Madeline Vu
E 375L
Restrictions on the Individual in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure
Hardy endured many years of social criticism and angry outcries from reviewers and critics for the tragedy titled Jude the Obscure. The public reacted hysterically to Hardy’s portrayal of the institution of marriage and the explicit sexual undertones of the novel. This incredible uproar eventually convinced Hardy to devote himself to poetry, proclaiming that he would never return to writing novels. Although many critics condemn Jude the Obscure to have no theme beyond the sexual relations of Jude, Sue, Arabella and Phillotson,[1] the book criticizes an entire system that is split between modernity and cultural continuities. Ultimately, Hardy explores the problems of masculinity both culturally and socially, revealing its constrictions and limitations on the individual.
A facet of masculinity in Victorian England’s patriarchal society is the university, which appears to be a house that facilitates learning for the minds of young men, yet it harbors many social restrictions. From a very young age, Jude realizes that to become a man in this type of society, one is expected earn a university degree at Christminister, for it was a “necessary hallmark of a man who wants to do anything in teaching.”[2] For example, Jude makes Phillotson his early model of success in this patriarchal society. Although Jude is not of the upper or the middle class, he uses Phillotson as a substitute of a middle-class for a lower-class model of manhood.[3] Jude also prepares his mind for the centers of higher learning by teaching himself Latin and Greek. “And although Jude may have little chance of becoming a scholar by these rough and ready means, he was in the way of getting into the groove he wished to follow.”[4] Jude tries all he can to embody the image of a university man, but he does not realize that this place of refuge for his manhood only sets him up for confinement. For instance, when Jude finally tries to gain admission into the university by writing to five professors, he is told that he would have a much better chance of success in life by remaining in his own sphere and sticking to his own trade. An early example of this class separation is when Aunt Drusilla tells Jude, “We’ve never had anything to do with folk in Christminister, nor folk in Christminister with we.”[5] His realization that Christminister will not accept him because he is of the working class reinforces his childhood perceptions about the difficulties of growing up and becoming a man. Jude is an intelligent person, but his inability to obtain higher education restricts him to skilled labor and ultimately to his death.
Furthermore, when Jude turns nineteen it is not sexual desire that hinders him but a cultural paradigm of masculinity, specifically that of chivalric code and courtship that seem to displace him from his course. His desire to possess someone like Arabella is only initiated because of his need to become a man. At first, Jude’s desire for women is in itself a form of unknowing. Before he met Arabella, he stated that he never thought about women in a sexual manner. Although Jude becomes involved with Arabella sexually, he interprets this distraction only as a natural instinct that can instantly gratify him. In fact, it is Jude's construction of manliness that actually betrays him because he applies a middle-class ethic to someone defined by low-class values as Arabella. In particular, Jude knows too well that Arabella was not worth a great deal as a specimen of womankind,[6] yet he honors her claim of pregnancy. Arabella never ends up looking like Picasso’s depiction of pregnancy and as a result, Jude is left manipulated.
Picasso, Girl Before a Mirror
Even though these social codes that
he respects belong more to the upper or middle class which separate him from the
peasant cynicism of country women like Arabella and Aunt Drusilla,[8] his vulnerability to this discourse limits himself
to a bleak life. For example, he is
forced to move into a small hut outside the city of
Warhol, Double Elvis
Beyond that, the
last half of the novel focuses on the Jude’s struggles between two directions,
much like this Warhol painting. This is
the beginning of Jude’s desire for existence outside the customs and conventions
of the time, yet his life is still defined by his futile attempts to fulfill
the needs of manhood and the cultural demands of masculinity. For example, Hardy uses Sue to represent the
alternative voice that is constructed outside of this patriarchal world that Jude
abides to. She represents an archetype
for a character that many named, the “New Woman” during the Victorian period.[10] Like other New Women, Hardy characterizes Sue
Bridehead as an intellectual, unconventional for her time period, and
essentially very modern. She lives alone
in
Picasso, Woman Dressing Her Hair
In addition, much like the unrestricted shape of the human body in this Picasso painting, Sue tries to teach Jude that “the social moulds civilization fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to the real star-patterns.”[13] However, despite Sue’s initial influence, Jude’s behavior is still confined to his society’s cultural demands of manhood. For instance, in this era of female subordination to males, Sue wishes to transcend gender stereotypes by developing relationships with men that are beyond sexual, yet Jude falls in love and marries her. Although Jude initially has concerns about marriage, reminiscent to his relationship with Arabella, he still thinks, “for what man is he that hath betrothed a wife and hath not take her?”[14] Thus, he never forgets the social conventions that he initially internalized, and as a result, no one believes that they are married. In the end they are confined to a life of constant movement in order for anonymity and work.
Despite Jude’s brief moment of independent thought, he is still fixed upon the privileges of cultural continuity and hierarchical order in comparison to the unconventional, represented by his relationship with Sue. His return to Christminister represents authority that Jude always desired for. Even though they are denied lodgings, his decision to stay in Christminister confirms his beliefs and core values. For instance, Sue states that “he still thinks it a great centre of high and fearless thought, instead of what it is, a nest of commonplace schoolmasters whose characteristic is timid obsequiousness to tradition.”[15] Consequently, his rejection of Sue means his rejection for the unconventional and the collapse of his desires for existence outside of the patriarchal world. Although Jude defies the same chivalric code that he abided to from the very beginning, by leaving Sue and his children, he tries to reestablish a facet of his masculinity by remarrying Arabella. Once again he finds himself in the same situation. For instance, he is confined to the unhappiness of marriage and a life where he is unable to pursue any kind of formal, higher education. In the end, his choice to preserve his masculinity that his society has defined for him seems to characterize his entire life. Jude wanted an intellectual life but all he did was frame the tragic limitation of his manhood. The honor, the rectitude, the righteousness, and the learning that Jude claims as the hallmarks of his middle-class manhood allow him to die with the words of Job on his lips.[16] “Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, ‘There is a man child conceived.’” [17]
In the end, Jude the Obscure questions the social constructs of gender and the conflicts and contradictories imposed by class. The irony of the novel lies in Jude’s ambitions to transcend social class structures, which ends in nothing more than conformity to both the social and cultural expectations of manhood. In the process, Hardy has revealed masculinity as a cultural and social class construct, one that coerces and limits individuals even as it holds out the irresistible promise of conferring definitive meaning on their lives.[18] Hardy’s novel of such dilemma links him to more modern thought. Although Jude the Obscure may not be as realistic as hoped, the complexities of emotion and the characters that convey these complexities of the human condition are quite moving.
W.C = 1,525
W.C. of quotes: 159
Total W.C. = 1366
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