Blake Krametbauer
Little Jude the Most Obscure
Jude the Obscure is, most obviously, a novel about human relationships, about love, about religion and its impact on society. On a deeper level, however, it is clear that Thomas Hardy had much more to say. Human error and mortality both weighed heavily upon Hardy’s aging mind as he wrote the last of his novels in the 1890s. These themes are made apparent in many ways, especially through Father Time, the enigmatic son of Jude Fawley and Arabella Donn.
Born
“eight months after [Arabella] left”[1]
Jude for
At first look, it appears that this boy has two separate halves: that of Father Time, a philosophical, barely human entity who is more of a symbolic component to this story, as well as that of Little Jude, a mere child in a lower class world, doomed for the failure that his caste has a predilection for.
Father Time is the first half we are introduced to; we see him as he sits on the train headed first to Arabella, then directly to Jude. He is picttured as a quiet child, his interactions with others limited to few words, all of which are concise and tell no more than what is immediately pertinent. Aside from the short directness of his words, the content itself shows him to have a well-advanced, mature demeanor. When informed he would have to walk through an unknown town in the dark, he simply replies that he is “not afraid.”[4] Unlike most children who innately fear the dark, he does not hesitate in undertaking such an expedition through the unknown. Additionally, after a short discourse with Sue about the residency of his father, he attempts to clear up any possible misunderstandings by stating that “Mr. Fawley, that’s his name.”[5] This statement, whose tone is bordering on sheer agitation, shows not only his adult-like method for handling situations, but also his refusal to waste time on trivialities.
These characteristic curt responses work to heighten the value of Father Time’s few words, an effect that Hardy uses to its full extent. The first few lines that Father Time speaks are more than philosophical, they are direct foreshadowing, giving him a nearly supernatural air. Indeed, from the descriptions that we are presented with, such as his “mechanical creep which had in it an impersonal quality—the movement of the wave, or of the breeze, or of the clouds”[6] he seems to emit a somewhat ethereal presence. When he warns Sue, then, that "if [he] were [Sue], [he] wouldn't marry [Jude]!"[7] he is not merely commenting on the tale that they had just previously been told, but rather lamenting the unavoidable calamity that the couple must soon endure.
Figure 1: A pair of dead roses,
similar to what Father Time symbolically imagined the
Again, he warns against this evanescently blissful union at the Wessex Agricultural Show when he tells his parents that he “should like the flowers very very much, if [he] didn’t keep on thinking they’d be all withered in a few days.”[9] His prophecy is fulfilled in a short while with the separation and damnation of both Jude and Sue. While he may be able to view the beauty in both concrete objects as well as general situations, he cannot help but know that all beauty will fade over time, leaving mere disappointment and longing in its stead.
Time, then, as both his name and actions imply, is an important aspect of Father Time. Father Time as our Western culture knows him is either based on Chronos, the Greek god who is the manifestation of time itself, or more likely, Chronus, the titan who spawned many of the original Greek mythological gods. Though not actually a god himself, he was worshipped as one by the Romans, who changed him from merely an important titan to the god of human time; he was gifted with a scythe from his mother, which he then used to castrate his father.
Figure 2: A painting of the Greek titan Chronus, god of human time.
Looking at this picture, it is easy to see where our Western Culture draws its imagery of the grim reaper, the bringer of death, from.
Figure 3: The modern-day depiction of the Grim Reaper, he who reaps souls for the afterlife.
The basic idea of Western society’s Father Time, then, is the inevitable human decay into infertility and eventually death. Jude’s young son, Father Time, can be seen to serve this same purpose—to make clear these unknowns realities in the lives of Jude and Sue. When Jude first meets his son, he excitedly postulates that what he “couldn’t accomplish in [his] own person perhaps [he] can carry out through [Father Time]!”[12] This idea of living through one’s children is still heavily present in our culture today. Many people find comfort in the hope that their legacy will live on through their children, and that they have a chance, then, at immortality. Father Time, however, dashes this hope of Jude’s when he not only kills himself, but also all of Jude’s children. This can be seen as Father Time ruining Jude’s hopes to live through his current children; because this is the catalyst for Sue’s spiritual revelation, which ultimately leads to her leaving him, it can also be seen as a symbolic castration, preventing him from having any more children. All together, this presents Father Time to be a warning to Jude, a caution against Jude’s inherent mortality and imminent death.
The other half to this sagacious creature is Little Jude, affectionately Juey, a boy who appears to be like any other. This name was given to Father Time by Jude and Sue, in a further attempt to prolong Jude’s life beyond his death. We first see Little Jude shine through in his initial encounter with Sue, when he pitifully inquires if it was her “who’s [his] real mother?”[13] Having lived a tumultuous life, seemingly wanted nowhere and therefore loved minimally at best, his desire for maternal relations is understandable. This scene continues as a “yearning look [comes] over the child and he [begins] to cry.”[14] His emotional response to this good news is realistic, as it is more than any child in such a situation could bear, and as such, he is further humanized and made to seem as but a normal kid. This reasonable, childlike figure reappears many times throughout the fifty pages that his character is present in the book, woven intermittently with Father Time. He appears the next time when Jude and Sue are painting the Ten Commandments in the church Upset from “how some boys had taunted him about his nominal mother,”[15] he cries to Sue about the hardships he is encountering in school due to Jude and Sue’s refusal to get legally married.
Both of these halves, however, merge on one feature: they are both horribly saddened and frustrated by society’s shortcomings. From Father Time’s perspective, this is shown through his eyes’ assertion that “there is no laughable thing under the sun,”[16] and through Little Jude’s cry that “whenever children be born that are not wanted they should be killed directly.”[17] They are both also nearly mutually exclusive, in that while Little Jude appears and cries only to Sue, the philosophical Father Time only manifests himself in Jude’s presence. If we, then, assume that Father Time is to act as a warning against Jude’s mortality, this brings into question the meaning of Little Jude to Sue, inquiring whether or not this young boy represents anything greater in the novel as a whole.
To answer this, we must look at the interactions between Sue and Little Jude, and how they impact Sue as a character. After Sue releases her pigeons from the poulterer’s cage, she, frustrated, exclaims “O why should Nature’s law be mutual butchery!”[18] Little Jude immediately responds with what seems to be appropriate childhood inquisitiveness. The next line of the novel goes as follows: “’Is it so, mother?’ asked the boy intently.”[19] Though it may seem as but the innocent acquisition of knowledge of the world around him, Hardy’s diction must be closely analyzed. He states that the boy asks “intently,” which usually means with eagerness, as if he is eager to learn. However, looking at the etymology of the word, it can be surmised that Little Jude’s question was also full of intent, as if he expected to elicit a specific outburst from Sue. He is successful, as Sue exclaims “‘yes!’...vehemently.”[20] When scrutinized closely, Little Jude no longer appears to be innocent to any extent, but somewhat calculating and spiteful.
This same sort of interaction can be seen immediately before he kills himself and his siblings. Capitalizing on his mother’s current despair, he cries “mother, what shall we do tomorrow!”[21] With similar syntax to that of Sue’s previous exclamations of the affliction of nature, Little Jude does not ask his mother what the future holds, but merely reiterates the deplorable situation they have found themselves in, helping naught but to further Sue’s depression. This lengthy exchange between Little Jude and Sue, the most that he speaks throughout the course of the novel, coincidentally his last spoken words, continues on in the fashion of a sadistic game of cat and mouse. Little Jude poses questions and produces assertions that are directly aimed at aggravating Sue’s deepest insecurities and fears. His impact, then, paralleling that of Father Time’s caution of mortality to Jude, is to bring about Sue’s realization of the worst of reality. He does not merely act as a child to Sue, but rather as a mentor to her, teaching her what she could never come to terms with on her own.
The dichotomy of Father Time and Little Jude is one of the shortest lived minor characters in the novel. Spanning barely fifty pages, he is quickly inserted and then removed from the story. He is, however, the catalyst for both Jude’s realization of mortality as well as Sue’s epiphany of the harsh realities she had been too long fighting recognition of. In his own words, his death marks “Judgment Day,”[22] where both Jude and Sue are tried and found guilty, punished by damnation, and their almost-wedding dissolved, along with their last strains of happiness.
Word Count With Quotes: 1841
Word Count: 1670
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