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1.1 The Significance of Jude the Obscure
Jude the Obscure, one of the most brilliant masterpieces in the palace of literature, sparkling and shining in the long process of literature history. Read by successive generations, it stood the test of time and was recognized universally as a great work. There are three typical features in Hardy’s novels: strong tragedy hue and unique coincidence and symbolism, marvelous landscape portrait and aesthetic structure, thought-provoking ideas and convincing criticism. Jude the Obscure was one of his masterpieces which possessed these features.
Jude the Obscure, first published in 1895, met with even stronger negative outcries from the Victorian public for its frank treatment of sex, and was often referred to as “Jude the Obscene”. Heavily criticized for its bare attack on the institution of marriage through the presentation of such as eroticism, the book caused further strain on Hardy’s already difficult marriage because Emma Hardy was concerned that Jude the Obscure would be read as autobiography. Some booksellers sold the novel in brown paper bags, and the Bishop of Wakefield, Walsham How, was reputed to have burnt his copy. In his postscript of 1912, Hardy humorously referred to this incident as part of the career of the book: “After these hostile verdicts from the press its next misfortune was to be burnt by a bishop—probably in his despair at not being able to burn me”. After that, Hardy resolved never to write another novel. Jude the Obscure attacked the institutions Britain held: higher education, social class, and marriage. It called, through its narrative, for a new openness in marriage laws and commonly held beliefs about marriage and porce.
Jude the Obscure, the last novel of Hardy, was the most successful one in “ novels about character and environment”. His uncovering about unreasonable education and marriage system of capitalism was utterly profound. Nevertheless, the significance of this novel has no limits. The most striking and jaw-dropping part was that the story alluded to the desolation of heart in human nature and the separation of soul through the depiction of Jude’s love tragedy struggling between soul and lust and the contrast between ambitious life goal and cruel social reality.
1.2 Thomas Hardy’s Life and His Art of Tragedy
Thomas Hardy, born in 1840 in Higher Bockhampton (Upper Bockhampton in his day), is a great poet as well as a great critical and naturalistic novelist known from door to door in 19th century. He is famous for his tragic heroes and heroines and the grave, socially critical tone of his narratives. His novels reveal a profound pessimistic sense of human subjection to fate and circumstance. Most of his novels are set in Wessex, a fictional primitive region. They deal with moral questions, played out through the lives of people living in the countryside, and point to the darker truths behind pastoral visions. They come to light for the vivid description of the vicissitudes of people who live in an agricultural setting threatened by the forces of invading capitalism. These works are regarded as novels of character and environment. He not only exposes and criticizes all sorts of social problems, but finally comes to question and attack the Victorian conventions and morals. Hardy has experienced a change from being cheerful and optimistic to desperate and pessimistic in his writing career.