeting Jude and Sue move back to Christminster, where Jude still feels a deep personal connection.
Part 6: At Christminster Again
Jude returns to Christminster on Remembrance Day, which is bittersweet for him as he waits with his family for the procession of new doctoral graduates. He ends up making a speech to a small portion of the crowd as they wait for the ceremony to begin, recounting his failure and preaching against the evils of the class system.
Jude and Sue now have two children of their own, as well as Father Time, and Sue is pregnant with a fourth. When the family finally goes looking for temporary lodgings, no one wants to take them in, and Jude is forced to lodge elsewhere, away from Sue and the children. The landlady is suspicious, and when Sue confesses, without thinking, she and Jude are not actually married, the woman says Sue and the children will have to leave in the morning. Father Time, a morose child to begin with, gets more and more agitated when he accompanies Sue to look for lodgings for the next day and they return unsuccessful. Again without thinking, Sue speaks to him as if he were an adult and admits people don't want to rent when there are so many in the family. She also tells Time, now called Little Jude, she is pregnant, and he is furious with her, blaming her for bringing more trouble on the family.
The next morning, while the children are sleeping, she leaves very early to have breakfast with Jude and discuss their predicament. When the parents come back to fix the children breakfast, they find Father Time has hanged his two siblings and himself because they are "too menny."
Both parents are devastated, but Sue practically loses her mind. After months of grieving, she decides she must go back to Phillotson, since she is his lawful wife, despite the divorce, and never actually married Jude. Her agnosticism and scorn of convention disappear, and she wants to sacrifice herself to atone for living in sin, bringing children into the world out of wedlock, and being responsible for their deaths God's punishment. Phillotson agrees to remarry her, and a devastated Jude, now on his own, is again tricked by Arabella after she keeps him drunk for a few days and then says he promised to marry her. Jude does remarry her, and they are miserable.
Meanwhile Sue is married to Phillotson but still won't sleep with him. Jude wants to die, so he goes out in a rainstorm when he is already sick and travels to Marygreen to see Sue. When Jude gets there, Sue embraces him and they kiss passionately, but she refuses to return to him. He knows he will never see her again and returns home. As a penance, she finally moves into her husband's bed. In Christminster Jude remains sick for months becoming weaker and weaker. When Remembrance Week rolls around, Arabella leaves Jude in his room to join the festivities, and he dies while she is gone. He is buried with only Arabella and the Widow Edlin in attendance, and Arabella declares Sue will never find peace, try as she might, as long as she is above ground.
Source : Course HeroJude the Obscure | Character Analysis
Jude Fawley
An orphaned child, Jude Fawley comes to live with his great-aunt at Marygreen and is inspired by his schoolmaster to move eventually to Christminster, a university town, obtain his education there, and enter the Anglican priesthood. Jude is kind, noble, appealing, and capable, but very much a loner, unnoticed and insignificant in grand scheme of things. He is easily swayed by others' strong opinions and loves more than he is loved. Jude's dreams and ambitions are thwarted from the beginning first by a disastrous marriage and then by class barriers that make it impossible to enter the university. Later his desire to live with his soulmate is thwarted by social conventions. Eventually everything Jude cares for is taken from him, even the idea of turning toward God.
Sue Bridehead
Sue Bridehead is a nonconformist, an independent individual, even from childhood. In Christminster she earns a living as an ecclesiastical designer and lives as a free woman. She becomes involved with Jude and as a result makes a bad marriage with an older schoolteacher whom she then leaves to live with Jude without the benefit of marriage. Her actions often show her as masochistic or, at best, carelessly self destructive, at war with herself, and uninterested in physical intimacy. Sue is an agnostic, but after losing her children she comes to think God is punishing her for defying convention and spends considerable time in church and living according to Christian doctrine.
Richard Phillotson
Young Jude's bland old schoolteacher, Mr. Phillotson, leaves Marygreen for Christminster with the idea of attending university and becoming a clergyman. He fails in that dream but resumes an acquaintanceship with Jude years later. Mr. Phillotson meets Sue (20 years his junior), takes her on as a student teacher, falls in love with her, and convinces her to marry him. When she demonstrates her aversion to him and asks for a separation, he allows her to join Jude and start a new life, at great personal cost. He shows himself both kind in allowing her to leave and selfish in taking her back.
Arabella Donn
Arabella Donn is the daughter of a pig farmer and butcher and, although very attractive, is coarse and underhanded. She is frank about her sexuality and lures Jude into a sexual relationship that ends in their disastrous marriage because she pretends to be pregnant. Selfish and conniving, she reappears several times and tricks Jude into marrying her again after her second husband dies.
Little Father Time
Little Father Time is one of the most haunting and symbolic figures in the novel. He is the son of Jude and Arabella, sent later to live with Jude and Sue. From the moment of his arrival, he is portrayed as unnaturally solemn, melancholy, and old beyond his years, earning him the nickname “Little Father Time.” Unlike ordinary children, he has no innocence or joy, but instead reflects the despair of a generation born into poverty, instability, and illegitimacy. His very presence casts a shadow over Jude and Sue’s unconventional household, as he senses the stigma and hardship surrounding their lives. In his most tragic act, he kills Sue and Jude’s children before taking his own life, leaving behind the chilling note: “Done because we are too menny.” This shocking moment encapsulates Hardy’s bleak vision of life’s futility and the crushing weight of social and economic pressures on even the youngest and most vulnerable. Little Father Time becomes less a child than a symbol of pessimism, embodying Hardy’s idea that hope itself is extinguished by the harsh realities of existence.
Aunt Drusilla
Aunt Drusilla, Jude’s great-aunt who raises him after his parents’ deaths, is a stern, practical, and somewhat bitter woman. She has little patience for Jude’s dreams and ambitions, frequently reminding him of the family’s “bad blood” and the misfortunes that have always accompanied marriage in their lineage. Her warnings against matrimony serve as a recurring motif throughout the novel, foreshadowing the tragic outcomes of Jude’s relationships with both Arabella and Sue. Though unsympathetic in manner, Drusilla embodies the voice of traditional wisdom rooted in hard experience, her worldview shaped by hardship and disappointment. She does not encourage Jude’s aspirations to rise above his station, instead reminding him of the futility of striving against fate. While she may seem cold, her character highlights the older generation’s resignation to life’s difficulties and adds to the atmosphere of inevitability that pervades the novel.
Character Study - Susanna 'Sue' Bridehead
Sue Bridehead is the most strikingly unconventional and complex character in "Jude the Obscure," notable for her intelligence, emotional ambivalence, and feminist inclinations.
Detailed Character Description
Sue is a free-thinking, highly intelligent young woman, deeply skeptical of societal norms surrounding marriage, religion, and gender roles. She is Jude’s cousin and eventual companion, and her ideas about relationships including a strong preference for intellectual and spiritual intimacy over physical passion set her apart from other women in her society. Artistic and sensitive, Sue works as both an artist-designer and a teacher, and flirts with religious ideas while also rejecting traditional Christianity for more pagan and progressive views.
Her behavior is often capricious, elusive, and emotionally unpredictable: she may be affectionate and intimate with Jude in one moment but distant and full of regret the next. Rather than presenting a stereotypical figure, Hardy renders Sue as a person divided between rationality and passion, independence and longing for connection. She famously resists legal marriage, insisting that love is "better without the bonds and ties," and insists upon unconventional arrangements in her life.
Her Qualities
Intellectual independence: Sue is curious, outspoken, and experimental in her thinking, keenly exploring philosophies and relationship models that defy Victorian conventions. She is often labeled a New Woman and a proto-feminist, challenging and questioning gender roles throughout the novel.
Emotional Contradiction: Her emotional life is a study in contradictions she oscillates between deep empathy and detachment, between loving Jude and withdrawing from him, between spiritual aspirations and human vulnerability. This complexity gives her a distinctive psychological and moral realism unusual for 19th-century fiction.
Sexual Ambiguity and Repression: Sue attempts to maintain her autonomy through sexual inhibition; she often privileges spiritual connection over physical intimacy, but at times her jealousy or longing surfaces. Hardy designed her as both sexually ambiguous and psychologically intricate a challenge to contemporary expectations.
Tragic Volte-Face: After devastating personal trauma (especially the loss of her children), Sue reverses her earlier views and submits to the very societal and religious ideals she previously rebelled against. This haunting shift makes her fate a "living death" and underscores Hardy's critique of Victorian morality.
Role in the Narrative
Sue is the novel’s most dynamic character, catalyzing both Jude’s development and the tragic crises of the story. Her presence transforms the novel’s exploration of love, marriage, faith, and identity, and she embodies the intellectual and emotional turmoil of the age. Sue’s uniqueness lies in her capacity to question everything, her refusal to be easily understood or constrained, and her tragic inability to reconcile her ideals with the realities of her world.
Sue Bridehead is an unforgettable, deeply original figure energetic, eccentric, and ahead of her time, representing both the promise and peril of intellectual and emotional freedom in a restrictive society.
Here is the link of sir's Research Article:Click Here
Jude the Obscure | Thematic Study
Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure is a profound critique of Victorian society, exploring how human aspirations are constrained by social, moral, and institutional forces. The novel’s themes are closely intertwined with its characters and plot, creating a tapestry of tragedy and social commentary.
1. Class and Social Mobility
Jude Fawley’s rural background and poverty prevent him from entering Christminster University, despite his self-education in Latin and Greek. Hardy highlights the injustice of a society where talent and ambition are subordinated to social class.
- Talent and hard work are insufficient to overcome societal barriers.
- Reflects Hardy’s own struggles with limited educational opportunities.
2. Marriage and Social Conventions
The novel critiques the rigid institution of marriage and societal expectations surrounding it. Jude’s first marriage to Arabella is deceptive and unfulfilling, while his union with Sue, based on love and intellectual compatibility, is socially condemned.
- Marriage is portrayed as a societal imposition rather than a personal bond.
- Highlights the conflict between individual desire and social morality.
3. Religious Hypocrisy
Religion in the novel is depicted as restrictive, judgmental, and oppressive.
- Jude and Sue are censured for defying conventional morality.
- Christminster symbolizes both intellectual aspiration and institutional control.
- Hardy’s own skepticism toward organized religion informs this critique.
4. Fate and Tragic Irony
Hardy emphasizes a deterministic worldview, where societal constraints and personal flaws thwart human aspiration.
- The death of Jude’s children, including Little Father Time, symbolizes tragic inevitability.
- Noble striving contrasts with harsh reality, creating powerful irony.
5. Gender and Women’s Autonomy
Sue Bridehead embodies the struggle of women for intellectual and emotional freedom in a patriarchal society.
- Challenges Victorian norms and faces social condemnation.
- Highlights gender inequalities and societal punishment for female independence.
6. Additional Themes
- Education vs. Social Restriction: Knowledge is limited by class and institutions.
- Sexuality and Morality: Natural human desire conflicts with societal codes.
- Alienation and Isolation: Characters suffer emotionally and socially for defying norms.
Structure of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure:
MA Sem 1 | Jude | Structure | Online Classes MKBU | 2021 01 31
1. Division into Six Parts (Books)
Hardy structures the novel into six parts (or “Books”), each marking a distinct phase in Jude’s life. This segmented structure reflects the movement of a Bildungsroman, but instead of upward development, the structure charts Jude’s progressive disillusionment and downfall.
- Part I – At Marygreen
Introduces Jude’s childhood, his dreams of Christminster, and the influence of Phillotson. This section establishes Jude’s aspirations for education and the social mobility that seems possible through scholarship.
- Part II – At Christminster
Jude arrives at Christminster, symbol of intellectual and spiritual ambition. Instead of welcome, he encounters rejection and exclusion. His first serious downfall begins here.
- Part III – At Melchester
Shifts focus to Sue Bridehead. Their intellectual and emotional bond develops, contrasting with Jude’s disastrous marriage to Arabella. The structure here introduces the theme of “love versus convention.”
- Part IV – At Shaston
The lives of Jude, Sue, and Phillotson intersect more tightly. Sue marries Phillotson but finds herself miserable. Themes of passion, morality, and institutional restraint intensify.
- Part V – At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere
Jude and Sue live together outside of marriage. Society’s hostility grows stronger, making their domestic life increasingly difficult. Their children arrive, and with them the pressures of poverty and stigma.
- Part VI – At Christminster Again
A circular return to the setting of Jude’s first dreams but now a place of despair. Tragedy culminates in the deaths of the children (Little Father Time’s act) and Jude’s own physical and spiritual collapse. The structural return underscores the futility of his aspirations.
2. Pattern of Aspiration and Defeat
The novel’s structure deliberately sets up cycles of hope followed by destruction:
- Each new section begins with some possibility (education, love, freedom).
- Each endswith crushing defeat (academic rejection, marital failure, social condemnation, death).
This repetitive rhythm reinforces Hardy’s pessimism and sense of inevitable tragedy.
3. Circular Structure
The novel ends where it began: Christminster. But the meaning has shifted what was once a beacon of hope is now the graveyard of Jude’s dreams. This circular structure gives the novel tragic inevitability, echoing Greek tragedy.
4. Parallelism of Relationships
The structure also parallels Jude’s two marriages:
- Arabella: sensuality, deceit, and worldly entrapment.
- Sue: intellectual, spiritual, yet equally destructive because of social pressures and psychological fragility.
- By placing these relationships in sequence, Hardy highlights how Jude is thwarted in both physical and spiritual love.
5. Thematic Organization
Hardy arranges the structure around major thematic conflicts:
- Individual desire vs. social institution (education, marriage, religion).
- Love vs. law.
- Idealism vs. reality.
- Progress vs. fate.
Each part dramatizes one stage of this conflict until final destruction.
6. Narrative Voice and Structural Irony
The narrator guides the reader with a tone of ironic detachment. Structural irony emerges because the narrative mimics the Bildungsroman framework childhood, youth, love, maturity but twists it into a failed Bildungsroman, where “growth” results in despair rather than integration.
In summary:
The structure of Jude the Obscure is formally divided into six phases, each portraying a movement from aspiration to defeat. Its cyclical return to Christminster, repeated pattern of failed hopes, and parallel relationships create a tragic architecture. Hardy deliberately uses the framework of the Bildungsroman only to invert it, making structure itself a vehicle for his bleak vision of fate, society, and human limitation.
- Little Father Time is the most direct and disturbing symbol in the novel. Holland interprets the tragic child’s suicide, and the killing of his siblings (“Done because we are too menny”), as a symbolic and failed act of atonement an echo of Christ’s sacrifice. In Hardy’s world, however, this sacrifice does not redeem; it only exposes the spiritual barrenness and absence of divine consolation in a society dominated by lifeless Christian dogma.
- Jude’s aspirations and suffering are cast in the mold of biblical figures like Job, whose pain is met with silence or indifference from God. Jude’s repeated failures, despite unwavering efforts and faith, reveal the stunted and cruel effects of dogmatic religion when separated from compassion or true ethical values.
- Sue Bridehead becomes the symbol of spiritual and emotional rebellion. Rejecting marriage and Christian convention at first, she later internalizes guilt interpreting personal tragedy as divine punishment leading her to abandon her independence and accept Victorian sexual submission and spiritual defeat.
- Holland situates Hardy’s indictment of Christianity within a larger criticism of modernity: the hypocrisy of social conventions, the failure of institutions (church, marriage, education), and the tragedy of individual aspirations crushed by collective dogma. Hardy uses intense realism and symbolic imagery a tragic Bildungsroman, anti-idealist in its spirit to dramatize human estrangement in a society “dehumanized” by religion and moral rigidity.
- Norman Holland Jr.’s article reveals Hardy’s sophisticated use of character, plot, and symbolism to create not just a negative portrait of Christianity, but a profound existential challenge to the comforts and certainties of religious ideology. The novel’s tragedies especially the fate of Father Time render suffering and sacrifice empty, urging readers to confront the failures of both faith and society to provide true compassion or redemption
- Holland uses textual analysis: close reading of symbols, narrative situations, characters’ attitudes; pays attention to biblical allusions, religious imagery, rituals. Some examples he uses:
- The epigraph from Esdras which brings in the idea of “letter that killeth” sets tone.
- Symbolic settings such as Christminster not just as an ideal of learning, but in connection with religious architecture, tradition, ecclesiastical power.
- Sue’s fluctuating stance: at first rejecting conventional Christian marriage and dogma; later, after the tragedy, returning to religious guilt and penitence. The contrast shows how Christian norms remain powerful in exerting control over individuals.
- The children’s deaths and Jude’s death tied to Christian moral expectations. Hardship, suffering, guilt are mediated through Christian moral vocabulary.
- Many critics agree with Holland that Jude the Obscure is deeply critical of Victorian Christianity especially its moralism, its suppression of individual freedom, its rigid social expectations. LitCharts (for example) notes that Hardy “portrays Christianity as life-denying and belonging to ‘the letter’ that ‘killeth’.”
- The theme of religion vs human nature is central: Sue’s pagan leanings (statues of Greek gods, etc.), Jude’s yearning for Christian theological / religious profession early on but then disappointment. The “church’s law vs nature’s law” motif is important.
- The novel’s symbolism supports Holland: Christian architecture, biblical allusions, religious ritual (marriage, wedding vows, etc.) all appear but are often subverted or shown to weigh heavily on the characters.
- Hardy does not present an alternative ideal; the “pagan” or natural impulses are also portrayed as unable to fully protect the characters from tragedy. The non-Christian or pagan side of Sue or Jude isn’t a happy escape.
- Some readers argue Hardy is not wholly dismissive of Christianity; there are moments when Christian motifs or beliefs are shown as deeply embedded in people’s psyche which means the “indictment” is more complex than pure rejection.
Frank R. Giordano Jr.’s article “Jude the Obscure and the Bildungsroman” (Studies in the Novel, Winter 1972), based on what can be reconstructed from summaries and related scholarship. Since the full text isn’t freely available, some of the details come via secondary sources, but enough is known to give a solid account of his arguments, evidence, and critical significance.
Overview of Giordano’s Argument
Thesis
Giordano argues that Jude the Obscure both draws upon and critically transforms the traditional Bildungsroman genre. While Jude’s life follows many of the genre’s classical stages education, aspiration, moral crisis Hardy diverges sharply from its typical pattern of moral or social integration. Instead of achievement or reconciliation, Jude’s “coming-of-age” ends in failure, personal collapse, and disillusionment.
What is Bildungsroman (in Giordano’s reading)
- A literary tradition tracing the development of a protagonist from childhood to maturity.
- Usually involves growth: intellectual, moral, social.
- Culminates in self-understanding and a harmonizing of the individual with society (or at least a resigned accommodation).
Giordano treats these features as a framework against which Jude can be compared.
How Jude the Obscure aligns with Bildungsroman patterns
- Jude’s early life shows the typical elements: childhood dreams (of scholarship, of Christminster), formative experiences (work, class disadvantage), first love, moral questioning.
- There is a sense of striving: Jude’s attempt to educate himself, his admiration of Phillotson, his desire to be accepted into Christminster.
- Emotional crisis: disappointments in love (Arabella, Sue), rejection, shame, societal constraints.
How Hardy subverts or “fails” the Bildungsroman pattern
Giordano highlights several ways in which Hardy refuses the genre’s optimistic closure:
- No social integration: Jude never becomes part of the academic world or socially accepted in the way a classical Bildung character would.
- Love fails: Jude’s relationships end badly; they do not bring growth in comfort or societal acceptance.
- Moral or spiritual stasis/collapse: Jude’s ideals are often compromised; he is disillusioned.
- Tragic ending: Rather than maturity or reconciliation, the narrative ends in tragedy, alienation, and death.
Irony and critique of Victorian assumptions
A central part of Giordano’s article is that Hardy uses the Bildungsroman form ironically. Victorian society assumed that progress, education, moral development, and social institutions (marriage, religion, class mobility) would enable improvement. Hardy shows these expectations to be flawed or even destructive for someone in Jude’s position.
Jude as “failed Bildungsroman hero”
Giordano coins or uses this phrase to denote a protagonist whose educational or developmental arc is not fulfilled, whose journey toward “self-realization” is thwarted. Jude is not Bildungsroman’s usual hero because his growth does not lead to stability or harmony, but instead to suffering and existential defeat.
Key Points and Evidence Used by Giordano (as Reconstructed)
While precise quotations from the article are hard to access, here are the kinds of evidence Giordano employs (as reported by scholars referencing him), and the motifs or structural features he analyzes:
- Stages of Jude’s life: childhood / formative years; attempts at formal education; attempts at admission to Christminster; love and domestic crises.
- Obstacles to Jude’s development: class barriers; lack of formal educational opportunity; social and religious norms; moral hypocrisy; financial constraints.
- Parallelism / comparisons: Jude’s aspirations versus reality; Jude’s idealism versus rejection; the contrast between Jude and other characters who accept social norms.
- Narrative structure: how episodes of ambition and disillusion are arranged to show progression toward failure rather than toward integration.
Critical Significance: What Giordano Adds to Hardy Scholarship
- He helps shift readers from seeing Jude simply as an unfinished or messy novel to understanding it as intentionally structured to dismantle expectations of growth & progress inherent in the Bildungsroman.
- He draws attention to the tragic dimension of Jude not as incidental, but as central: the failure is thematic, built into the form.
- His reading encourages reading Jude less as a social critique alone (of class, religion, marriage) and more as a formal innovation: how Hardy reshapes and challenges genre.
- It helps explain why Jude the Obscure has often divided critics: those expecting a classical progression find it frustrating; those open to modernist or pessimistic form see its power.
Possible Criticisms or Counterpoints
While Giordano’s argument is highly regarded, some counterpoints emerge in later criticism (again via secondary sources):
- Some critics argue that Jude does still contain moments of moral/spiritual awareness or growth, even if not in conventional sense, complicating the idea of “failure.”
- Others question whether Hardy completely rejects the hopes of the Bildungsroman, or merely portrays them as constrained: is there not a kind of personal integrity or inner growth, even if external success is denied?
- The balance between “realistic details” and “idealistic ambition” sometimes leads readers to see Jude also as social protest rather than purely tragic critique.
Contribution and Uniqueness
The article is significant for situating Hardy’s bleak vision within the context of the Bildungsroman and highlighting how "Jude the Obscure" manipulates established narrative patterns to probe the limits of self-development in an unforgiving society. This approach helps readers understand Hardy’s pessimism, social criticism, and innovation in novelistic form.
Frank R. Giordano Jr.’s article is a foundational academic text clarifying how "Jude the Obscure" dialogues with, and ultimately dismantles, the conventions of the Bildungsroman, situating Hardy as a profound disruptor of Victorian literary tradition.
Conclusion:
Jude the Obscure is more than a story of personal tragedy. It is Thomas Hardy’s powerful critique of Victorian society, its rigid class structures, oppressive institutions, and moral hypocrisy. Through Jude’s unfulfilled dreams, doomed relationships, and ultimate suffering, Hardy exposes the harsh realities of human ambition constrained by social norms. The novel’s enduring relevance lies in its exploration of love, education, gender, and fate, making it a timeless reflection on the struggles of the individual against society.
References:
1. Barad, Dilip. "Jude the obscure." Dilip Barad | Teacher's Blog, 27 Jan. 2021,
https://blog.dilipbarad.com/2021/01/jude-obscure.html
2. GIORDANO, FRANK. “JUDE THE OBSCURE’ AND THE ‘BILDUNGSROMAN.’” Studies in the Novel, vol. 4,no. 4, 1972, pp. 580–91. JSTOR,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/29531557
3. Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure. Project Gutenberg, 2022,
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/153/153-h/153-h.htm
4. Holland, Norman. “Jude the Obscure’: Hardy’s Symbolic Indictment of Christianity.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 9, no. 1, 1954, pp. 50–60. JSTOR,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3044291
5. Knauer, Elizabeth L. "Unconscious Sue? Selfishness and Manipulation in" Jude the Obscure"." The Hardy Review (2009): 41-51. JSTOR,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/45300363
6. Research Article on the character study of Sue Bridehead:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374700278_Susanna_'Sue'_Bridehead
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