Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

Thomas Hardy (Author), Patricia Ingham (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 2009 | Series: Oxford World's Classics

Hardy's last and most controversial novel, Jude the Obscure caused much outrage when it was published in 1895. Jude Fawley, poor and working-class, longs to study at the University of Christminster, but his ambitions to go to university are thwarted by class prejudice and his entrapment in a loveless marriage. He falls in love with his unconventional cousin, Sue Bridehead, and their refusal to marry when free to do so confirms their rejection of and by the world around them. The shocking fate that overtakes them is an indictment of a rigid and uncaring society. This is the first truly critical edition, taking account of the changes that Hardy made over twenty-five years. Hardy's last, and most controversial novel, this revised edition has the first truly critical text, a new chronology and bibliography, and substantially revised notes.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Jude the Obscure created storms of scandal and protest for the author upon its publication. Hardy, disgusted and disappointed, devoted the remainder of his life to poetry and never wrote another novel. Today, the material is far less shocking. Jude Fawley, a poor stone carver with aspirations toward an academic career, is thwarted at every turn and is finally forced to give up his dreams of a university education. He is tricked into an unwise marriage, and when his wife deserts him, he begins a relationship with a free-spirited cousin. With this begins the descent into bleak tragedy as the couple alternately defy and succumb to the pressures of a deeply disapproving society. Hardy's characters have a fascinating ambiguity: they are victimized by a stern moral code, but they are also selfish and weak-willed creatures who bring on much of their own difficulties through their own vacillations and submissions to impulse. The abridgment speeds Jude's fall to considerable dramatic effect, but it also deletes the author's agonizing logic. Instead of the meticulous weaving of Jude's destiny, we get a somewhat incoherent summary that preserves the major plot points but fails to draw us into the tragedy. Michael Pennington reads resonantly and skillfully, his voice perfectly matching the grim music of Hardy's prose, but this recording can only be recommended for larger public libraries.
-John Owen, Advanced Micro Devices, Sunnyvale, CA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

'His style touches sublimity'
—T.S. Eliot



'The greatest tragic writer among English novelists'
—Virginia Woolf

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 019953702X
• ISBN-13: 978-0199537020
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.9 x 7.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (186 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #260,030 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 66 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Hardy's Last Novel March 1, 2000

By frumiousb VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Supposedly, this book was burned by the Bishop of Wakefield when it was first released, and Hardy's wife was furious at him because people would think it was autobiographical. The response to the book was the final nail in the coffin that caused Hardy to stop writing novels.

Jude Hawley is born into a changing world-- a world that's changed enough that a poor boy can dream about a university eduction and a professional future. However, it hadn't changed enough for that dream to yet be realizable. Hawley instead is entrapped into a hasty marriage and sacrifices his dreams of further education. Even after the marriage is dissolved by the wife removing herself to Australia, Jude continues to be haunted for the rest of his life by his early mistake-- dooming himself and his true love to a lifetime of misery.

The book is bleak. The characters (Jude and Sue, primarily) can't live with the choices that law and religion demands, but they can't live outside them either and their attempts to do so only drive them down deeper. The central thesis of the book, and the one that was so shocking a the time, was that these moral and legal strictures prevented people from fulfilling their dreams and living happy lives. Jude the Obscure challenges the sanctity of marriage by building a tragedy about people trapped by its convention.

An important and challenging book. It continues to be relevant today.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Dreams deferred July 19, 2005

By A.J.

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Ready for four hundred pages of sparkle and sunshine? "Jude the Obscure" is about a group of people whose every hope and dream is gradually crushed to a fine powder and blown away by the winds of despair. Hardy is his usual unforgiving self in this grim, discomforting tale of educational goals thwarted, marital bliss destroyed, childhood innocence corrupted, and spiritual redemption viciously mocked. Those who might suspect that this is a recent example of the current cultural debasement of family values would be amazed to know that this novel was written not in 1995 but in 1895. Upon its publication, Hardy was criticized for his pessimism when all he was did was herald the arrival of the pessimistic twentieth century.

"Jude the Obscure" is not an indictment of education, marriage, family, or religion, but rather Hardy's bitter commentary on how society misuses these institutions to defend its shaky beliefs and practices. Jude Fawley, the title character and society's puppet, is a young man trying in vain to transcend his environment. A stonemason by trade, he dauntlessly studies Latin and Greek with the rigorous mind of a classical scholar in preparation for entering the ivy-covered Gothic halls of Christminster, a college town supposed to evoke Oxford. Two things stand in his way: He is too poor to afford the tuition, and he marries an ignorant farm girl named Arabella who discourages his academic aspirations.

Separated from Arabella but still legally married, Jude begins a relationship with his pretty cousin, Sue Bridehead, after he moves to Christminster to be nearer his goal, supporting himself with various stonemasonry jobs. Sue marries Jude's former teacher, Richard Phillotson, many years her senior, also rejected by Christminster and now a local schoolmaster.... When Phillotson realizes that Sue's heart belongs to Jude, he sorrowfully but graciously cuts her loose, whereupon she goes to live with her lover. The irony that Hardy emphasizes is that the two couples in the novel who were never meant to be--Jude and Arabella, and Phillotson and Sue--were the ones who married, while Jude and Sue, the only mutually happy couple, are unmarriageable to each other.

Sue is the most interesting, and arguably the most tragic, figure in the novel. At first she appears to be a devout Christian, working in a shop that makes religious ornamentation; but she soon reveals herself to be as cynical as Jude is earnest, acknowledging that she and Jude are descendants of a fractured family for whom marriage seems not to be intended. However, towards the end of the novel her character is transformed by a misfortune so violent and sickening that it has the power to convince her that she is being punished for her sinful ways. A pious person would be probably cheered by choosing conventional morality after such an incident, but Sue, fearful of the wrath of a divine force she can't know or control, is only made more miserable by feeling pressured to accept the undesirable situation of living with her lawful husband.

"Jude the Obscure," even more so than Hardy's other famous novels, is swamped in loneliness, frustration, disillusion, anger, and hopelessness, all delivered by the relentless fist of fate, and it is exhausting to imagine the emotional abysses he would have had to plumb had he decided against all critical opposition to continue this avenue of his career. Hardy, like Jude an autodidact but unlike Jude a professional success nonetheless, is plaintive about a social system that prevents talented people of poverty from realizing their potential while requiring them to live holy lives. His response was to write a book that would shock the public, not to shame them, but into seeing what he saw. Read more ›

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the great ones. August 5, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

As are Hardy's other books, Jude the Obscure is not an "easy read." Appreciating Hardy's work requires a little work and the ability to pay attention and to think a little along the way. But the effort pays off. Jude the Obscure is a great book about the human condition, at least as it exists for many people. Like other Hardy characters, Jude Fawley makes a mistake early in his life and continues to pay the price until the day he dies. He commits an act of folly that seals his doom, and nothing he can do can make it right. This would be merely sad or melodramatic were if not for the fact that Jude is a truly good man with truly good intentions. It is this that makes his story truly tragic. Not only is he trapped by the consequences of his early act of foolishness, but he is also trapped and eventually dragged down by the conventions of a society that is more concerned with status and class than with character and ability and more devoted to mindless tradition than to a considered morality. Most of what can be said of Jude also be said of his love, Sue Bridehead, although I found her to be a less believable and sympathetic character. I was surprised by the frankness with which Hardy deals with sexuality in 1895, and I can understand now the furor this book apparently caused in Britain and America upon publication. Hardy is a writer of great power and insight. He also knows how to build a great story. And he is a novelist of ideas. He has his faults, of course. At his worst, he is wordy, obscure, and pedantic. But at his best, he is one of the most emotionally moving of writers. At times his books flash briliantly with passion. At times, he is heartbreaking. Jude the Obscure is a novel that no lover of fine writing and a great story can afford to miss.... The novel has haunted me for weeks since I read it, and it probably will for a long time. Read more ›

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Examined Life Isn�t Worth Living Either November 29, 2002

By Robert Derenthal

Format:Paperback

Jude wants to get ahead in the world. Starting at a young age he studies the Classics; learns Latin and Greek, and opens his mind wide to knowledge in general. He is preparing himself for Oxford, but Oxford won't have him, nor undoubtedly will any other university. You see he is poor, and poor people aren't admitted to college in Victorian times.

After exiting a short-lived dismal marriage Jude then meets and falls in love with his cousin who ultimately leaves her husband and moves in with him. There is no "happily ever after" in this novel. Sue, his lover, has sexual problems that need the ministrations of Dr. Ruth, who unfortunately was not available at the time. Sex is repellent to her, and so she and Jude live fairly platonic lives; lives that are not made easier by society's negative reaction to their living in "sin".

Jude and Sue are nice, if not psychologically whole, individuals. You wish them well, but Thomas Hardy has decided to sacrifice them to his philosophical views. He burdens the poor couple with society's repressive attitudes toward women, the lower classes, and marital nonconformity. A novel that begins with the hope of springtime, ends in a winter of despair.

It is a pessimistic, depressing story that examines Victorian sexual and societal mores, and for this it was condemned by many critics. Hardy was so affected by this criticism that he never wrote another novel. Instead he successfully turned to poetry, although his pessimism was again apparent in some of his verses (Read for instance his elegant poem "God's Funeral"). Some of the novel is a bit melodramatic, but that is a common trait of many works of the period. My credulity is strained somewhat by the basically non-sexual relationship of Jude and Sue.... Sue is described as an attractive, intelligent and even flirtatious woman. Put simply, I could not fall in love with such a lady, and live with her as brother and sister.

I enjoy many Victorian novels because they combine outstanding literature with an exposition of the society of the times. Hardy is one of England's best. Highly recommended, and I strongly suggest that you buy the Norton Critical Edition of this work. In addition to the novel text you are provided with interesting information about the author, and a collection of contemporary and current reviews of the novel. Read more ›