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Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy
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Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy
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Powerful and controversial from its 1895 publication to the present, Jude the Obscure scandalized Victorian critics, who condemned it as decadent, indecent, and degenerate. Between its frank portrayals of sexuality and its indictments of marriage, religion, and England's class system, the novel offended a broad swath of readers. Its heated reception led the embittered author to renounce fiction, turning his considerable talents ever afterward to writing poetry.
Hardy's last novel depicts a changing world, where a poor stonemason can aspire to a university education and a higher place in society—but where in reality such dreams remain unattainable. Thwarted at every turn, Jude Hawley abandons his hopes, is trapped into an unwise marriage, and pursues a doomed relationship with his free-spirited cousin, Sue Bridehead. The lovers find themselves equally incapable of living within the conventions of their era and of transcending its legal and moral strictures. Hailed by modern critics as a pioneering work of feminism and socialist thought, Hardy's tragic parable continues to resonate with readers.
Hardy's last novel depicts a changing world, where a poor stonemason can aspire to a university education and a higher place in society—but where in reality such dreams remain unattainable. Thwarted at every turn, Jude Hawley abandons his hopes, is trapped into an unwise marriage, and pursues a doomed relationship with his free-spirited cousin, Sue Bridehead. The lovers find themselves equally incapable of living within the conventions of their era and of transcending its legal and moral strictures. Hailed by modern critics as a pioneering work of feminism and socialist thought, Hardy's tragic parable continues to resonate with readers.
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Sujet
LiteraturaSous-sujet
ClĂĄsicosPART SIXTH
AT CHRISTMINSTER AGAIN
â. . . And she humbled her body greatly, and all the places of her joy she filled with her torn hair.â
âESTHER (Apoc.).
âThere are two who decline, a woman and I, And enjoy our death in the darkness here.â
âR. BROWNING.
I
On their arrival the station was lively with straw-hatted young men, welcoming young girls who bore a remarkable family likeness to their welcomers, and who were dressed up in the brightest and lightest of raiment.
âThe place seems gay,â said Sue. âWhyâit is Remembrance Day!âJudeâhow sly of youâyou came to-day on purpose!â
âYes,â said Jude quietly, as he took charge of the small child, and told Arabellaâs boy to keep close to them, Sue attending to their own eldest. âI thought we might as well come to-day as on any other.â
âBut I am afraid it will depress you!â she said, looking anxiously at him up and down.
âOh, I mustnât let it interfere with our business; and we have a good deal to do before we shall be settled here. The first thing is lodgings.â
Having left their luggage and his tools at the station they proceeded on foot up the familiar street, the holiday people all drifting in the same direction. Reaching the Fourways they were about to turn off to where accommodation was likely to be found when, looking at the clock and the hurrying crowd, Jude said: âLet us go and see the procession, and never mind the lodgings just now? We can get them afterwards.â
âOughtnât we to get a house over our heads first?â she asked.
But his soul seemed full of the anniversary, and together they went down Chief Street, their smallest child in Judeâs arms, Sue leading her little girl, and Arabellaâs boy walking thoughtfully and silently beside them. Crowds of pretty sisters in airy costumes, and meekly ignorant parents who had known no college in their youth, were under convoy in the same direction by brothers and sons bearing the opinion written large on them, that no properly qualified human beings had lived on earth till they came to grace it here and now.
âMy failure is reflected on me by every one of those young fellows,â said Jude. âA lesson on presumption is awaiting me to-day!âHumiliation Day for me! . . . If you, my dear darling, hadnât come to my rescue, I should have gone to the dogs with despair!â
She saw from his face that he was getting into one of his tempestuous, self-harrowing moods. âIt would have been better if we had gone at once about our own affairs, dear,â she answered. âI am sure this sight will awaken old sorrows in you, and do no good!â
âWellâwe are near; we will see it now,â said he.
They turned in on the left by the church with the Italian porch, whose helical columns were heavily draped with creepers, and pursued the lane till there arose on Judeâs sight the circular theatre with that well-known lantern above it, which stood in his mind as the sad symbol of his abandoned hopes, for it was from that outlook that he had finally surveyed the City of Colleges on the afternoon of his great meditation, which convinced him at last of the futility of his attempt to be a son of the university.
To-day, in the open space stretching between this building and the nearest college, stood a crowd of expectant people. A passage was kept clear through their midst by two barriers of timber, extending from the door of the college to the door of the large building between it and the theatre.
âHere is the placeâthey are just going to pass!â cried Jude in sudden excitement. And pushing his way to the front he took up a position close to the barrier, still hugging the youngest child in his arms, while Sue and the others kept immediately behind him. The crowd filled in at their back, and fell to talking, joking, and laughing as carriage after carriage drew up at the lower door of the college, and solemn stately figures in blood-red robes began to alight. The sky had grown overcast and livid, and thunder rumbled now and then.
Father Time shuddered. âIt do seem like the Judgment Day!â he whispered.
âThey are only learned doctors,â said Sue.
While they waited big drops of rain fell on their heads and shoulders, and the delay grew tedious. Sue again wished not to stay.
âThey wonât be long now,â said Jude, without turning his head.
But the procession did not come forth, and somebody in the crowd, to pass the time, looked at the façade of the nearest college, and said he wondered what was meant by the Latin inscription in its midst. Jude, who stood near the inquirer, explained it, and finding that the people all round him were listening with interest, went on to describe the carving of the frieze (which he had studied years before), and to criticize some details of masonry in other college fronts about the city.
The idle crowd, including the two policemen at the doors, stared like the Lycaonians at Paul, for Jude was apt to get too enthusiastic over any subject in hand, and they seemed to wonder how the stranger should know more about the buildings of their town than they themselves did; till one of them said: âWhy, I know that man; he used to work here years agoâJude Fawley, thatâs his name! Donât you mind he used to be nicknamed Tutor of St. Slums, dâye mind?âbecause he aimed at that line oâ business? Heâs married, I suppose, then, and thatâs his child heâs carrying. Taylor would know him, as he knows everybody.â
The speaker was a man named Jack Stagg, with whom Jude had formerly worked in repairing the college masonries; Tinker Taylor was seen to be standing near. Having his attention called the latter cried across the barriers to Jude: âYouâve honoured us by coming back again, my friend!â
Jude nodded.
âAnâ you donât seem to have done any great things for yourself by going away?â
Jude assented to this also.
âExcept found more mouths to fill!â This came in a new voice, and Jude recognized its owner to be Uncle Joe, another mason whom he had known.
Jude replied good-humouredly that he could not dispute it; and from remark to remark something like a general conversation arose between him and the crowd of idlers, during which Tinker Taylor asked Jude if he remembered the Apostlesâ Creed in Latin still, and the night of the challenge in the public house.
âBut Fortune didnât lie that way?â threw in Joe. âYer powers wasnât enough to carry âee through?â
âDonât answer them any more!â entreated Sue.
âI donât think I like Christminster!â murmured little Time mournfully, as he stood submerged and invisible in the crowd.
But finding himself the centre of curiosity, quizzing, and comment, Jude was not inclined to shrink from open declarations of what he had no great reason to be ashamed of; and in a little while was stimulated to say in a loud voice to the listening throng generally:
âIt is a difficult question, my friends, for any young manâthat question I had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing at the present moment in these uprising timesâwhether to follow uncritically the track he finds himself in, without considering his aptness for it, or to consider what his aptness or bent may be, and re-shape his course accordingly. I tried to do the latter, and I failed. But I donât admit that my failure proved my view to be a wrong one, or that my success would have made it a right one; though thatâs how we appraise such attempts nowadaysâI mean, not by their essential soundness, but by their accidental outcomes. If I had ended by becoming like one of these gentlemen in red and black that we saw dropping in here by now, everybody would have said: âSee how wise that young man was, to follow the bent of his nature!â But having ended no better than I began they say: âSee what a fool that fellow was in following a freak of his fancy!â
âHowever it was my poverty and not my will that consented to be beaten. It takes two or three generations to do what I tried to do in one; and my impulsesâaffectionsâvices perhaps they should be calledâwere too strong not to hamper a man without advantages; who should be as cold-blooded as a fish and as selfish as a pig to have a really good chance of being one of his countryâs worthies. You may ridicule meâI am quite willing that you shouldâI am a fit subject, no doubt. But I think if you knew what I have gone through these last few years you would rather pity me. And if they knewââhe nodded towards the college at which the dons were severally arrivingââit is just possible they would do the same.â
âHe do look ill and worn-out, it is true!â said a woman.
Sueâs face grew more emotional; but though she stood close to Jude she was screened.
âI may do some good before I am deadâbe a sort of success as a frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story,â continued Jude, beginning to grow bitter, though he had opened serenely enough. âI was, perhaps, after all, a paltry victim to the spirit of mental and social restlessness that makes so many unhappy in these days!â
âDonât tell them that!â whispered Sue with tears, at perceiving Judeâs state of mind. âYou werenât that. You struggled nobly to acquire knowledge, and only the meanest souls in the world would blame you!â
Jude shifted the child into a more easy position on his arm, and concluded: âAnd what I appear, a sick and poor man, is not the worst of me. I am in a chaos of principlesâgroping in the darkâacting by instinct and not after example. Eight or nine years ago when I came here first, I had a neat stock of fixed opinions, but they dropped away one by one; and the further I get the less sure I am. I doubt if I have anything more for my present rule of life than following inclinations which do me and nobody else any harm, and actually give pleasure to those I love best. There, gentlemen, since you wanted to know how I was getting on, I have told you. Much good may it do you! I cannot explain further here. I perceive there is something wrong somewhere in our social formulas: what it is can only be discovered by men or women with greater insight than mineâif, indeed, they ever discover itâat least in our time. âFor who knoweth what is good for man in this life?âand who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?ââ
âHear, hear,â said the populace.
âWell preached!â said Tinker Taylor. And privately to his neighbours: âWhy, one of them jobbing paâsons swarming about here, that takes the services when our head reverends want a holiday, wouldnât haâ discoursed such doctrine for less than a guinea down? Hey? Iâll take my oath not one oâ âem would! And then he must have had it wrote down for ân. And this only a working-man!â
As a sort of objective commentary on Judeâs remarks there drove up at this moment with a belated doctor, robed and panting, a cab whose horse failed to stop at the exact point required for setting down the hirer, who jumped out and entered the door. The driver, alighting, began to kick the animal in the belly.
âIf that can be done,â said Jude, âat college gates in the most religious and educational city in the world, what shall we say as to how far weâve got?â
âOrder!â said one of the policemen, who had been engaged with a comrade in opening the large doors opposite the college. âKeep yer tongue quiet, my man, while the procession passes.â The rain came on more heavily, and all who had umbrellas opened them. Jude was not one of these, and Sue only possessed a small one, half sunshade. She had grown pale, though Jude did not notice it then.
âLet us go on, dear,â she whispered, endeavouring to shelter him. âWe havenât any lodgings yet, remember, and all our things are at the station; and you are by no means well yet. I am afraid this wet will hurt you!â
âThey are coming now. Just a moment, and Iâll go!â said he.
A peal of six bells struck out, human faces began to crowd the windows around, and the procession of heads of houses and new doctors emerged, their red and black gowned forms passing across the field of Judeâs vision like inaccessible planets across an object glass.
As they went their names were called by knowing informants; and when they reached the old round theatre of Wren a cheer rose high.
âLetâs go that way!â cried Jude, and though it now rained steadily he seemed not to know it, and took them round to the theatre. Here they stood upon the straw that was laid to drown the discordant noise of wheels, where the quaint and frost-eaten stone busts encircling the building looked with pallid grimness on the proceedings, and in particular at the bedraggled Jude, Sue, and their children, as at ludicrous persons who had no business there.
âI wish I could get in!â he said to her fervidly. âListenâI may catch a few words of the Latin speech by staying here; the windows are open.â
However, beyond the peals of the organ, and the shouts and hurrahs between each piece of oratory, Judeâs standing in the wet did not bring much Latin to his intelligence more than, now and then, a sonorous word in um or ibus.
âWellâIâm an outsider to the end of my days!â he sighed after a while. âNow Iâll go, my patient Sue. How good of you to wait in the rain all this timeâto gratify my infatuation! Iâll never care any more about the infernal cursed place, upon my soul I wonât! But what made you tremble so when we were at the barrier? And how pale you are, Sue!â
âI saw Richard amongst the people on the other side.â
âAhâdid you!â
âHe is evidently come up to Jerusalem to see the festival like the rest of us: and on that account is probably living not so very far away. He had the same hankering for the university that you had, in a milder form. I donât think he saw me, though he must have heard you speaking to the crowd. But he seemed not to notice.â
âWellâsuppose he did. Your mind is free from worries about him now, my Sue?â
âYes, I suppose so. But I am weak. Although I know it is all right with our plans, I felt a curious dread of him; an awe, or terror, of conventions I donât believe in. It comes over me at times like a sort of creeping paralysis, and makes me so sad!â
âYou are getting tired, Sue. OhâI forgot, darling! Yes, weâll go on at once.â
They started in quest of the lodging, and at last found something that seemed to promise well, in Mildew Laneâa spot which to Jude was irresistibleâthough to Sue it was not so fascinatingâa narrow lane close to the back of a college, but having no communication with it. The little houses were darkened to gloom by the high collegiate buildings, within which life was so far removed from that of the people in the lane as if it had been on opposite sides of the globe; yet only a thickness of wall divided them. Two or three of the houses had notices of rooms to let, and the newcomers knocked at the door of one, which a woman opened.
âAhâlisten!â said Jude suddenly, instead of addressing her.
âWhat?â
âWhy the bellsâwhat church can that be? The tones are familiar.â
Another peal o...