jude the obscure (thomas hardy)

three possible readings:

1, Perhaps the preferred reading. Hardy skewers a system which is weighted against the less fortunate, which promotes mediocrity in place of honesty and talent, which is a damning mirror of a society which hasn’t evolved in over a century. Jude’s calvary, from aspirant man of letters to stonemason martyr remains a pertinent lesson for Britain, where privilege continues to trump endeavour. Most glaringly in the faux glory of Oxbridge, that sham system which has perpetuated class divisions over the course of centuries. 

2, This is a novel which destroys the self-esteem of its supposedly heroic protagonists, Jude and Sue. The writer curses them with a fallibility neither deserve in order to make his polemical point, in the process reducing their struggle to a mean, petty romance, doomed to disaster. The writer’s personal marital hang-ups get in the way of his own characters, whose endless procrastination diminishes them. 

3, This is not a novel about the class system, or even about education. It’s a novel about the pernicious influence of societal norms, driven by reactionary forces, in this case represented by the institution of marriage and the church. It’s Hardy’s counterblast to the conservatism of Shakespeare, to the false happy-ever-after occidental romantic myths, which continue to be perpetuated by the gender stereotypes inherited by females and males alike. As such Jude the Obscure is genuinely radical text, not so much because of its critique of Oxbridge and the education systems, but because of an altogether more radical critique of marriage and monogamy. A critique which was a precursor of the sexual revolution of the sixties/ seventies and the identity revolution of the 2010’s.

Of course there’s no reason why these readings are mutually exclusive. Suffice to say that Hardy’s last novel is a slippery, complex beast, which frustrates straightforward interpretation. With moments when it feels as though even the writer isn’t exactly sure where his novel is headed, what he’s going to do with the troubling characters he has created. Mulling it over it’s curious to think how close Hardy’s world was to Laurie Lee’s. Which suggests that for a brief time in the twentieth century, social mobility became more feasible in the United Kingdom, although one fears that at some stage the tide has turned and we are receding back towards the obscurity of the Britain whose pathways Jude forlornly patrolled.