Jude Part VI: College Life and Ritual (11.15.2005)

Part VI of Jude the Obscure brings interesting social questions into play. Throughout the novel, we have seen Jude as a character struggling between conflicting dreams and temptations. At first, he defines success as education, then his focus shifts to Arabella, then back to education, then back to women. Jude is a character constantly in turmoil. This final section of the novel seems to be a culmination of the conflicts between these various definitions of success. Is success defined by the means and actions one takes during their life or by the ending outcomes of these actions? By the end of the novel, it seems that Jude has defined success as the means during his life, recognizing that

“ ‘It is a difficult question, my friends, for any young man—that question I had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing at the present moment in these uprising times—whether 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 have failed. But I don’t admit that my failure proved my view to be a wrong one; though that’s how we appraise such attempts nowadays—I 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 : “See how wise that young man was, to follow the bent of his nature.” But having ended no better than I began they say: “See what a fool that fellow was in following a freak of his fancy!”’” (344).

Jude has realized that he was successful because his efforts were sound and worthwhile, even if the outcomes of his efforts were not praised by society. This same idea is imparted on Jude by Sue, a woman who sees herself as the moral center of the novel. She believes that Jude’s actions throughout life were honorable for “ ‘Your worldly failure, if you have failed, is to your credit rather than to your blame. Remember that the best and greatest among mankind are those who do themselves no worldly good. Every successful man is more or less a selfish man. The devoted fail. “Charity seeketh not her own” (382).

While it seems simple to extract these meanings from the text, is this really the message Hardy is trying to send to his readers? Jude is a character constantly torn between desires, pleasures and temptations, but what does that mean? He is unable to learn from his mistakes, but is that true of all of society? Are we a group of people constantly shifting from whim to whim or is it by recognizing a common definition of success that we are able to become a more constant society in our endeavors?