Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

Introduction of Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June 1840, Stinsford, United Kingdom.Thomas Hardy OM was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Wordsworth. He died on11 January 1928, Dorchester, United Kingdom.

About Jude the Obscure Novel 

Jude the Obscure is a novel by Thomas Hardy, which began as a magazine serial in December 1894 and was first published in book form in 1895. It is Hardy's last completed novel. The protagonist, Jude Fawley, is a working-class young man; he is a stonemason who dreams of becoming a scholar. 

Character of  Richard Phillotson

Phillotson is eminently the respectable man. Though he fails to achieve the same goals Jude pursues, his bearing and view of things do not change much. Even when Arabella encounters him on the road to Alfredston, now down on his luck and teaching at Marygreen because it's the only place that will have him, this air of respectability remains. It must be this which Sue can't stand about him, the respectability plus the legal right to make love to her.

Sue's opinion of him does not make him any less decent. He is like Jude in many ways: he is goodhearted and honorable-, he allows instinct to overrule reason; he is too accommodating for his own good; he is intelligent. Like Jude he is ill-equipped to get what he wants in life and soon resigns himself to mediocrity. However, unlike Jude he no longer is dazzled by ideals, perhaps because he is older. Maybe too late he learns to act on the basis of calculation, estimating that Sue's return will be worth the benefits it may bring.

Phillotson, in short, is a man whom it is easy neither to like nor to dislike; he goes largely unnoticed.

Character of Jude

The novel’s protagonist, a poor orphan who is raised by his great-aunt after his parents divorced and died. Jude dreams of attending the university at Christminister, but he fails to be accepted because of his working class background. He is a skilled stonemason and a kindly soul who cannot hurt any living thing. Jude’s “fatal flaw” is his weakness regarding alcohol and women, and he allows his marriage to Arabella, even though it is unhappy, to distract himself from his dream. He shares a deep connection with his cousin Sue, but their relationship is doomed by their earlier marriages, society’s disapproval, and bad luck. Jude starts out pious and religious, but by the end of his life he has grown agnostic and bitter.