Let's see where were we - got off the original schedule a bit. I see the consensus was to follow kathleen's suggestion and spend more time on these two chapters.

Sooo, we'll spend another week on Shaston, IV, Chapters 3 & 4, and see if we can get some questions answered...

This may be of interest...may also help understand Sue's characterization, LJ!

"Sue is a type of woman which has always had an attraction for me, but the difficulty of drawing the type has kept me from attempting it till now." (TH to his friend Gosse)

In 1881 a critic, Charles Kegan Paul gives the following generalisation about Hardy's women:

"They are all charming; they are all flirts from their cradle; they are all in love with more than one man at once; they seldom, if they marry at all, marry the right man; and while well-coonducted for the most part, are somewhat lacking in moral sense, and have only rudimentary souls."

He goes on to say that this is not by any means a portrait of Sue, but it does suggest the degree to which Sue's wilfulness and elusiveness are qualities which Hardy had dwelt upon in previous books.

Of all her charms and weaknesses, the one that never ceases to amaze me is Sue's logic. If you had to point to one, which would you choose?

Joan

Joan: What a fabulous heading, where DID you get that photo of Shaftesbury? It's so neat!

And what a wealth of thoughts to chew on. I've got some of Hardy's own thoughts on Sue: will post early tomorrow (the Ides of March) ahahhaha.

I took that remark "as I choose," to be Sue's way of telling Richard she'd do as she liked, whether it was to marry or to live as she pleased. I think he's asking one thing there out of his injured pride, and she's answering another. I think her lack of logic may be just that she's not attuned to anybody else's needs or wants but her own, and thus her strange lapses of logical thought.

Ginny

The combination of intellect and naivete in Sue is interesting. She disputes the limited view of Christian tradition with the confidence of an able historian, but she cannot take adult responsibility for her own predicament. Somewhere in cyberspace I call here a "twit," and so she seems when she wants Jude to take all the responsibility for the kiss. I think she has always wanted him, at first as a friend and companion that she was glad to find when she was at Christminster, where she seemed to be leading a lonely life, and later, as more than a friend. I think he is the first person for whom she has had those feelings, but she is at this point unable to deal with them honestly.

Jude does seem to be at the mercy of his passions, as Ginny says. Are we to consider how much passion interferes with free will? I think free will still exists even in the midst of passion, but its power is reduced by passion. I also think this is more the norm than thae other way around!

Here are Hardy's own words on Sue: I've deleted the parts about the end, (but there are a few remarks, thought they might be germane, so did include), so Jonkie won't have to skip:

In a letter to Sir Edmund Gosse on November 20, 1895:

"You are quite right; there is nothing preverted of depraved in Sue's nature. The abnormalism consists in disproportion, not in inversion, her sexual instinct being healthy as far as it goes, but unusually weak and fastidious. Her sensibilities remain painfully alert notwithstanding, as they do in nature with such women. (!!??!!)

One point illustrating this I could not dwell upon: that, though she has children, her intimacies with Jude have never been more than occasional......omit omit....and one of her reasons for fearing the marriage ceremony is that she fears it would be breaking faith with Jude to withhold herself at pleasure, or altogether, after it; though while uncontracted she feels at liberty to yield herself as seldom as she chooses. This has tended to keep his passion as hot at the end as at the beginning, and helps to break his heart. He has never really possessed her as freely as he desired.

Sue is a type of woman which has always had an attraction for me, but the difficulty of drawing the type has kept me from attempting it till now.

Of course the book is all contrasts--or was meant to be in its original conception."

Now, Jonkie, hope that didn't say too much, I sure am glad he cleared THAT up, aren't you? hahahahahhaah

Ginny

In my "Book" Jude is just plain stupid and Sue is totally, irrevocably, and completely artificial and not believable.

Best

LJ

I am so glad we decided to give these chapters closer attention. They seems to contain more puzzle pieces and we really need them right about now!


Sue, a "twit", "artificial", "everybody's friend, nobody's lover", "self absorbed, deliberately out to hurt people". Jude just plain "stupid", "naive", "at the mercy of his passions"...

Is this how Hardy intended to portray his characters?


LJ comments "somehow the emotions don't fit the characters as developed."


I wonder at Phillotson as he describes "the extraordinary affinity in the attachment between Jude and Sue...their supreme desire to be together...to share each other's emotions and fancies and dreams..." Now, do you ever remember Phillotson observing Jude and Sue together long enough to reach such conclusions? Do you recall ever witnessing such emotions being expressed between Jude and Sue not in Philotson's presence?

I'm with LJ in this...this observance by Phillotson does not "fit" with anything I've seen either.
Hardy seems to be using Phillotson to explain what he is now trying to have us believe of Jude and Sue's relationship.

Do you remember Hardy himself saying that he was not satisfied with the book...that he tried to do too much, and it sort of got away from him and took on a life of its own? Those weren't his words, but it was something like that.

How about spending some time looking at what Hardy was attempting to do?

We had concluded earlier that although he was not a Romantic writer, there were some characteristics of the earlier Romantic writers. Certainly Shelley was one of them. Hardy was a Shelley enthusiast. He knew him personally. There are references to Shelley's characters, Laon and Cyntha in his long poem, The Revolt of Islam, when Phillotson describes the relationship between Jude and Sue. "Platonic!". "Well no. Shelleyan would be nearer to it."

One Hardy biographer, Michael Millgate, writes "though Jude's love for Sue demands physical expression, it is strong enough to comprehend Shelleyan modes of thought and feeling."

"Her sensitivities are painfully alert, but sexual instincts - unusually weak and fastidious."

Here is a clickable to some bit of background on Shelley and the poem referred to here:




Shelley's Revolt of Islam
Reviews of Shelley's Revolt of Islam

I don't know if that helps understand Shelley's views on Romantic love, but there are strong similarities to Hardy's story, aren't there? Even the way the poem was received by the public.

Ginny, you stopped just in time!

Anyone else care to comment as to what Hardy is trying to do in these two chapters?

Joan

I agree completely that in this episode Hardy uses Phillotston to explain the relationship the way he wanted the reader to perceive it. Hardy hasn't really allowed us to "see" that affinity as described by P.

"They seem to be one person split in two." (Phillotston - same section Joan refers to above) Jude is indeed beginning to "part company" with his doctrines, to question the "artificial system of things, under which the normal sex impulses are turned into devilish gins and springs." Sue, who in the previous chapter bemoaned a society that bound us to unhappy commitments made in ignorance now fears the guilt she might have to share over the kiss. She is frightened by the conventions she spurned. It almost seems as if Hardy has them crossing paths, each continuing away from the original position to explore the territory the other has left.

JM, do you get the feeling that Hardy has planned this juxtaposition, or that he is struggling to make broader points and has forgotten the earlier construction of his story - and characterizations...

Joan - Without taking time for careful reflection (mistake!), I'd have to answer BOTH! I think he always planned the juxtaposition, but now the way he is carrying it out seems somewhat unnatural. I don't think I would have said that on my own; I would have thought that this was always Sue, that we had not known her truly before she was in this predicament. Now, especially after reading Hardy's own words about women (thanks, Ginny!), she doesn't seem like the person I thought she was when she and Jude began their friendship. So this is the type that fascinated Hardy! Always to be at a white-hot heat because one is always, or frequently, being denied sex. Well, gosh darn! That's a bit masochistic - or Romantic??? - or both??? -or nuts??? This alters my view of Jude, too. Is the element of frustration necessary to his passion?

I'm still persuaded that Hardy wanted us to witness a transformation beginning - and continuing!

What is that called in psychology when you always yearn after what you can't have and don't want what you do have? Ol Jude cooled off quite a bit and quickly with the fair Arabella: still don't understand the divorce thing with them.

IN fact, when we look at it, the poor guy yearns after a lot of stuff, while doing things I certainly couldn't: being a stone mason, for instance.

I wonder if that's his tragic flaw, if he has one, and this IS a tragedy?

Ginny

Some very good news! Nearly all of the deleted discussion has been restored...all but the last month! Will link the old discussion into this one later today! It was "human error"! Imagine that!
Thanks to all who are laboring to retrieve our precious document!

So JM, who has time for careful reflection these days?! I'll go with your gut reaction. Both! Hardy planned this whole character juxtaposition , but it didn't come off in a natural manner - not fitting the characters as they had been presented to this point!

I think he's been trying to do too many things (as he himself admitted after the book was finished), and these are the chapters where he attempts to pull them all altogether.

He uses his characters to express his social commentary. This time it's Phillotson's turn. In the last chapters, we noted that he was using Sue.


It is impossible to accept the fact that old conventional Phillotson is so understanding and has so much insight into the relationship between Jude and Sue. It makes me wonder how this was accepted by the readership back then. For one thing, the Romantic writers had been filling pages of such liberated thought for many years before Jude was published. We know that Phillotson had no social life, spent much of his time reading. Can we accept he was reading the Romantics as well as classic writings? Does that explain his grasp of the "Romantic"relationship between Jude and Sue?

Do we grasp the nature of the Romantic relationship that Hardy would have us accept? He seems to be going out of his way here to bring Shelley's concept of romantic love into the story. Will copy a bit from the description of Laon and Cyntha in his poem, Revolt of Islam:
'He chose for his hero a youth nourished in dreams of liberty, some of whose actions are in direct opposition to the opinions of the world, but who is animated throughout by an ardent love of virtue, and a resolution to confer the boons of political and intellectual freedom on his fellow-creatures. He created for this youth a woman such as he delighted to imagine--full of enthusiasm for the same objects; and they both, with will unvanquished and the deepest sense of the justice of their cause, met adversity and death.

Hardy seems to be walking a very thin line, trying to cast Jude and Sue in the pure romantic love tradition, while characterizing poor, frustrated Jude as only a partially willing participant! Perhaps that is the tragedy here.

Ginny, will you restate what you see as Jude's tragic flaw? He yearns for that which he does not have, without appreciating what he does have.? Don't we all suffer from such a flaw to some extent...

Don't know the psychological term for this. Not a phobia...probably a mania. Kleptomania? (teehee)

I think we are going to have to accept the characterization Hardy presents in these two chapters, even though they don't seem "to fit" the characters that we thought we knew - as we proceed through the rest of the story.

Either Hardy altered his earlier portrayal - or perhaps he purposely left their actions vague, to be explained later, and WE, Hardy boys and girls, reached our own conclusions, agreed with one another and accepted them as what Hardy had intended!

He seems to take the opportunity in these chapters to clarify the relationship between the two...although there are still lingering questions concerning the individuals' characters and motives.

Michael Millgate, a renowned critic of Hardy (and Faulkner), has much to say of the relationship between Sue and Jude...and something of Shelley's influence on Hardy.

"Hardy's feelings about Shelleyan idealism seem to have been of a somewhat ambivalent kind; the allusion to Laon and Cyntha in the Revolt of Islam seems, however sufficiently appropriate as a means of evoking the spiritual affinity and illusory self-isolation of Jude and Sue.

Till Shaston, I never thought there was much 'spiritual affinity' between the two at all, did you?

Millgate :

"For all their moral and intellectual anxieties, Jude and Sue give an impression of almost Dostoievskean simplicity and innocence, and their childlikeness is emphasized throughout.

The opening presentation of Jude as a boy is extended and powerful, lingering in the mind until it is reinforced by Aunt Drusilla's reminiscences of Sue as a child. The subsequent appearances of Aunt Drusilla and the Widow Edlin help to keep alive an awareness of both Jude and Sue in childhood: in the presence of these grandmotherly figures the pair remain- to them and in some measure to us - the children they once were. They never wholly grasp what social pressures they are likely to encounter, the effect they will have upon other people, the amount of attention their way of life must attract..."

So, we were supposed to grasp their 'affinity' all along...

Are we ready to understand and accept our new 'couple'...the couple which seems to be made up of 'one person split in two'?

This post is from kathleen, who posted in the old Jude discussion, which you can reach through the clickable above.

I have copied kathleen's post to share with you at this site:

Joan, yesterday I read the posts for this week. Today I wanted to go over them again but to my surprise, the ones from Feb.7-11, and a post by Ginny dated March 17 were the only ones I could find. Am I hallucinating? Is the Internet playing games?

I agree that Sue's answer to Richard when he asks her if she wants to live with Jude as his wife, "As I Choose" is the key to her sexuality. I think it is innate in her character to feel ambivalent toward any intimacy. She does realize she is attracted to Jude, but at this point isn't sure she will find sex with him any less offensive than with Richard. According to the Introduction notes, in a letter to EDmund Grosse (Hardy's publisher?), TH writes, " one of her reasons for fearing the marriage ceremony is that she fearsit wouldbe breaking faith with Jude to withhold herself at pleasure, or altogether, after it; though while uncontracted she feels at liberty to yield herself as seldom as she chooses." We used to call women like this a 'tease.' Sue is an intelligent, independent, cold, and possibly heartless woman. She probably accepts her attraction to Jude because she believes his for her is so great that she will be able to dominate him. Will she? I suspect the answer is 'Yes'. Based on her jump into the river when she left the Training School and her jump out the window when Richard entered her bedroom, she may also be borderline psychotic. Ginny, have you read any where that Tryphena had similiar experiences?

Richard's explanation of the end of his marriage to Gillingham has several passages that are pure Hardy. Regarding Sue's jump out the window, it was proof she wanted out of the marriage. Richard concludes: " It is wrong to so torture a fellow-creature any longer; and I won't be the inhuman wretch to do it, cost what it may!" Further on, he continues, "I like other men, profess to hold that if a husband gets such a so-called proposterous request from his wife, the only course that can possibly be regarded as right, and proper, and honorable in him is to refuse it, and put her underlock and key, and murder her lover perhaps. But is that essentially right, and proper, and honourable or is it contemptibly mean and selfish?" (I'm so glad I wasn't born in that age, and am very glad I was born in America) There's more of this reasoning in the exchange between the two friends. Gillingham speaks the part of the social mores on the subject. Richard (TH) continues in that vein. A brilliant exchange!

"For all their moral and intellectual anxieties, Jude and Sue give an impression of almost Dostoievskean simplicity and innocence, and their childlikeness is emphasized throughout."

I think Millgate is helpful... more than Phillotson! I still don't see where P. wouild have had the opportunity to observe Shelleyan idealism in the couple, but in respect to social pressures, human relationships, they are childlike. That's part of the reason they each made such a a serious matrimonial mistake. The Shelley essay (can't find poem, yet) indicates that the hero and heroine are idealists, and I think that applies as the relationship develops. Many would say that idealism is childlike, too!

JM, here's Shelley's poem. I don't have the patience to read it...quite long. If you get through and learn anything that will help with our understanding of Jude and Sue, through Laon and Cymba, let me know!


Shelley's Revolt of Islam


Am printing out your posts to read after dinner, which once again is quite late in our house! Didn't get in from work till after 7 and the dog had to go out...and I had to read my snail mail, and email...and it's a good thing I have a patient, though hungry husband!

Later!

jonkie

Joan, have you or Ginny or anyone found any critical commentary on the title? Any ideas about it?

Jo and Kathleen: Still looking, reading interminable essays on this and that, one alludes here to his cousin, publishing parallels, but stop short, another alludes to the name, but again stops just short, mercy, mercy.

Don't want you all think I've droppped the ball, am running behind the ball trying to catch it. Back later, with, I HOPE, more,

Ginny

Good morning everyone! Hope the sun is shining where you are as it finally is in Arlington, VA! Sumps are still hard at work down in the basement, though...

Well, it's Monday. I am determined to catch up with Jude and Sue today. Before moving on to Chapters 5 & 6, there are some notes I want to share with you first...on Tryphena, the title and divorce...

JM, every critic I have come across indicates that the obscure Jude in the title refers to the General Epistle of Jude in the New Testament, often referred to as the "obscure" epistle as well as the obscure apostle.

Michael Mill gate :" this epistle is caught up in the drama of sin/guilt/ determinism and free will. Hardy intended the 'obscure' in the title to convey the sense of "to fame unknown"

Jude comes from an "obscure" home (p.93), he identifies Sue and himself as "poor obscure people" (310), the theme of education denied which runs throughout the novel glances at the fate of Jude and countless others who remained 'mute'and' 'inglorious', their potentialities unrecognized and unfilled."

----

Millgate also notes that Hardy's first intended title, The Simpletons was intended to describe the relationship between Jude and Sue and their attempt to lead a private life...and their "simplicity and innocence, and childlikeness, is emphasized throughout the novel...

Hardy's relationship with Tryphena Sparks is debated among the critics, yet I've never seen anything which describes Tryphena herself, or her relationship with her father. Weber states that warnings given to Jude about dangers of marrying a cousin probably resembled those given to Hardy in 1868 when "walking out" with cousin Tryphena Sparks.

Others claim a lasting memory of Tryphena haunts Hardy's works, a poignant regret as opportunities not properly appreciated at the time and now irrecoverably lost.

There is much talk that there was an engagement between them, even that Tryphena was pregnant with his child, but the critics, if they mention her at all, state that Hardy never fathered a child with any woman...even suggest that he was unable to.

After Tryphena died, Hardy called upon her daughter, and acknowledged that Tryphena's death prompted the "scheme" of the novel. Not exactly sure what that means...

Divorce. The question keeps coming up- why didn't Jude just divorce Arabella. My first reaction to this question was that divorce wasn't as common, or as easily obtained back then, especially among the lower classes. I didn't say that, because I didn't know that as a fact. Then I read this in a commentary by Cedric Watts :

"Jude the Obscure depicts divorce as easily obtainable (provided that the divorced spouse is a female presumed guilty of adultery), and particularly easy for ordinary people. Jude remarks that 'obscure' people can be dealt with 'in a rough and ready fashion', whereas 'patented nobilities' would have had 'infinite trouble'. Nevertheless, Hardy depicts marriage as a snare, and maintains a satiric animus against the institution of wedlock."

so, I guess Jude was either too "churchy" to opt for divorce, or felt he did not have grounds to divorce Arabella for adultery. (!)


>Off we go with Sue in the omnibus!

We are interrupting this discussion for a brief message:

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We will now resume our regularly scheduled program. Thank you.

Just heard that Dan Rather will report on a sexual harassment case for teaching Shakespeare - tonight on CBS news. Interesting...somehow I'm not surprised.


Speaking of Shakespeare, did you notice the quote from Othello in Chapter six? I missed it, but I have a footnote which tells me that when poor Phillotson says "I can be accepted as a teacher no more- I shall probably have enough to do to make both ends meet during the remainder of my life, now my occupation's gone"mirrors "Othello's occupation's gone"in Act III, scene 2, line 358.


Phillotson has turned into quite the heroic character in these chapters, don't you think? He has even acquired a new best friend in Gillingham - another example of the characterizations which just don't seem "to fit" previous portrayals. He has emerged into such a good guy, and so enlightened that even Sue has warmed up to him...to a point!


I'm really beginning to feel sorry for Sue. Are you? It's impossible for her to find happiness - to have a satisfactory relationship with any of the men who love her and are willing to let her have her way. "Her way" does not make her men happy, but what's more, she's not happy with it either!

How about Jude? Is he hopeless? He's willing "to desert everything" for Sue - on any terms. When he learns how Sue feels about him, he says:

I think and know you are my dear Sue, from neither length nor breadth nor things present nor things to come, can divide me." My footnotes tell me that the bold print is from Romans 8:38,39.

Arabella wants him to divorce her. He doesn't want to hurt her by revealing that she married the new guy in Australia. What will be the grounds for divorce? The only grounds for divorce I've been able to find is the wife's adulterous conduct. This will be interesting and enlightening on the divorce laws of the time which we have been unable to find thus far...

Look forward to hearing from you!

I tried to get this in earlier - 'net dumped me! Thanks, Joan for Millgate commentary on Obscure, linking it to the epistle themes (sin/guilt/determinism and free will - no wonder it's OBSCURE!)and to the fact that the education Jude wanted was to remain out of reach.

Can you imagine Jude ever publicly accusing Arabella of adultry? I think he was too fearful, too guilt-ridden himself to ever do such a thing, even though it may have been legal.

Jo, Good analogy with the "Book of Jude". I'd probably have been a little more crude.

These two chapters simply amplify the earlier ones (Joan's note from Millgate noted especially) To the title "Simpletons" I'd have added "Sexually deviant or repressed" and would have emphasized the "Retarded" meaning of the word "Simple"

Best

LJ

LJ, I do agree. There wasn't much new in these two chapters that wasn't introduced in the preceding two - EXCEPT the introduction of the D-I-V-O-R-C-E issue for the very first time in this novel!

Arabella is asking Jude to divorce her - not the other way around! This agrees with what Cedric Watts said about divorce during Hardy's time:

"Jude the Obscure depicts divorce as easily obtainable (provided that the divorced spouse is a female presumed guilty of adultery), and particularly easy for ordinary people. Jude remarks that 'obscure' people can be dealt with 'in a rough and ready fashion', whereas 'patented nobilities' would have had 'infinite trouble'.

I highlighted the "provided the divorced spouse is a female presumed guilty of adultery" part because adultery on the part of the wife has been the only grounds for divorce mentioned so far. It will be interesting to see if Jude divorces Arabella and what the grounds will be. Maybe we will learn that there were other ways for the 'obscure people' to procure a divorce. Can't imagine how Phillotson could divorce Sue...Did they have annullments back then?

Yoo Hoo! Where is everybody? Off planning that trip, I bet! Upon rereading I discover that chapters 5 an 6 - Shaston- are VERY interesting, illuminated for me by the research Joan and Ginny have provided about Hardy's views on marriage and his preferences where women were concerned. Sue's earlier statement, "As I choose," was consistent and prophetic. As far as man-woman relations are concerned, she seems to prefer conversation above all. She indeed seems to be Hardy's ideal woman, not really sexual, quite ethereal, light and infrequent in her touches, not a cold night companion for either man, the one who unwittingly prompted her to jump out of the window or the one she is joining now. The knowledge of Jude's brief interlude with Arablella sends her into a tizzy, but he's only allowed to kiss her cheek -quickly! How disappointed in her lack of passion Jude seems, and, at the same time how incredibly tolerant. How will the divorce Arabeela has requested occur, if the only legal grounds are the woman's adultry?

Thanks for the insights, Joan. I especially found the info about Hardy's relationship with Tryphena helpful. The two chapters we did for this week illuminates for me, Hardy's struggle to be objective in portraying the what and whys of his relationship with his cousin as Sue and Jude start living together. What struck me was how often Sue is referred to as ethereal, ghostly, shadowy. Is it because Hardy's cousin seemed to him that way or is Hardy using symbolism again? If it is the latter he once again stumps me. Sue may seem ghostly physically, but just the opposite in her thinking. She comes across in these chapters as a selfish, self-centered, incapable of loving, neurotic. She herself admits she does not have the courage of her convictions, and "But I am so cold, so devoid of gratitude..." shows she also has some knowledge of herself. Sue certainly takes full advantage of Jude's love for her, and he poor thing is helpless to protect himself. She plays him like a violin, and Hardy certainly has articulated the interplay beautifully. Hardy also uses Philliston's travail as a means of enlightening readers of the social relatioship of a husband and wife...she's definetly a piece of property, a possession. He also makes light of the two divorces. In an era just beginning to accept the legality of husband and wife ending a marriage, Hardy makes it sound as simple as it is today. So far he hasn't told us what reason Phillotson will use to divorce Sue. I really cannot see him using 'taking a lover' publicly against her.

Kathleen, very appropriate: "She plays him like a violin," - and he lets her do it! Isn't it amazing how both of them indulge her? What charm - or something! Hardy makes me believe it's happening, too, with his description of the two of them and Jude's reactions when they are on the train. What is the point of such a relationship, in either Jude or Phillotson's case? Is he demonstrating that we were born to be miserable, to seek after that which will destroy us? Anantomizing the institution of marriage to criticize the social strictures giving the man power and condemning both to unhappy early decisions - that's understandable. But the Sue and men thing is aggravating.

I was amused at your violin analogy, kathleen. Right in keeping with the many music images and symbolism in the novel. I came across this particular one in a criticism by Frederick McDowell:

"In the opening section, Phillotson has difficulty getting a piano moved, which he has never learned to play.
His failure to master it is linked with his inability to play, subtly and potently, upon the keyboard of a woman's sensibility...
While Sue is Phillotson's wife at Shaston, she and Jude are brought together when he plays upon this same piano, a newly written hymn which appeals with power to both of them...Jude has greater spiritual reserves in general than Phillotson."

Is it this spiritual side of Jude which attracts Sue?

kathleen is convinced that the haunting memory of Hardy's now deceased cousin/lover Tryphena is influencing his portrayal of Sue, "ethereal, ghostly, shadowy". Jude says to Sue:

"When I put my arms round you, I almost expect them to pass through you, as through air"

After their separation, Sue returns to Phillotson:

"...in light spring clothing and her advent seemed ghostly - like the flittering of a moth. "

JM sees her as "Hardy's ideal woman, not really sexual, quite ethereal, light and infrequent in her touches..."
And we have more Shelley, as Sue quotes from his poem, Epipychidion:

"There was a Being whom my spirit oft
Met on its visioned wanderings far aloft
A seraph of Heaven, too gentle to be human,
Veiling beneath that radiant form of woman."

Is this Sue's self-image? An angel...flying too close to the ground? Someone should write a song...

And she expects her men to recognize and accept that. When Jude does not, and reacts as a red-blooded male toward an earthly woman, she becomes dismayed! Her feelings tend to be most intense toward the man with whom she does not have to be a woman, but will allow her to be angel, and adored.
Phillotson rises to become the hero in the piece - in his understanding of her nature (though I don't think he really understands the angel part) He loves her enough to set her free.

But how can he liberate Sue? Says Phillotson:

I ought to dissolve the legal tie altogether; which...I think I can do, now she has been back, and refused my request to stay after I said I had forgiven her I believe that fact would afford me opportunity of doing it."

What kind of grounds can that be? Gillingham questions that as well:
...if you carry it out. I doubt however, if you can."

Based on the story thus far, and the information Joan and Ginny have gathered, I'm convinced Hardy is almost reporting scenes he actually had with Tryphena. He uses a different scenario, and being the writer he is can develope the dialogue to match the scenario, but the content I would bet is very close to the original. How can Jude put up with Sue's reluctance for intimacy? He may have a low sex drive (as it was thought Hardy had; I think I read that in the notes) which would allow him to accept Sue as she is. It's a strange relationship so far,but for me it is believable. Maybe all the hoopla we've been exposed to these past few months makes me more tolerant...or something.

kathleen, more tolerant? Of which...deprivation or gratification...?

Yes, I agree, something in Tom's life has made him very bitter towards marriage, and yet tolerant toward the reticence of Sue. Ironic, isn't it? It could very well have been Tryphena...

As JM says, Sue's "As I choose" is prophetic. What is so sad is that she, being who she is, really has no real choice, destined (doomed?) to self-denial. This is why I don't really see her as selfish at all...


I 'm still thinking of LJ's conclusion:
To the title "Simpletons" I'd have added "Sexually deviant or repressed" and would have emphasized the "Retarded" meaning of the word "Simple"
I don't know that I agree with "retarded" in the sense of delayed development...or ignorant...except in their misguided belief that they can make a life together in spite of their obvious differences...How did Sue turn out this way?


I fail to see what Phillotson means (and Hardy no doubt wants us to believe) when he says "They seem to be one person split in two." Do you agree with that?

There really is no place for this pair...anywhere! Sue leaves Phillotson, boards the train and thinks she is going to stay with Jude in Melchester.
"But don't I get out? Aren't we going to stay here?", she asks. and then a second time, "I thought we should have stayed here."
Prophetic again..They would have had a better start if Sue hadn't learned of Jude's night with Arabella that very first night. But then again, there would have been something else to set her off...

Jude explains that they are not known in Aldbrickham..(but of course they are fated to wind up in the same hotel - same room even- where Jude had stayed with Arabella and the one person who saw them that night remembers.......All this proving that there is really no place they will ever be able to go without interference from the outside world.)


So we travel on to Aldbrickham as Sue sighs to Jude:


"I fear I am doing you a lot of harm. Ruining your prospects of the Church, ruining your prospects in your trade...everything!" Right you are, Missy...but Jude is going willingly, isn't he? "My point of bliss is not upward, but here", he tells her......

"I ought to dissolve the legal tie altogether; which...I think I can do, now she has been back, and refused my request to stay after I said I had forgiven her I believe that fact would afford me opportunity of doing it."

Maybe when she refuses to return to Phillotson, he can assume she is or will be guilty of "legal adultry": she goes off with Jude, but he doesn't have to prove what the relationship actually is to be granted a divorce - ???

Joan, sorry I didn't make myself clear, so...the relationship between Sue and Jude (Tom and Tryphena) is bizarre because Sue has, literally, a lack of interest in sex. To me that is as difficult to understand as our national interest in some one's sex life.

I don't think it is self-denial that prevents Sue from entering into a sexual relationship. She is either asexual or was sexually abused in childhood. If the latter, she may remember it well enough to have a profound revulsion of even the thought of sex. In fact, when we first met her didn't she allude to 'her problem' when talking to Jude about the Christminster student she lived with? There was another reference too, but my memory isn't that good. If we ignore Sue's sexuality, she becomes a rather nice person...charming, warm, interested,and interesting to talk with, intelligent, independent...someone who would do well as one of today's career women.

If any of you have "The Moon is a Ballon" and "Bring on the Empty Horses" you might be interested in a comparison of Jude and David Niven with his transient "Girlfriend" and later her other lover on pages 498 and 500.

Best

LJ

Hardy introduces this Fifth Part, At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere with a quote from the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus:

"Thy aerial part, and all the fiery parts which are mingled in thee, though by nature they have an upward tendency, still in obedience to the disposition of the universe they are overpowered here in the compound mass the body."

So what did he have in mind in selecting this quote. Clearly Jude's well-intentioned spirit aims higher than his flesh will permit him to reach, but I have a feeling that we will see our angel, Sue flying close to the ground in these chapters. I feel so sorry for her. I think I'll change my earlier description of her from "self-denial" to "sexual repression." We will have to talk about reasons for that more after reading the next chapters. I have a theory...


kathleen,I think I understand what you're getting at, when you speak of your tolerance toward sexual behaviors and privacy...perhaps you have become "enured" because of the lurid detail made public recently - with more to come, I fear.

Some strong parallels with present circumstances as Phillotson says,"I shan't resign. It is no business of theirs. It doesn't affect me in my public capacity at all."- the subject of both issues being adultery!

The irony in the situation between Sue and Jude is that there is absolutely nothing between them, but everyone, including Phillotson believes there is real passion there.

I feel sorry for Sue because she really believes she can control men, make them love her for who she is, and forget the 'other', which makes her so uncomfortable. There are some moments when she comes face to face with reality, that lets us know just how frightened she is of being a woman, a wife...

"There had arisen in Sue's face that incipient fright, which showed itself whenever her changed from friend to husband."

I think that at this point, Sue and Jude feel that no one is interested in their odd arrangement, living under the same roof, meeting at breakfast. Who cares about 'such poor obscure people'...certainly not the Government, which grants both divorces with no interest or investigation into the grounds for the divorce...It was so simple, wasn't it? We'd been wondering how the divorces would have been handled. And we experience first-hand how quickly the cases of the lower classes were disposed -in "a rough and ready fashion." To tell the truth, I had expected that they would not get divorced at all, simply live together.

Obviously, it doesn't matter one way or t'other...Sue brings her problems with her...


ok, LJ, I'll byte...tell about the Moon is a Balloon...or are you twitting?

By the way, you never mentioned the new graphic in the heading...chose it just for you. Doesn't it look like a cover on a romance novel?

Well, Niven had this attractive girl living with him for a while. She was as enigmatic as Sue. Later he re-met her as a prostitute when she was happily living with her "New" mate, another girl.

Best

LJ

Joan, love the new heading, the colors are so fine!

I am always behind here, I see we're to have read Chapters 1&2 today, and am going to get right back with them.

I did find the schedule of the segments as they were originally printed, and if I can beat the lightning, will post:

Dec: Chaps: I: 1-6
January Chaps. I:7-11
February Chaps: II: 1-4
March Chaps: II: 6-III
April Chaps: III: 4-7
May Chaps: III: 8-IV
June Chaps: IV: 3-5
July Chaps: IV: 6-V, 1-3
August Chaps: V: 4-7
September Chaps: V: 8-VI

Does that make any sense at all? We're now to be in Chapter V 1,2, right??

Back later with more stuff from Norton.

Ginny

Joan, the new picture is the one on the cover of my novel. Apparently there is a JUDE movie, and these are the actors.

Nobody said anything about the scuffle at the meeting about Phillotson's dismissal. It takes place in his schoolroom, and I loved it. All the "itinerants" are evidently defending his right to promote the dissolution of his marriage by letting Sue leave to join someone else. It sounds like a scene from a Fellini movie: "...two cheap jacks, a shooting-gallery proprietor and the ladies who loaded the guns, a pair of boxing-masters, a steam-roundabout manager, two travelling broom-makers, who called themselves widows, a ginger-bread stall-keeper, a swing-boat owner and a "test your strength" man. "This generous phalanx of supporters, and a few others of independent judgment, whose own domestic experience had been not without vicissitude, came up and warmly shook hands with Phillotson; after which they expressed their thoughts so strongly to the meeting that the issue waas joined, the result being a general scuffle, wherein a blackboard was split, three panes of the school-windows were broken, an ink-bottle was spilled over a town-councillor's shirt front, a churchwarden was dealt such a topper with the map of Palestine that his head went right through Samaria...." I think Hardy enjoyed writing this bit! It's his demonstration of the group who do not fit the acceptable social pattern and therefore have nothing to gain by "keeping the rules" and nothing to lose by protesting them and defending the rights of an individual to disagree with them and even violate them. Remember when Sue turned away from the model of Palestine in irritation? So much for Palestine!

"Thy aerial part, and all the fiery parts which are mingled in thee, though by nature they have an upward tendency, still in obedience to the disposition of the universe they are overpowered here in the compound mass the body." I think Hardy means that even the most ethereal human, seemingly incorporeal,lacking in passion, will at last be leveled by her humanity and/or the humanity of others. Sue struggles against this as long as possible; it takes the threat of Arabella coming back into Jude's life before she relucantly agrees to a physical relationship.

Well! Chapter Two was a blockbuster, but first the Antoninius' quote. I read that as Sue having to share her body after all. I almost laughed when I read "She ran across and flung her arms round his neck". Once she had a good reason to 'succumb' she certainly didn't lose any time. We should have guessed that if Arabella surfaced again, we might see a different Sue. It is noteworthy that TH comments "...Jude gaily at breakfast' and ..."A glow had passed from her." She even "...letting Jude kiss her freely, and returning his kisses in a way she had never done before." Now really, the two pictures of Sue being so cold/repressed, and Sue readily participating in sex/ intimacy, just doesn't ring true. Hardy stumbled here.

Jude's part in the triangle is also interesting. I admired his insistence, and his reasons for seeing, helping Arabella. The only way he wouldn't go was for Sue to change attitudes in a split second. Then we have Sue going to see her. That was a neat twist...the ever controlling Sue. Can't you just see two very good actresses playing the roles of Sue, and Arabella in that hotel room? What a scene that is... two very different women involved with the same man confronting each other. In terms of upmanship they are equal. I especially smiled when I read...Sue: "He is mine... Arabella: "He wasn't yesterday." Sue: "How do you know?" Arabella: "From your manner when you talked to me at the door. Well, my dear, you've been quick about it, and I expect my visit last night helped it on ..." How right she was! I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall listening to that exchange, and seeing the expressions on both their faces.

Ginny, if I understand the list you gave us, it is the breakdown of when the magazine publishing Hardy's "Jude..." came out, and the chapters in each. I think I enjoy the two at a time chapters more than I would covering five or more. It would depend on the book, I guess.

Did you think I had forgotten my Hardy boys and girls? Many pressing "earthly" affairs this week, but I also became deeply engrossed in a 900 page Hardy biography by Martin Seymour-Smith, which had so much to say about so many of the questions that have arisen regarding biographical influences on Jude. So much information, I don't know where to begin sharing it with you. Too bad I didn't find it on the web - could have simply installed a clickable or done a bit of copy/paste...

JM, you have done an admirable job filling the void! Yes, the scene with the itinerants was wonderful, wasn't it! I think it lent some much-needed comic relief to this gloomy tale of angst. Hardy must have welcomed the break!

Phillotson's character certainly has emerged from the earlier presentation of an absent-minded professor, so involved in his studies that he is scarcely able to interact with the rest of the world...doesn't even remember his former student, shows no social grace in handling that situation...Anyway, now he has become this generous, liberal-minded paragon, willing to grant his young wife her freedom to make her happy. Charismatic as well, attracting a "phalanx of supporters"...real folk, not bound by the conventions of the time.....

I read something quite interesting in the above mentioned biography, regarding the Phillotson character. Much of the Phillotson notes were in Hardy's wife, Emma's handwriting, (though there were some added in Hardy's hand). It is thought that Emma was sympathetic to Phillotson's plans to free Sue from an unhappy marriage and Hardy probably let Emma have a hand in writing that section. Perhaps this accounts for the difference between the earlier characterization and the "new Phillotson"?

It seems that Hardy fell in love with Mrs. Florence Henneker during the writing of Jude the Obscure ....(not to be confused with Florence, the secretary, who was to become the second Mrs. Hardy.) Florence Henneker was a writer, of the social class Hardy yearned to belong, childless, fifteen years younger than Hardy - an educated "enlightened" woman. According to Seymour-Smith, "he viewed her first with lust, then love, and then the fierce involuntary resentment expressed in Jude." It seems that Mrs. Henneker rejected all physical advances - for religious reasons.

It was during this time that Hardy began to change the theme of his novel. It was to be about "two people who love each other but who cannot live together happily and as such it is a psychological study of each." The implications are that Hardy was advocating "free love" with Mrs. Henneker.

Hardy described theirs as a "union of enlightened minds". He wrote (in a letter) that what he wanted most was "a friend with whom mutual confessions can be made of weaknesses without fear of reproach or contempt".

Needless to say, Emma Hardy was beside herself! Hardy claimed that he looked upon Florence as a young Emma. Emma was not impressed and offered him his freedom. He really didn't want that, and his relationship with Florence was already waning by the time Emma realized it was going on...Anyway, Emma remained his assistant , and was responsible for much of the benevolent Phillotson character... She was deeply, and permanently offended at Hardy's portrayal of marriage..."he should be the last man to disparage marriage..."

Seymour-Smith makes much of the fact that Hardy was often unhappy during his long marriage to Emma, not with the marriage but life in general. He wrote in a letter in 1901 that he agreed with Sophocles "not to be born is best". A real pessimist!

There were many interesting subjects also covered in this biography regarding:

Virginia Woolf
Tryphena Sparks
Mary Pearcey (the woman who was hanged, which inspired the story in the first place
The name Suzanna Florence Mary Bridehead
Essays on heredity and the Fawley family curse

As you can see, a lot of ground was covered in the bibliography...if you want me to share any of the information on the above, just ask. Right now I have more notes regarding JM's last post and a week's worth of observations from these two chapters...and only tomorrow to catch up!!!

kathleen I just came in with this and read your post...loved it! Can see this being acted on the stage very easily! I think Hardy summed up Sue's reaction best when he said:
Love has its own dark morality when rivalry enters in.

Later!

The HARDY material is a lot more realistic and believable than is the novel which is too full of holes to hold even Basketballs.

Best

LJ

I'd like to hear about the lady who was hanged!

Oh LJ, that is harsh! Basketballs through the holes? Just when I was going to say that I am finding both Sue and Jude's behavior so much more believable...perhaps even understandable these days!

Let's see what we agree on and where the holes are...

Sue is frigid, without passion- due to either some specific event in her childhood, or growing up in a dysfunctional home. Whatever the reason, she fears the sexual act and a certain loss of control. She is frightened of the marriage contract, which legally gives the husband his rights. She dreads "an iron contract will extinguish your tenderness for me and mine for you- as it did between our unfortunate parents." With the Government stamp she would become afraid of Jude, but free, she trusts him more than anyone she ever knew.

Several times she states that Jude is all she has in the world and how she fears losing his love if they marry. She tells him that few women like marriage, but do it for dignity and social advantage. Is this flawed thinking on her part?
Did Hardy believe these were the reasons most women married at that time, rather than out of passion?


Do you believe that women today marry just to be married? Or out of passion?

Sue must have believed this to be true of most women at the time. Jude tries to understand. He believes "people go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort."


Does Hardy believe this? Do you believe this is true today, accounting for the growing divorce rate?


Ordinary passions drive them to it", but you (Sue) have so little animal passion you act on reason." Jude 's "growing dubiousness approaching anger" is also a normal, credible reaction to this unnatural, unsatisfying situation. He tells Sue that Arabella is more his wife than Sue has ever been and makes a move to go to her and find out about her present difficulty (what IS this responsibility in Australia. My guess is that she has left a child there- Jude's baby? I'm just guessing)


And then, as both JM and kathleen have pointed out, the threat of losing Jude to Arabella has forced Sue to accept Jude's marriage proposal. When she accepts, the glow she had acquired with the news of her divorce, her freedom, disappears. And the depression sets in......


As I say, I find all this believable...

Okay, JM, here's the scoop from the Seymour-Smith biography. I'll stretch it a bit further to include Tryphena Sparks, as I know kathleen is interested in her influence on Sue's characterization. Apparently there is disagreement among the critics and biographers on this

"...Readers will by now be aware that I take the view of Millgate rather than that of Gittings: that Tryphena's passage through Tom's life was fairly, if not absolutely, unimportant. What, after all, is a 'lost prize' in the existence of such a potent nostalgist as TH, especially when this one came from his almost native Puddletown? Had she been all-important in his life, and the chief model for Sue, he would hardly have drawn attention to her existence in the preface to a novel which he knew was about to be widely read...laying himself open to questions which we would not wish to answer.


Millgate's suggestion as to the identity of this woman who died in 1890 and whose 'circumstances' suggested Jude is at least as plausible...

On 23 December , 1890 an intelligent and enigmatic twenty-four -year old man called Mary Eleanor Pearcey, also known as Mary Wheeler, was hanged for allegedly luring Phoebe Hogg and her child to her house in Hampstead, and there murdering both of them with a chopper, on the previous 24 October. She maintained her innocence and may in fact, have been innocent. The affair was much discussed, and Tom mentioned to Emma in a letter that everyone was talking about the verdict in London.


The police alleged that Mrs. Pearcey was the lover of Frank Hogg, the murdered woman's husband, who had a key to her house. What may have affected Tom...(who was affected by such cases as from Tess and another poem about the judicial murder of Mrs. Thompson), was
the fact that Mary Pearcey's feelings for Frank Hogg were said by the Times to have been comradely rather than sexual.

That's all I found, no reason why Mary did in Mrs. Hogg and the baby. That didn't seem to interest Tom, as did the fact that sex was not an issue in their relationship.........

Off to a wedding in Aldbrickham ???????????

Well, well, well. Now we have a child whose personality is even less believable than Jude's or Sue's. Sue and Jude continue to erratically flounder in a mish-mash of squandered emotions and by the end of these next two chapters we seem to have learned a lot more about Hardy than we have about any of the characters in the book.

He should better have been named Job and she might have done well to make a play for Arabella.

Best

LJ

P.S. How old do youall figure the little boy to be ?

Well, so much for the wedding at Aldbrickham!


LJ, now yours is a gift! To be able to put so succinctly the same thoughts on which I expend so many bytes.....

"Let the day perish wherin I was born, and the night in which it was said,
There is a man child conceived."

Does your edition footnote this quote from Job 3:3? Jude continues to speak in this manner, preparing the way for the tragic turn the story seems about to take......
"Upon my word, love, you are beginning to frighten me too, with all this forboding."
And then again echoing what Aunt Drusilla had told him, that "they ought never to have been born, much less have come together for the most preposterous of all joint-ventures for them-matrimony"


Sue: "I can't help liking her-just a little bit!" Now what is she attracted to in Arabella? She says:"she's not an ungenerous nature." Is this because of Arabella's generous marital advice?

"You're a onyer, like myself," Arabella says to Sue. (onyer = "oner", one of a kind, unique, remarkable)


Is this true? Do you sense that Arabella and Sue are unique characters, or do you think they are representatives of two different feminine views on marriage?

And what do we make of Little Father Time? Just when I was beginning to understand and accept both the Jude and Sue characters, in comes this totally unbelievable child! It is going to take work to believe this little waif, so ignored/maltreated(?) to the point of being traumatized while in his grandparents' care...

We're told he is

"of an intelligent age"
"small, pale, frightened"
unsmiling
"like an enslaved and dwarfed Divinity"
"quaint, weird face" (like mask of Melponene- muse of tragedy)
named Little Father Time because he "looks aged" "talks so too"

"Preternaturally old boy" Yet when he meets Sue, he cries. She leads him around by the hand...I'm going to say he's about 4-5. What say you?

No wedding in Aldbrickham...does that mean no christening for LFT either? No Christian burial will have to be arranged...(This is just starting to get depressing!)

I'm surprised at myself because of the emotional responses I've experienced in these last three chapters. I find sue AND Arabella irritating, aggrevating, dishonest, frustrating, even disgusting. And Jude ?? A four plus nerd.

Best

LJ

"Poor Jude" my butt

Joan, maybe Father Time is intended to be a bit older - six? He walks strange streets alone seeking a specific address he was told to find! Of course, your guess is just as good or better, because this is NOT REALISTIC! Father Time seems symbolic, fate catching up with Jude (like he ever escaped it!).

I think Hardy would say that the "lower classes" would marry for passion more often. In a woman's case, she may well be seeking respectability in the formal union. The "upper classes" would probably sacrifice passion to the preservation and enhancement of the respectability they already possess. Even though we are supposed to be "liberated," I don't see that things have changed that much. The more people believe thay can gain by carefully calculated behavior, the more carefully calculated that behavior is. The less confident or hopeful soul seeks solace in passion wherever he or she can find it. Several times the characters (usually Sue, I think) have said that generations hence people would look back upon their rigorous attitudes about matrimony with wonder and scorn. I wonder what Hardy would say about our divorce rate, the frequently careless, irresponsible and self-defeating behavior of our young people, our nuclear families, our alienation, disconnection? Perhaps he would see that psychologically we haven't changed much; we just have more variety in our ways of messing up!

LJ!, I am delighted that Hardy has elicited a reaction from you! That is certainly better than the alternative. I would be interested in examining your response. Could it be something more than the "dishonest", "disgusting" and "frustrating" characters through which Hardy is expressing his ideas? Could it be the message, rather than the messengers?


JM, I agree with you. Things really haven't changed that much. Jude thinks

"...the intention of the marriage contract is good, and right for many...but in our case it may defeat its own ends because we are the queer sort of people in whom domestic ties of a forced kind snuff out cordiality and spontaneousness."


Sue still held that there was not much queer or exceptional in them: that all were so. 'Everybody is getting to feel as we do. We are a little beforehand, that's all. In fifty, a hundred years the descendants of these two will act and feel worse than we.' "

Now what is Hardy saying through Sue? That people will be even more unhappy within the confines of marriage in 100 years? Goodness, that is today, isn't it? Or is she saying that more people will hesitate to marry legally and choose to live without benefit of marriage? Or is she saying both?


Keep in mind that he is struggling right now within his own marriage, advocating 'free love' in order to be free to carry on an affair with Florence Henneker.
Yet that doesn't really seem to be what Sue is saying. She fears the marriage document will put an end to their love.

At first, I thought that she was agreeing to marry Jude to create a supportive environment for Little Father Time (okay, I'll agree he's 5 or 6 yrs. old), but even that is not strong enough a reason to marry in the end.

Hardy doesn't seem to be suggesting an alternative to marriage, or is he saying if the couple chooses to live without marrying, it is their own business? He seems not to be considering the affect of such relationships on families... I am certain that we will hear more on this in the next chapters.

I sense Hardy's frustration as he tries to think this through. No wonder he was so unhappy with the novel when he was finished. Perhaps this same frustration is gripping LJ!

Just got in from work and find the banner up top! What a surprise! I would have tidied up a bit if I knew we were having open house!!

Just in case you are interested in Great Books' discussions, know that next week we will begin the nomination for the next selection, which we will be starting in a few weeks. Would love to hear from you and have you join us!

Happy Spring!

Joan

Just saw the "click" banner on top -- to find you are discussing my favorite book of all (I am a real Hardy fan, even have read some of his poetry) -- but Jude the Obscure -- powerful, and fraught with the feeling of inexorable fate that moves through all of Hardy's books. I find myself shouting no! no! even though you know the characters will do it anyway. My favorite line -- 'Done because we are too many." I know this doesn't fit with your book discussions (never been too great on that sort of thing) but I was overjoyed for the opportunity to tell someone how I feel about the book, and about Thomas Hardy. Thank you so much

I was under the impression that the next two selections (neither of which were my candidates) had already been selected. As I recall they are Faulkner's "Light In August" and Dickens' "Hard Times"

Please enlighten me as to whether or not this is correct, and if so, in which order it IS correct.

Best

LJ

t's all. In fifty, a hundred, years the descendants of these two will act and feel worse than we." Joan /Ginny, how or where did Hardy obtain his classical education? How I wish I could quote lines from ancient Greek or Roman poets, and be the name dropper he is: Octavia, Livia, Aspasia, Praxiteles, Phryne !!

I found our two protagonists delightful in these two chapters. They are happy with each other, enjoy talking the same language, and Sue even enjoys sex with Jude. Did Hardy have a meeting of minds with Florence?

Now about LFT. From where does that title come? I can see the figure but what author used the title first? He is a pathetic little boy, nothing like his father when he was that age. Both Sue and Jude show parental instinct with him.

Sue's obsession about marriage being a form of coercion for the woman is a bit much. I can follow her reasoning, but Hardy is not balanced in his thinking. I'm becoming convinced he would have benefited from daily Prozac, but then we would not have had his books.

I just read my post. The whole first paragraph is missing. How can that happen? Kathleen

Joan, I'm for discussing the Faulkner book as planned.

This is my second post. I have no idea how the previous one disappeared into Cyberspace.

I found the relationship in these two chapters delightful. Sue and Jude are happy together, they complement each others thinking as evident in their conversations. Whomever 'Sue' was in Hardy's life, he must have enjoyed a period of time such as they are having, with her. We are even told she would not feel the same about sex if they were married; in another Jude apologizes for the things he said about her sexlessness. They both demonstrate parental instincts with LFT.

Hardy should have written at least one essay on marriage. I would have found it easier to read than the pieces we get from Sue and Jude in these chapters. Sue's obsession with the idea their relationship would change radically once married (coercion) was a bit much. There is no balance in Hardy's thinking on the subject; every aspect is negative. He would have benefited with a daily dose of Prozac, but then we would not have his books. I enjoy following his reasoning though. It is so beautifully written and so clearly presented.

LFT....a pathetic child. Has he been introduced as symbolic of what is to come for Sue and Jude/

Mrs. Edlin finally filled in a blank when she told them on the eve of their wedding about their relatives. But do we know just how they were related to that unfortunate pair?

Joan/Ginny, how or where hardy received his classical education? How I envy his ability to quote from Greek and Roman scholars, and to be a name dropper like him (Octavia, Lavia, Aspasia, Praxiteles, Phryne!!)

Elizabeth! Please don't go away! We need a Hardy enthusiast, as we struggle to separate his own life and views from that of his characters, both Sue and Jude! Some of us have completed the book, some are enjoying the unfolding of each chapter. We discuss two chapters a week, finishing up this week with Part Fifth, Chapters 3 & 4, as Sue and Jude attempt (and fail) to marry in Aldbrickham!

If you are at all interested in reading the early posts, you will find the beginning 300 posts by clicking above on the "Old" discussion.

If you don't have the time or the interest to do that, no matter, we really welcome your input!

Please continue to drop in! You could certainly clarify things and add a fresh viewpoint!

Joan

LJ, you are so right! We are scheduled to begin Light in August as soon as we finish Jude. And we may do that. I was going to begin a discussion in the "Upcoming Books" folder (not here) next week, but when I was responding to the surprise banner the day before yesterday, it slipped out.

Quite a while ago, before Christmas actually, I received several emails from GB readers concerning their reservations about that selection. One of these, a leading proponent of the selection in the nomination process...sent me a whole list of reasons why we should reconsider. I intend to include these reasons next week as we re-open that discussion. Others just don't like Faulkner, one of these, a regular contributor to our discussions.

I think that we should reopen the discussion and vote again. If it is still the top choice, then Faulkner it will be! If the choice was colored by the enthusiasm of a few (who are no longer enthused) and by the Faulkner birthday celebration, then it is time to recognize that.

I do think the lesson to be learned here, is to vote one selection at a time, not three, because of the time we take to read these oldies. Hope to hear from you next week, or you can respond right now if you wish by clicking "Upcoming Books" from the convenient new menu installed yesterday. I haven't listed the Faulkner concerns up there yet, but it is the place for early input into this "situation".

Whom do we have to thank for the New Look, Larry???

There is as yet no way to post in the "Upcoming Books" discussion.

Best

LJ

Good morning, LJ. I think if you go to the nifty, new menu bar up in the heading here, and scroll down to Great Books Upcoming discussions, click it on, and once you get there, scroll down past the names of the planned books, right into the post area, you can let loose with your ideas. I'm looking forward to hearing from you and will be back after I market!

kathleen, this may be as good as it gets for Sue and Jude, but I don't see it as idyllic a period for them as you do. Rather an unsettled, somewhat tense period, yet they both appear hopeful that things will work out in the future...

Sue, ever-virgin, is in a panic, fearing what the marriage contract will do to their relationships, once Jude has sexual "rights". And yet the irony , if I'm reading this correctly, is that she will not allow any such relationship prior to marriage, either. Is that your understanding? She's still keeping to her own room at night, isn't she?

Jude now shares her negative attitude towards marriage, but I think this is only because he sees how upsetting it is to Sue. This is one of the rare times I agree with Phillotson that they seem like "one person split in two". Basically, I think that Jude just wants to make Sue happy, which seems to be basically what Sue wants for herself too.

I don't know what to make of Little Father Time. at this point. He seems to be inserted here as a symbol of their conscience...?

I agree, Hardy has all the marks of a very well-educated man, easily assimilating references from the Greeks, Romans, Shakespeare to the moderns of his own time. He is to be congratulated, as he did this on his own - very much resembling the young Jude.

I'll include a few snippets from a biography (Seymour-Smith's):

By his own and others' account, Tom could read before he was three.

Mama Jemina understood that as the oldest son, Tom was expected to follow in his father's footsteps as a mason, but may have harboured ambitions for him, giving him books (Dryden, Johnson, Rousseau), before he was eight.

He attended a Church-run school in Brockhampton, shortly after he turned eight, transferring to a Dorcester British School run by Isaac Last, who saw promise of some sort and worked with him. Learned Latin , German and the Bible.

By sixteen Tom was finished with his formal education and sent to work in an architect's office. He writes that he "did not much want to leave school" as he had "just begun to be interested in French and the Latin classics."

He wrote the "the born bookworm" in him was "alone unchanging" and that he had dreams of a university education followed by entrance into the church." (Sound familiar?)

While working at John Hick's architectural firm, Tom decided to continue his education himself.

John Hicks knew Greek and taught him and another apprentice, Henry Bastow. He worked through the Iliad (in Greek) by eighteen and through Bastow (who had attended a "good school") learned much of modern thought; decided not to continue with architecture.

Until he was 26, he '"retained the idea of taking a degree at Cambridge, and then becoming a country parson, while writing poetry."

When his friend and mentor, Horace Moule, sent him the Students' Guide to the University of Cambridge, Tom wrote, "I find on adding up expenses and taking into consideration the time I should have to wait, that my notion is too far-fetched to be worth considering any longer...it seems absurd to live on now with such a remote objective in view."


So much for formal education.

Joan, As you know I have had to drop out of the discussion since I was away for a month and have not read very much since getting back (spending too much time on the computer and too many irons in the fire). However, I have been following the discussion as each new posting is made. This has continued to be a very fascinating discussion. I am going to try rejoin when we start the next book.

You are doing such a fine job of leading this discussion and your research has added so much. Thanks for all of your hard work to make this such an interesting place to lurk.

Larry

Same to you, JO, and to everyone a very Happy Easter!!

Ginny

A joyful, blessed Easter, Everyone!

Some interesting easter tidbits:


The word for Easter in French is Paques m. plural. The word for passover is Paque f. sing.


Easter [ME estre, fr. OE eastre; akin to OHGostarun(pl)Easter; both fr, the prehistoric WGmc name of a pagan spring festival akin to OE east east]


Back to Jude tomorrow...

I have read my two chapters, five and six, and was all set to present you with all of my concerns about them...when the phone rang, and I must spend the day in the antique shop and keep my thoughts to myself until tonight.

I probably would have sounded like LJ...and I have been trying so hard to remain positive about this story. I think I was doing fairly well, but this chapter was tough! I think we need Elizabeth to drop in here again and defend poor Mr. Hardy! There is much written describing the public reaction to the book back in his time, and I assure you, it isn't just LJ who is questioning the merit of Hardy's last novel. I have been holding off with that until we finish, because I don't want to know how the plot resolves itself and I am sure that would happen if I looked closely at those essays...

I really strained to keep from laughing at the way all those characters were marched onto the stage of the agricultural exposition. Jude, "Little Time", (as he is now called, even though his name is now legally 'Jude'...does that mean he was christened after the marriage?), Sue, Arabella, Physician Vilbert, Anny, etc...

My guess is that he was tired of the book at this point, and more interested in making his points, than crafting plausable circumstances...

Lots more to talk about here, but my big question to you is this? Has this "union" been consumated? I know it's been legalized. But there seem to be as many indications that it has not been as there are that it has. I had planned to read the chapters more closely this morning, but time has run out. I think it's important to know, but still don't after having read it. Is Hardy being purposely obtuse...or did I just miss it altogether?

We seem to need a defense of marriage here too...taking a real hit and very little to say in its favor. So depressing...didn't realize how unhappy I've been these past 32 years...but what is the alternative?

What, what?? Wait a minute here, now, that's carrying identification with a book TOO far!!

Heckers, nobody got depressed with poor Othello. That was a tragedy, too. Is this one?

But Othello had a hubris problem that poor Jude doesn't have.

Hardy is hardly the person to chat with about happy marriage...

This is the reason I can't read John Updike. His "Rabbit" books depress me so in the first few pages, I am ready to throw out the baby, the bathwater and the sink, too. Have not read his final book in the series because would need to reread the first one, and don't need that bath in depression.

So we need to ask ourselves what Jude is DOING about things? Is this, or is it not, a tragedy in the true sense? Events totally outside his control? I don't think so. Will look up Hardy's correspondence on "Little Time."

Ginny

Well, at this point, whether the marriage realy occurred, and whether or not it was or ever becomes consummated if it did transpire, is moot.

Even the ultimate relationship with Arabella is moot.

The only thing I can think of that's important is whether or not we find out more about Phillotson as promised several chapters ago.

Best

LJ

I'd like to see Phillotson enter stage left myself...and would be quite surprised if he doesn't, as so many of the other characters are reappearing ...(to remind us of earlier events and their significance in Jude's development, or present circumstances?)


We left Phillotson, without an occupation, "Now my occupation's gone!", as was Othello's (since you bring him into this, , Ginny)

"Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars...
Farewell! Othello's occupation's gone."

--Othello, wronged as his sweet Desdemona has betrayed him for the young Cassio. I still have hopes that Phillotson will handle his loss better than Othello did.

I continue to marvel at the way so much of what we are reading in these book club discussions are inter-related. It happened just this morning when I read a book review of Katharine Graham's memoir, written by Jill Conway. And if you have read Thomas Hoving's King of the Confessors, the geographical description - and the historic comparison of the vibrant hub of monastic activity at the old abbey site at Bury St. Edmunds, where somewhere on the site, St. Edmund the Martyr Confessor was buried...compares with the Hardy's description of Shaston, where the remains of Edward the martyr, known as Edward the Confessor was said to be buried...

Both monasteries destroyed by order of Henry VIII, ultimately because of a Marriage issue!!!

I do believe this awareness is what education should be about. Sorry to admit, that my head was somewhere else in those days...but I sure am noticing now!

Very astute observation Joan. Because of the scant remains at the St Eds site we have to go to the historical descriptions, but they do parallel each other.

Best

LJ

LJ, I know you think it is a 'moot' question, but please tell me what you think Hardy is saying here!


Don't you think it is important to know if Sue and Jude are married...or have consummated this peculiar relationship?
Hardy has made it clear what he thinks about conventional marriage, but is he saying happiness of some sort can be found within the marriage state on certain terms? Or is he saying this relationship between Jude and Sue is possible only because it is outside the marriage state?


Sue and Jude go to London and "when they come back they let it be understood, indirectly, and with the total indifference and weariness of mien, that they were legally married. Sue...adopted the name Mrs. Fawley. Her dull, cowed, and listless manner for days seemed to substantiate all this."

Are they really married, or acting as they think married people do? "Their apparent attempt at reparation had come too late to be effective."


Jude says,"This life suit us, certainly.". Oh?
Sue wants to go work on the Ten Commandments with Jude because, "they liked to be together" Oh? Does this sound like Hardy's idea of a "married" couple? ...all "..snug and peaceful


Jude continually refers to her as "dear little girl", "comrade".."companions"....does this sound "married"?

What do you make of this?

"It is droll that we two should happen to be painting the Ten Commandments! You a reprobate, and I - in my condition" ...her condition?

On moving day we learn that "Sue was unwell and ensconced herself in an upper room Is she ill? Pregnant?

If pregnant...and married, would they be this content and happy with one another, based on what Hardy has said thus far of the marriage state?

If pregnant, and unmarried, the two have defied convention and Hardy will use this occasion to destroy them. This is my fear. And I think they may have pretended to marry for LFT's benefit, not wanting him to suffer.

"Little Father Time brought into their lives a new and tender interest of an ennobling and unselfish kind."

But still, would Sue be so happy with a physical relationship? I would hope so, yet we were lead to believe she was frigid... Could it be that she would function as a healthy woman outside the conventional marriage, but within a relationship which flaunted the rules? She certainly seemed happy in the first of the two chapters. So did Jude!

Still baffled! Waiting to hear from YOU!

Right now, I have to go to work, but have printed your post and will respond later.

Did you notice that Arabella judged them as NOT married but had no stated suspicion of pregnancy. Perhaps Hardy in his literary ineptitude wrote about what HE would notice more than what another woman might observe.

Best

LJ

I'm off to work as well, but want to mention this before I go...Arabella observed Sue and Jude at the Agricultural Fair in Chapter 5, before the "marriage" in Chapter 6. I don't know how much time elapsed between the fair and the marriage...could it be enough to alter Sue's condition/appearance?

It's time to start thinking of the next Great Book Selection! You are welcome (and encouraged) to register your preferences! Lots of ways to get into the discussion. For starters, just click this nifty graphic the banner-makers have created...

You are right Joan and in your earlier post you answered the question yourself with surgical precision and clarity. i.e. No matter what, it doesn't make sense and won't hold together with the personalities developed thus far in the book.

I think we could "Presume" at least a latent bisexuality on the part of both Sue and Jude. This could not have been so clearly understood in the pre Kinsey days, but it is not developed in the story (at least up till now).

I have said that a "Good writer" might have better developed the plot and personalities . Perhaps I should have said a "Modern writer" assuming that Hardy was writing from personal "Feel" which he did not fully comprehend.

Hardy's social commentary is certainly well developed and "Up to date" even now. Perhaps his interest, goals and intentions with the plot were so geared to this aspect that character development and continuity were not given thought in any great depth.

Best

LJ

Sue could have been pregnant before they married - I think that's what Hardy intends. Joan, you quote the "in my condition" line, which I had noted along with the remarks of the women watching them paint the Ten Commandments:
"She's his wife, I suppose?"
"Some say yes, some say no," was the reply from the charwoman.
"Not? Then she ought to be, or sombody's - that's very clear!"


Weren't they the busybodies? Maybe they are married, considering how Sue behaves when they return from the "wedding," or maybe she's miserable because they have to pretend they are!

The story seems increasingly artificial ever since the arrival of LFT. At the beginning, I believed the personalities of Sue and Jude, found credible the fact that their loneliness drew them together, found the conflict in their views interesting, and the possible development of their story engrossing. Adding and emphasizing all the conflict over MARRIAGE seems to have sunk the plot in mire. The fact that it was Hardy's central issue doesn't make it work.

I am convinced Jude and Sue consummated their relationship when Sue became jealous of Arabella because Jude was going to follow her to her lodging. Once she succumbed she apparently enjoyed it enough for the two of them to find contentment in their relationship. They haven't been married long enough for TH to say their marriage is or isn't according to his thinking on the matter. I still find their interaction with each other a delight. Arabella's description of them as they walk around the fair lets us see how happy they are together, how easily they converse. LFT is a symbol of what is coming...he is negative, devoid of a child's curiosity, and reactions, resigned to his fate.

Arabella's comment to Cartlett as they are walking behind Sue and Jude, "I am inclined to think that she don't care for him quite so much as he does for her " is more perceptive than she is capable of. TH has led us to believe this since they first became serious. Perhaps he felt that way in his relationship with Florence and/or Emma. Joan thanks for the info on Hardy's education . He deserves a great deal of credit for educating himself so thoroughly in the classics.

These two chapters are a treatise on what happens to people when their life style does not adhere to the social mores of the times. They are ostracized, talked about to the extent their children can repeat what is said (thus passing the thinking onto their children), their livelihood is jeopardized, and if they do not indicate willingness to share their lives with neighbors, they are hounded out of town. It has always been thus in other than urban areas; it's part of the human condition. I found chapter six sad. It was as if their lives were crumbling. I agree that TH is dropping hints about Sue being pregnant (why doesn't he make it definite?), and he will probably never let us know definetly whether Sue and Jude were married.

Great posts, All! I've just been reading more about Hardy's own life, and am more confused than ever now. He seems to have been quite the Bill Clinton: a rake right on up into his 70's. That he found marriage with Florence not too appealing is hardly a surprise, and neither is the fact that he felt that he suddenly yearned toward Emma once she was gone to the extent that Florence despaired of having to listen to Emma's praises for the rest of her life.

Hardy is, to me, the classic example of a person to whom the grass is always greener somwhere else. No wonder he was a dud at marriage, and had such sour convictions about it: marrying your mistress doesn't always work out well now, either. Since he was a man of such loose morals, it also makes sense that he idealized a certain type of woman, and he just got the character of Sue hopelessly muddled, thought her abrupt change when married almost hilarious, given his own history.

When I should have been reading the commentary, I've been absorbed in his life. Did you know he had three funerals?

This is fascinating to me: the first was at Westminster Abbey January 16, 1928 at 2 in the afternoon, to put him in the Poet's Corner. Florence and Hardy's sister Kate were chief mourners. It was a strange procession.

The Pall Bearers were Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister, Ramsay MadDonald, Leader of the Opposition, Sir James Barrie, John Galsworthy, Edmund Gosse, AE Housman, Rudyard Kipling, and Bernard Shaw. Galsworthy and Shaw were "imposing 6 footers" Barrie was an "unusually small man," looking about "three inches high," and Kipling kept changing his step with the result that Shaw was in constant danger of tripping over him." The casket contained whatever ashes were left of "whatever part of Hardy" which was buried.

His heart was buried at the same hour and day at Stinsford Church where his brother Henry was chief mourner. The churchyard also held his beloved Emma, "whom he had come to love so passionately since he had lost her," as he had once remarked. Hardy had wanted to be buried here, the country wanted him in Westminster, so his heart, as we've noted earlier, was cut out and placed in a biscuit tin (which it's rumored the cat got at) until it was placed in the coffin to be buried in the same grave as Emma.

At the same time in St. Peter's Church, Dorchester, again "at the same hour," a memorial service was held, attended by the Mayor and the Corporation. All the shops and businesses were closed for an hour; the blinds were drawn; the streets were deserted, except for the crowds of people who, unable to squeeze into the church, stood in the churchyard and on the pavements outside. In this way Thomas Hardy, an exceptional man to the very end, had three funerals."

Isn't that something? NOW to the critical reviews.

Ginny

And now that I've read the criticisms of "Little Father Time," I wish I hadn't as they give away more of the plot than I was ready for. All seem to agree he's symbolic, tho, of "Hardy's extreme use of his one completely symbolic character, Father Time....[who] is an excellent ilustration of the kind of sensational sentimentality which results from trying to represent the essence of life's squalor in a naturalistic narrative;' The doctor says [says Jude} there are such boys springing up amongst us--boys of a sort unknown in the last generation--the outcome of new views of life...He says it is the beginning of the coming universal wish not to live.'" That by Arthur Mizener.

Several things about this section make me wonder. I thought Hardy did a wonderful job portraying the Agricultural Fair at Wessex, tried my best to see one when I was last in England, they say they are really something, doesn't sound much different from our State Fairs.

I don't see a thing wrong with the way they took the child in and loved him, think it IS strange he kept that stupid name, even tho they had named him "Jude," apparently the old name clung (how could it have??).

Thought the scenes in the church of the ugliness of small town gossip and narrow mindedness were good, too.

Didn't understand why Jude just wrote in his resignation when the Guild hinted around. Couldn't he have stood up for himself? Or was he so...what?? at that point he just gave up?

I think often when I read their conversations that somebody ought to be the "man" in the relationship, or the decisive one, anyway. They both whine. But who in this modern age could look down on his englightened wanting to understand her feelings, and to try to empathize and feel the way she did? Isn't Jude the....what do you call it, the englightened male of the 90's? Sensitive, and compassionate? Wants to know what she's thinking? I would think that was quite different from the average man of the times!

Ginny

You don't suppose that Hardy was actually trying to tell us that the child suffered from "Progeria" do you ??

He seems almost to have been pedantic in some of his "Classical" references. One wonders if he were aware of this very rare medical anomaly and was implying such in LFT.

Best

LJ

Oh LJ!!! You've done it again! Sent me through dictionary, medical books...almost ready to get online into medical sites to find the meaning of that "rare (very rare) medical anomaly, Progeria". What is it???????????????


Hardy's reading was not limited to the classics, to literary works, but also to scientific and medical studies. I know that he was interested in genetics from the Seymour-Smith biography:

"He was well up with current thinking in genetics, and read August Weisemann's Essays upon Heredity, published in 1891. (Hardy's interest in the effects of heredity, even if it was inspired by a dark notion of 'tainted blood' springs from Weisemann's argument that the 'germ cell' ran independently of environmental circumstances).

The idea in Jude that 'bad marriages, owing in the main to a doom or curse of hereditary temperament peculiar to the family of the parties'...that the love of Jude and Sue Bridehead is doomed because they are cousins and share tainted blood - now seems old-fashioned. But since it operates throughout the book as an assumption, it meed not cause its modern readers any unhappy suspension of disbelief. The notion that some kind of curse - like, and yet horribly unlike, a musical gift - can run in a family is unscientific only in the sense that it cannot be refuted; but it is a potent one. Nor is the idea of the existence of unknown ancestors, working out a mysterious and perhaps sinister pattern, unscientific: it is simply a part of a gloomy speculative process carried out in the minds of those susceptible to it.

Heredity exists, and pattern or no pattern, some people regard it in a morbid light. Weisemann's ideas might have been interpreted by Tom as meaning that in no way can people escape their fates."

And let's not forget that Little Father Time shares in Jude's gene pool...

So, LJ, maybe some of this genetic information goes toward a Progeria diagnosis? Or is it more a medical condition...dealing with his progesterone level? Or is it a psychiatric condition?

I have found more on a psychiatric study of LFT. Will be back in a bit, unless other demands on my time arise.......

ARGhhhh! I did it too! After reading your post on 'Little Time', Ginny, I went to my sources to see if I could find Hardy's inspiration for this strange creature (which I didn't find). I stopped in my tracks, but not before it was too late! I wasn't ready for what I found either!


I promise to avoid any mention of the 'rest of the story', but will say that kathleen hit it right on the head when she wrote:

LFT is a symbol of what is coming...he is negative, devoid of a child's curiosity and reactions, resigned to his fate."

I agree, Ginny, the name is ridiculous. I could have accepted his strange speech and behavior much easier if they called him, "Jude", once he came to live with Jude and Sue...or at least called him, "LT", sorta like "LJ"... Nah, the name was a mistake from the git-go...

Let's face it! He's here now, no matter his name; and he is going to play an important role. We'll just have to try to accept his part in the story, no matter how unbelievable his character. He will not turn into a happy, smiling, well adjusted boy, but will serve as 'a symbol of the next generation's will-not-to-live'. (Albert Guerard)

Without revealing anymore of the story, I will share what some critics have to say about him:

This is from Seymour-Smith again, on Hardy's "prophetic understanding of the psychiatry of a century later":

"Each detail given by the narrator about LFT has been shown, in psychiatric studies undertaken only in the 1980s and 1990s, to be conducive to depression.


Handed over to his grandparents in infancy, he is thrown out after growing up with them.

Returned to his mother by some friends travelling from Australia, he is treated kindly, but quickly shoved on to his father, whom he does not know.
The description of his apathy is clinically exact to the last detail (see Dr. Keith Horton's - I just deleted the title, because it would give away some of the plot......, 1987.)

Hardy adds a poetic dimension to LFT, and makes him a symbol of deprived and oppressed children everywhere. He is just an encumbrance.


By the time Sue and Jude take him over, he is too depressed to rally...
'I ought not to be born, ought I?'...and gets no answer.
'It would be better to be out o' the world than in it, wouldn't it?' 'It would almost, dear.'

Can we look at LT as a really depressed little kid, instead of cringing at Hardy's portrayal each time he opens his mouth?

Joan and Ginny, wonderful research! Really helpful and enlightening! If Hardy consciously linked the psychiatric symptoms of depression in LFT to the social commentary he makes through his plot, can we say he's prescient? Quite brilliant! LFT seems more symbollic than real to me, even if the symptoms have some psychiatric/medical basis. He's sad on two levels, I guess: because of what happened to his childhood and because Hardy needs a sober manifestation of inescapable fate.

I agree with Kathleen: "These two chapters are a treatise on what happens to people when their life style does not adhere to the social mores of the times. They are ostracized, talked about to the extent their children can repeat what is said (thus passing the thinking onto their children), their livelihood is jeopardized, and if they do not indicate willingness to share their lives with neighbors, they are hounded out of town. It has always been thus in other than urban areas; it's part of the human condition. I found chapter six sad. It was as if their lives were crumbling."


If it's always been this way, then LFT represents something in society that always was rather than something he foreshadows about life in the "future." (Ginny and Joan, didn't each of you quote a critic or expert suggesting that the will not-to-live was a modern or future phenomenon?) The way the plot is operating suggests that the whole family suffers rejection because the couple began their relationship outside the social norms. Maybe the will not-to-live always existed, and such things previously taken for granted are now noted, examined and analyzed. Or maybe the critcs mean that this phemomenon will increase.

Well. This week Hardy clearly says that LFT has the face of an "Octogenerian" That implies "Progeria"

Best

LJ

Could we have a fuller explanation of Progeria?

Genetic, but (Probably) not "Hereditary" Very Rare medical condition manifest by extreme promature ageing in childhood (even infancy). There was a special on it recently on ETV.

Best

LJ

I did see aa TV program, maybe a year ago, about the condition. I wasn't sure at first if that's what you meant: little boys who looked like little old men, whose projected life span was seriously compromised by the rapid aging. Families with these children were getting them together to go to Disneyworld, I think.

LJ, I think you are on to something:


PROGERIA

Progeria was first reported in 1886!!! Less than 10 years before Hardy wrote of Little Father Time!!!

I'm so sorry. I know we are to be discussing Chapters 7 & 8 this week, but I am mired in 5 & 6! There's much about Little Father Time and Arabella and Jude and human emotions - that have not been expressed - I can't figure out if this is because it was not customary in novels of the time, if Hardy himself is lacking in this department, or if it is simply not his intent to humanly portray his characters, but rather to use them as puppets to advance his social commentary. Not knowing that, I continue to regard them as human beings...and attempt to understand them as such.

Little Father Time (I see that Sue is calling him "Juey" in chapter 7)...is one character Hardy has really failed to portray. But let's try to understand him as Hardy has presented him.

"preternaturally old boys almost always come from new countries". Now what does that mean? What was Hardy trying to tell us? That Progeria goes untreated in new countries? The litererature on Progeria indicates that this abnormality may be hereditary. Was Hardy familiar with the literature? We know he was interested in genetics. And it sounds as if he knows about Progeria...

I can't help but contrast Jude's childhood with his son's. Do you remember Jude as a boy when Phillotson left Marygreen?

"As you got older, and felt yourself to be at the centre of your time, and not at a point in its circumference, as you had felt when you were little, you were seized with a sort of shuddering...all around you there seemed to be something glaring, garish, rattling, and the noises and glares hit upon the little cell called your life, and shook it, and warped.

If he could only prevent himself growing up! He did not want to be a man.

And Jude was a very emotional, sensitive little boy.

Did you notice the smile on the face of the little girl born with Progeria? We are told LFT never smiled. So we are now regarding him as a kid born with this serious affliction, and rather than receive treatment, he grew up in a dysfunctional household (in a "new country") and is now severely depressed as well. Whew!


Then, there's Arabella. I have questions about her "nature' as well, but must get to work. Hopefully we can begin our discussion of 7 & 8 soon........

Later!

Arabella wants Jude back because...

I am having trouble with this...She wanted to marry Jude as a young girl in Marygreen, in order to get away from her family on the pig farm, but left him soon after when she realized life with Jude was no picnic...left with that same family...for the unknown in Australia.

She left his baby in Australia, obviously experiencing no maternal attachment toward the poor little thing.

Returned to England, and spent one night with Jude, before deciding she'd rather marry Cartlett.

She seems to be physically attracted to him, but not enough to stay with him once she has him. Does she just like the challenge of capturing him, but not living with him?

" 'He's a nice looking chap - You ought to ha' stuck to un, Arabella.'
'I don't know but I ought', murmured she.
'That's you, Arabella! Always wanting another man than your own.'
'Well , and what woman don't I should like to know.' "

A few posts ago, Ginny said of Hardy, the grass was always greener to him...well, his Arabella seems to exhibit the same tendency. She seems to want Jude, only when apart from him.


Are we all like this? Is this a universal tendency? Perhaps that's what I really don't like about Hardy's writing. He paints our natures with such negative strokes! Perhaps I dislike it because there is some truth to it!

She even seems to wish she had her son back...even though she obviously has no feelings for him....

"Their child! T'isn't their child
...with a sudden covetousness
...smoldering maternal instinct...
half feel as if I should like to have him with me"

I suppose it is normal to have such feelings...to an extent. But, we don't act upon them! I fear that Arabella is getting ready to act on hers...Why do you think Hardy wrote in such detail of Physician Vilbert's "love-philtre, the distillation of the juices of dove hearts" and the effects of "ten drops on the desired man", which he sold to Arabella?

I keep thinking of Ginny's questions about Jude's responsibility for his actions? Is he a "tragic hero"? I'm beginning to think not!

How do we define tragic hero ? A character worthy of our attention who falls because of a personal weakness? I know he breaks my heart, but I haven't really thought through the tragic hero issue.
Maybe Arabella's friend is right -she wants what isn't hers! Or maybe the death of husband number two just leaves her too idle, unoccupied. She strikes me as one who has to bustle around, manipulate somebody, and in a pinch poor Jude will do!

Joan, I would opt for Hardy using his characters to express his views on life, but those characters are so realistic, readers can readilly get caught up in their lives. My guess is that the majority of people who read this book do not look for any more than the story line. This is the first book of Hardy's I've read. Have any of you read others? If so, does TH do this in other books? His ability to put his beliefs across through these realistic characters is what makes him one of the greats.

I am just about convinced TH wrote LFT into this book just for symbolism. The child is not in any way a child. Diagnosis or no diagnosis, "Juey" brings to the story only ominous clues. For me he has no more substance than a ghost.

Sue and Jude have two children, she is pregnant with the third, they are constantly on the move with no complaints from Sue, Jude has been so ill he is still an invalid weeks after the onset yet she seems cheerful. They have been together now for two and a half years at least. I would say they have a good relationship, but how strong it is will be seen shortly I suspect.

Arabella....TH is bringing her back to test Sue and Jude's committmaent to each other. What is the symbolism of the love potion? Surely Hardy is not going to use it to stimulate Jude's attraction for Arabella! Who in Hardy's life is she portraying? She is a woman with no convictions, who adopts a value if it is interesting at the moment ... her religious thinking which is dropped when it interferes with her instincts. And the meeting with Phillotson (a bit contrived), their exchange of information that is definitely the beginning of the end.

I think I'm missing or forgetting something. How has Jude not been responsible for his actions? Arabella left him, not the other way around, and he has totally accepted LFT and genuinely loves Sue and and takes care of her. Do we mark a weakness in his taking her away from Phillotson? She did not want to stay there. Jude seems to work every way and every where he can, even baking those interesting pastries when he's too sick for the more arduous stone cutting. That's a touch that interests me, too: he's so preoccupied with the tradition those Christminster windows represent, they are so lodged in his consciousness that they now become this little domestic product and a means of modest revenue for the family.
Kathleen, I agree about "Juey" and Arabella: one an ominous symbol, the other a manipulator who does whatever she has to satisfy the need of the moment.

Two and a half years! Weren't you amazed at that leap in time? But, kathleen, have they both really been content during those two years? Some of Sue's statements make me wonder.

"It seems a terribly tragic thing to bring beings into the world - so presumptuous- that I question my right to do it sometimes!"


"Perhaps my husband has altered a little since then. I am sure he is not proud now."


Arabella: "I've reached a more resigned frame of mind"
Sue: "Indeed! I wish I had been able to do so."


"Mrs. Edlin, dear faithful old soul - the only friend we have in the world."

This doesn't sound like a happy household! Add to this, a severely depressed child, suffering perhaps from premature aging...or a 'ghostly symbol, bearing ominous clues'...

You're so right, Jo, it's too soon to criticize Jude, or write him off as a "hero". There isn't even a tragedy at this point. Just two people living an unconventional life for their time, living together, raising a family, without being married. Jude has responded at every opportunity by doing the "right thing", doing whatever will make Sue-and Arabella- happy.
The only thing that he really wants to do is go to Christminster.

"Why should you care so much for Christminster?", she said pensively. "Christminster cares nothing for you, poor dear."

Now that's sad, but not tragic!

Let's not even think of him as a tragic hero yet. But let's be clear about the definition of a tragic hero. It seems we had difficulty agreeing whether Othello was a tragic hero, and what his tragic flaw was..........

I remember discussing Othello and deciding (years ago!) that his tragic flaw was his gullibility: he trusted Iago, so he destroyed the one he should have trusted. Taking a more comprehensive view of his experience, in his naivete he trusted in the acceptance and admiration of a culture he really didn't understand. He is considered a tragic hero because he fought loyally and effectively, won deserved honors (greatness) , and in the end lost everything because he believed the jealous Iago (weakness - gullibility).

Is Jude great? I think Hardy thinks he has great potential that in his world can never be realized. Could this be the stuff of tragedy, or is it merely a sad, personal loss? There is always the hair-splitting about the word "tragedy" - I've run into it before. I'm thinking about the Christminster window cookies again. They seem to symbolize the life he can never have.

Well,there's tragedy enough coming up, but no improvement in the comprehensibility of the characters.

Best

LJ

I think we all sense that tragedy is coming, LJ, but so far our Jude is behaving as an average guy in love...first with Arabella's charms, and secondly, with Sue's quickness, intelligence and learning... I don't think there is anything to fault his behavior thus far - nor is he a hero ...we'll have to keep a sharp eye on him as the plot thickens...

Is Sue turning out to be the tragic heroine?

Interesting that we should find ourselves discussing Othello again. (Your comments are well stated, JO. If we split hairs, Othello is a tragic hero!) We are celebrating the Bard's birthday BIG TIME at the Folger...


Yes, I paused at those little Christminster gingerbread cakes too...especially when Arabella helped herself without asking, and chewed one up in front of Sue...is this ominous? Will she chew up his remaining dreams of returning to Christminster as a student?

I have another question? Does anyone know what Hardy's talking about when describing the weeds
Arabella, described as "the woman in weeds" and then again, "Arabella Cartlett and her weeds stood among them" (in the new chapel excavation).

I note she is dressed -in mourning attire, a "somber suit, a heavy veil", but don't understand the term weeds. Do any of you have a footnote in the edition you are reading?

Later! Must get to bed early and rest up for the big birthday party tomorrow!

weed2 (w¶d) n. 1. A token of mourning, as a black band worn on a man's hat or sleeve. 2. weeds. The black mourning clothes of a widow. 3. Often weeds. An article of clothing; a garment. [Middle English wede, garment, from Old English wÆd.] American heritage dictionary.

I have always heard of mourning clothes referred to as widows weeds.

Joan Grimes

Is it a Southern term..."widow's weeds", a British term? Or has everyone heard of the expression but me?

Thanks for all that Joanie G. !

Jjoan,

I don't think it is necessarilly a southern term. I think it is really a British term. If you notice in what I posted from the dictionary Weed is from the Middle English wede meaning garment which is from the old English wead.

Joan

I read it used this way a long time ago and came to believe it meant black garments worn in mourning, but I never knew the origin. Joan G., what did wead mean (old English)?
Joan P., I'd love to hear a bit about the Bard birthday bash!

Jo,

wead meant garment also.

Joan

I have found so much on weeds since yesterday, I can't understand why I never noticed the term before! I have found whole poems, photos and more - referring to the widow's weeds. Just came across this a few minutes ago, while surfing. (Have you noticed I LOVE to surf for stuff!)
Widow's Cap. This was a Roman custom. Widows were obliged to wear ``weeds'' for ten months. (Seneca: Epistles, lxv.)

Jo, the best part about Shakespeare's birthday celebration was the way the kids responded to the experience! There were different troupes performing scenes from the plays all day, as well as Renaissance madrigals, lutes, Morris dancers..........here's an excerpt from the Washington Post:

SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHDAY OPEN HOUSE -- At the Folger In addition to the children's activities mentioned above, there will be tours of the Reading Room (open to the general public on only this one day a year) and the Elizabethan Garden; an appearance by Anne Boleyn, who will gather a crowd of children and then tell stories of life in 16th-century England in the Reading Room; a strolling fortune teller; stage combat demonstrations by Brad Waller and his students; juggler/magician/ comedian Barry Wood; music by Musica Antiqua; songs by Philomela; dancing by the Rock Creek Morris Women; and "Elizabeth's Secret," a demonstration of the multilayered fashion of the Elizabethan era. At 3:30, Queen Elizabeth I will preside over the cake-cutting ceremony on the front lawn.

kathleen, I came across this about Arabella's character. (arable= tillable, fertile, bella=beautiful) in an article on Hardy's vulnerability to beautiful women. He mentions a young woman named Rachel whom Hardy describes as

'vain, frail, rich in colour and clever at artificial dimple-making...' The critic states that Rachel was no subject for poetry, as were many of Hardy's 'loves', but some of her characteristics were given to Arabella.

This critic stresses that Hardy's female characters were actually composites of people he knew.

You asked if anyone had read any of Hardy's other novels...certainly I have read Return of the Native, Tess of the d'Urbervilles ... can't remember if I read Far From the Madding Crowd or Mayor of Casterbridge...it's been so long since I read these books. I vaguely remember Eustacia Vye from the Return. If there weren't so many books "on deck", waiting to be read, I'd reread that one. Maybe I'll rip through it this week, just for fun! Yes! I'll start tomorrow!

So Jude and Sue will return to Christminster! That was a quick decision!

Sue tells him that she has seen Arabella, who is living nearby.
He responds:"...perhaps it is for the best that we have almost decided to move on."
"Where do you think to go to?" Sue asked, a troublousness in her tones."

troublousness !

Why does he think it will be different this time! I don't get it!

"I love the place - although I know how it hates all men like me....nevertheless, it is the centre of the universe to me, because of my early dream; and nothing can alter it. Perhaps it will soon wake up, and be generous. I pray so!"

Now this is flawed logic...he wishes it to be, therefore, he will be accepted this time! ."...by a particular day. (?)

Later!

Joan, I think I'll attend the party next year!
Jude's logic is flawed, but I suspect Hardy was criticizing the system that kept the poor from aspiring to scholarship and the positons that could be attained only with higher education. Jude still wants to study, to grow intellectually, even while he is fulfilling his domestic responsibilities. Perhaps his tragic flaw is that lack of logic!

WELL, Not that additional comment on the irrationality of the plot seems necessary, but what do you think of this couple "Living in sin" as it were, hounded from village to village because of a "Possible" lack of conformity to social standards, landing in the midst of this stressful location, separated by the lack of adequite housing (Not very logically, either) and then this woman (Sue) for no good reason, "Spilling her guts" and admitting that they're not married.??? Over and above the abjectly stupid error in judgement, can we realy believe that like Washington she could "Not tell a lie"?? (I don't even believe it about Washington)

Best

LJ

These will be a difficult chapters to discuss.

Hardy seems to use them to impress upon us his deep resentment against the institutions of education and religion by shocking us with this truly morbid scene. Did he succeed? Do you find yourself agreeing with him, blaming the outcome on society? If not, who do you blame? Sue, for her answers and non answers to LFT's questions? Jude, for keeping the family out in the rain til dark to watch the procession, with no lodging for the night?

The quotes which precede Part Sixth are bizarre - out of context. Hardy has been using these quotes to characterize the coming chapters...does anyone have any ideas about the significance...or meaning of these quotes?

'...And she humbled her body greatly, and all the places of her joy she filled with her torn hair.' - Apocrypha Esther 14:2

'There are two who decline, a woman and I,
And enjoy our death in the darkness here.' R. Browning from "Too Late"

There are so many instances (too many?), where one stops and wonders at the implausible...
LJ has pointed to Sue's impulsive admission that she was not married...and I was wondering what made the landlady even ask 'Are you really a married woman?' I mean if I checked into a motel on a rainy night with my three sons, and pregnant with Will, would I find it unusual to be asked if I were married? You bet!
I suppose Hardy is trying to say that the woman assumed, upon hearing that Sue had been wandering around with no home and all these children, in her condition, that she wasn't the average wife, who would have "nested" by now.

Were there other instances where you had to suspend belief, in order to continue with the story?

Read the first chapter of Return of the Native last night...the whole chapter describes the wild nature of the heath, (its enemy is civilization) and Hardy only used the word obscure four times!!!

Spent last evening reading the book of Esther. Felt like Jude - no, Hardy himself! What was interesting to me - this book immediately precedes the book of Job, which is said to have influenced Hardy immensely in the writing of Jude's despair.

I think I grasp the reason for the quote at the start of Part Sixth. There are several parallels between Sue and Esther...and I think the quote hints at what is to come.

Here's a brief summary of the Book of Esther:

King Assuerus, who reigned the lands from India to Ethiopia, held a great feast for all the princes of his empire in the capital city of Susan. (does this name mean anything?) During the feast, he sent for his wife, Vashti, to come in to show her beauty to the assembled. She refused.


The king was outraged at this show of disrespect, and asked his wise men for recommendations on punishment. They convinced him to replace her with a better queen. Vashti had set a very bad example. Husbands should be rulers, masters in their houses.


A number of beautiful young virgins were brought to the king, each spending one night with him.

A Jewish man, Mardochai, had been carried away from Jerusalem. His brother's daughter, Esther, whom he had adopted and raised her at the death of her parents,was with him. . Esther was brought before the king. Mardochai had forbidden her to tell the king that she was Jewish.

Esther was the king's choice. He crowned her as his second queen.

Mardochai hung around the palace gates to look out for Esther. One day he heard two of the king's eunuchs plotting to kill the king. He warns Esther, who in turn warns the king. The grateful king rewards Mardochai with great riches.


In the meantime, the king had made a Aman, king of Macedonia. When Mardochai refused to bend his knee and worship Aman, he tells him he is a Jew. Aman, infuriated, decided to kill him and all Jews. He tells the king:

"There are people scattered through the whole world which used new laws and acted against the customs of all nations, despised the commandments of kings...violated the concord of all nations"

As this clearly threatened to disturb the peace within his empire, the King Assuerus was inclined to listen. Esther senses the danger to her people. lays away her royal apparel, puts on garments suitable for weeping and mourning, covered her head with ashes and dung, humbles her body with fasts, and all the places which before she was accustomed to rejoice, she filled with her torn hair.

"We have sinned in thy sight, for we have worshipped their gods."

Is Sue about to repent for her sins in similar manner - minus the dung of course - "filling all the places of her joy with her torn hair"?

Joan, I am in AWE of your scholarship and research! I've been reading here every day and "keeping up" with the comments that way, but, alas, once again, have fallen behind and so cannot post to the topic at hand. I hope this afternoon to be caught up, but these last two posts of yours are just fabulous! As good as anybody could get ANYWHERE!!

Just for this, we won't throw her off the Brooklyn Bridge in NYC, will we??

Ginny

I agree with Ginny...Joan those two pieces of research are impressive. Thanks once agian. I suppose Esther's travail is a prediction of what Sue will go through. I can understand now how Hardy was able to articulate Sue's reaction to the death of her children. Actually that reaction was the only description of emotion TH gave us. Certainly Jude wasn't portrayed as upset with the discovery. His only concern is Sue. I found it disconcerting we were not given the names, description or personalities of Sue and Jude's children. Perhaps TH wanted to spare us from becoming involved with them (I doubt that). I, too, found several of the events contrived...Arabella, and Phillotson entering the picture together, Jude unable to spend the night with Sue and the children, Sue's inappropriate discussion with Juey, Sue and Jude leaving the children alone while they have breakfast. Unless it was common practice at that time to leave children alone in a stranger's house, TH showed his lack of knowledge/experience raising children. Once again we are treated to Hardy's understandable thinking on the attitude of society in not allowing bright children of poor parents into the hallowed walls of Christminster (Oxford). I wonder if he ever resolved his resentment. A new philosophy shows up, too...children, especially those born to poor people should not be conceived. Since they had no birth control measures to my knowledge in those days, how did TH think Sue could have prevented the pregnancies...abstinence?

As for the story line itself, I was with them through the procession,even though I had difficulty accepting Jude's readiness to stay in the rain in view of his health, and Sue's condition. I began to be annoyed when the full impact of their wanderings for two years or more registered on me. From where did TH find such a scenario? Based on that, I can understand Sue losing her judgement talking with Juey. From there on I felt detached from their lives. Until we find Sue in the grave, I was reading the book as I would a news article. It really is remarkable that Hardy gave us such a clear word picture of Sue's emotions, but nothing about Jude's.

THe Esther Story is MUCH better than the JUDE fiasco.

Best

LJ

I'm finding myself moved by the events, yet struggling to understand Hardy's meanings here. Surely Jude is a modern day Job, beset by illness, troubles, death. And yet what has HE done to deserve all this? And is it a parallel to the Job story, I wonder?

He wants to return to Christminster, the former seat of all his hopes, and there's a Procession, so he stands out in the pouring rain watching the Doctors in their scarlet academic robes enthusiastically. This just breaks my heart. He hopes his child may yet succeed where he failed.

Norton's here comments that "Hardy's body was wrapped in the scarlet gown of the honorary doctorate bestowed by Cambridge University." He is received by his former acquaintances, gives a little speech, in which he says " 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 sure know where he's coming from there.

He then goes on to say " I doubt if I have anything more for my present rule of life than actually following inclinations which do me and nobody else any harm, and actually give pleasure to those I love best." Again, not exactly something worthy of crucifixion.

I see him, still, as more worthy than Sue. I can't understand her remarks to Juey.


Juey:" Father went away to give us chidren room, didn't he?"


Sue: "Partly."


HE: "It would be better to be out o' the world than in it, wouldn't it?


Sue: It would almost, dear."


And when the anguished child wants to know why people have children, if they make so "much trouble," Sue says, "O--because it is a law of nature."

I don't know what she was thinking of, but she definitely dropped the ball here. I can understand being tired, and pregnant, but not taking it out on the kids, and I agree with Kathleen that it does seem VERY strange that Hardy never mentions the kids, I don't even know if they were boys or girls, or who old they are. Thus the reader is a little detached when Sue is found in the grave....don't understand this part.

Don't understand the obvious symbolism: Sarcophagus College, Rubric College, is education a death?

Here's what Joan said in Question #1:

1.Hardy seems to use these shocking tragic scenes to impress upon us his deep resentment against the institutions of education and religion by shocking us with this truly morbid scene. Did he succeed? Do you find yourself agreeing with him, blaming the outcome on society?

No, I blame Sue. Maybe it's a common phenomenon, but most rooming houses don't want children, but notice they sent JUDE away. And why on earth as Jonkie said "and I was wondering what made the landlady even ask 'Are you really a married woman?' I mean if I checked into a motel on a rainy night with my three sons, and pregnant with Will, would I find it unusual to be asked if I were married? You bet!"

Even if you DID find it unusual, you'd certainly not give way to sudden impulse, you note the landlady was very subdued/ surprised? at the news. Since their state of "non-marriage" had harried them from town to town, why bring it up then? Either Sue is a nut, or Hardy has got her so mixed up now there's no help for it.

Now, Joan's question "5. Is this a tragedy? What is the definition of a tragic hero? Does Jude fill the bill? "

I thought a tragic hero had a tragic flaw, which led to his downfall? What can we say Jude's tragic flaw is? Weakness where Sue is concerned? Got to think on that one a bit. He's retained his compassion, even for horses, I STILL feel sorry for him, would like to wring her neck.

Ginny

Ginny, your observations on the parallels between Jude and Job provide much to think about..

'I'm finding myself moved by the events, yet struggling to understand Hardy's meanings here. Surely Jude is a modern day Job, beset by illness, troubles, death. And yet what has HE done to deserve all this? And is it a parallel to the Job story, I wonder?'

What did Job do to deserve his loss? The parallels to the Job story are definitely there, but to what extent?


I checked out Job...He was 'simple, upright, fearing God and avoiding evil'

For these reasons he was blessed with seven sons, three daughters, great wealth.


Satan questions, 'Doth Job fear God in vain?'


He loses everything, wealth and children, but does not despair.

'Naked came I out of my mother's womb and naked shall I return. The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.'</blackquote>


Satan:'Touch his bone and flesh, and see that he will bless thee.'
Job is struck with an ulcer from the sole of the foot to the top of his head.


His wife despairs, but Job says , 'We have received good things of the hand of God. Why should we not accept evil?'

When his friends suggest he is being punished for his sins, he proclaims his innocence. He acknowledges God's justice, although He often afflicts the innocent.
Job begins to question why he was born (begins to despair) , but then professes belief in resurrection. He is rewarded, receiving twice as much as he had before, including seven more sons and three more daughters. He lives 140 more years after this.

What are your thoughts on Job's story? Do you see parallels with Jude? To what extent?

Later! Joan

WEll, actually, I was caught up with the constant suffering of Job, how he lost his wife and children, but never lost his faith. Now, Jude has done that, I believe, lost it too. Maybe the losing of it is HIS tragic downfall? Doesn't he say somewhere here that SHE took it away, or does she herself say that,I must look back.

As I recall without looking it up again, Job's "friends" or neighbors told him all his reactions were wrong and sinful, and, again, not all of Jude's friends have thus responded, although they seem to have suffered unduly by "society's" condemnations, so maybe the Job parallel is not so poor after all. So Job's trials were a test, and Jude's trials are.....??????

Now Norton has a wealth of critical (and I do mean critical) stuff about this section, apparently nobody liked it much....

Andrew Mizener says, "Father Time is an excellent illustration of the kind of sensational sentimentality which results from trying to represent the essence of life's squalor in a naturalistic narrative."

He also points out that "the pressure of the conventional world on them as unmarried lovers forces them down and down until Jude, 'still haunted by his dream,' brings Sue and the children to Christminster." So Mizener, at least, sees a Job like parallel in Jude's surrounding neighbors.

Mizener says Jude is NOT a tragedy, "not a carefully devised representation of life the purpose of which is to contrast, at every turn, the permanently squalid real life of man, with the ideal life (or if you wish, man's dream of an ideal life). It is the history of how an obscure but worthy man, living a life which Hardy conceived to be representative, learned gradually '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.'"

In a letter to Jeannette Gilder on July 16, 1896, Hardy remarked, "Moreover, my respect for my own writings and reputation is so very slight that I care little what happens to either, so that the rectification of judgements, etc., and the way in which my books are interpreted, do not much interest me. Those readers who, like yourself, could not see that Jude (though a book quite without a 'purpose' as it is called) makes for morality more than any other book I have written, are not likely to be made to do so by a newspaper article, even from your attractive pen."

So Hardy thought it a morality tale? So now I'm more confused than ever, and there's all those references to yet look up: got interested and read on ahead, need to look up Beersheeba and St Silas.

Ginny

Joan, is your first question a natural extension of the fourth one? In other words, is society's harsh exclusion of Jude and his family a result of life's natural cruelty as Phillotson characterizes it? If "cruelty is the law pervading all nature and society" then resentment is pointless, because the determining factors in one's destiny are beyond human control. Maybe that's Hardy's "moral," if as Ginny notes he considered this a moral tale!

I get the feeling that believability and rationality are deteriorating exponentially as the the plot twirls.

Best

LJ

I thought these two chapters were sort of confusing, in that we can see Phillotson had a yearning for an education himself at University?!?, and even hoped to be a licentiate in the church? Gosh, maybe Phillotson and Jude are the same person!

I looked up Beersheeba and St. Silas, there are so many Bibical parallels here.

Beersheeba is mentioned in the Bible as the home of the partiarchs Abraham and Iassc and is referred to in the book of Samuel as the southern limit of the Holy Land....the name may mean "seven wells."

St. Silas was the companion of St. Paul on the second jouney when he took the place formerly held by Barnabas....Silas may be an abbreviation for Silvanus. He may be not only the amanuensis of St. Peter, but some scholars are inclined to give him a prominent place among the writers of the New Testament.

There was a big article on Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge and Hardy and Dorset in Sunday's NY Times, as next Sunday it will be on Mobil's Masterpiece Theater.

On Jude's puzzling "don't leave me you know my demons," one of the sources says that Hardy revised quite a bit out about Jude's sex life and excesses, and he must have, as I've seen no indication of much of a roue here?

An interesting passage by A Alvarez: " Christminster was intended for when the colleges were founded,; a man with a passion for learning, but no money, or opportunities, or friends....You were elbowed off the pavement by the millionaires' sons....And by the shift of focus [Jude as a living tragic hero] Hardy helped make the issue iteslf live. In his postscript of 1912 he wrote 'that some readers thought...that when Ruskin College was subsequently founded it should have been called the college of Jude the Obscure.' Hardy may not have had as direct an influence on social customs as Dickens; but he helped."

Ruskin, Oxford, was the first college designed to provide oppportunities at the university level for working-class men, who, for one reason or another, had not had a chance to go to a university after leaving school; it has sense been supplemented by a wide system of government and local grants----Norton.

Thought that was interesting,

Ginny

Oh my, the discussion of chapters 3 & 4 have started without me...I will spend the day playing catch up! Won't even read yours, Ginny till I do. Hopefully this afternoon. This is my day off and I am supposed to be cleaning the house!!!

Let me post this for LJ before I go to the next chapters. I have two other posts in response to JM and Ginny's last two posts, but will have to wait with those...the timer went off!!!

So much occurred in Chapters 1 &2!!!!! I'm sorry, I was unable to go on to 3 & 4 last night as planned.

LJ, I feel I must share some of what I've been reading for the last few days - a criticism by Albert Guerard, published in 1949. I honestly think that we've got to suspend 'believability and rationality' if we are to understand the significance of this novel. I'll try by best to explain...(with Guerard's ample help)


Hardy was a poet, who "blundered into fiction because he could not get his poems published, and he looked to publishers' readers and editors for instruction." He didn't like to read contemporary fiction, such as Meredith, Trollope, George Eliot...even Dickens!. He did read Shakespeare, Sophocles, George Crabbe..."
"Hardy was nearly forty, the author of five novels before he stopped trying to shape his work according to somebody else's interpretation of what the public wanted..."

He began to enter uncharted territory with his last novels, and his poetry. If we read Jude with the eye of a realist, (as the writers of his time were), we must then appreciate what he did well in that department.

"What charmed the earlier generation: the regionalist's ear for dialect, the botanist's eye for the minutiae of field and tree, the architect's eye for ancient mansions, and the farmer's eye for sheepshearing; the discernible architecture of the novels, the Franciscan tenderness and sympathy. -and finally the unqualified faith in the goodness of a humanity more sinned against than sinning."
But Hardy was also attempting to do much more, and since it was innovative, there were problems.


Guerard: "The post-Victorian generation looked upon its everyday experience as placid, plausible, and reasonably decent; it assumed that the novel should provide an accurate reflection of this sane, everyday experience and perhaps a consolation for its rare shortcomings. It assumed that realism was the proper medium of fiction-and that to see a preponderance of evil and brute chance in life was to be unrealistic Much as they liked him, his critics were made uneasy by his use of melodrama...his grotesque and macabre deviations from the placid reality they saw.


Hardy was in many ways a Victorian and may have been the last of the Elizabethans...


Later writers were able to portray the reality of life by accepting that "a cosmic absurdity pervades all appearance, that evil has an aggressively real existence, that experience is more often macabre than not. Symbolism, expressionism, and surrealism explored this absurdity, while naturalism explored the violence latent in society.

William Faulkner has consistently used the distortions of popular storytelling - exaggeration, grotesque horror, macabre coincidence- to achieve his darker truth; they are part of his reading of life. Just so Hardy made something visionary out of Victorian coincidence by juxtaposing the fantastic and the everyday".

Is this what is making you (us?) uncomfortable...the things which made the post Victorian realist uneasy:

"the inventiveness and improbability, the symbolic use of reappearance and coincidence, the wanderings of a macabre imagination, the suggestions of supernatural agency, the frank acknowledgement that love is basically sexual and marriage usually unhappy, the demons of plot irony and myth."

Criticism has refused, in its devotion to realism, to recognize the strength of Hardy's anti-realist aim and has often deplored his imaginative heightening of reality

"He purposely distorted actuality to achieve a kind of truth....the contrast between rural simplicity and urban or aristocratic complexity and corruption, the pathos of regional and class deracination, the destructive effect of class feeling, the problem of marriage and mismarriage, the conflicting impulses toward spontaneity and tradition and convention."

Later!!!

Joan, You've certainly done a real service to our comprehension of the novel and its plot as well as clarifying the strong points of the work, but I think my "Point of no return", my Waterloo, my rampart over which I can not accept this as a valid classic, is the inconsistancy and lack of reasonableness, the incongruity within themselves of the characters. Even allowing for change over time and superficiality, and intellectual shallowness followed or preceeded by growth, the personalities are not believable.

Best

LJ

I haven't given up, LJ! We have a few weeks left. I'll come back in a bit with a Hardy quote that may give you something to think about.


Ginny thanks for the information.
It is interesting that Hardy had an impact on the creation of Ruskin College, Oxford...I did get that right, didn't I? It would have really been impressive if they had named it Hardy College, though.

I will definitely watch Mayor of Casterbridge next week. LJ, I hope you can watch it. Would be interested in your comments on the credibility of the characters... I think it is a better choice for Masterpiece Theatre than the last several productions. Did you watch Helen Mirren in Painted Lady the last two weeks? To tell the truth I fell asleep before the climax last night. Two hours are just too long for me. I like Helen Mirren, and the story was interesting enough...just an odd choice for Masterpiece ...

Well, I find I can understand Sue's reaction. I find her volte-face believable. She's been traumatized. Lost her children. Feels guilt. Not only for her failings with LFT, but for giving birth to her own two children. Remembering something she said to Arabella:

"It seems such a terribly tragic thing to bring beings into the world-so presumptuous- that I question my right to do it sometimes.

Was her conscience telling her something back then?
She concludes,"All the ancient wrath of the Power above us had been vented upon us, ...and we must repent. It is no use fighting against God."

Yes, I can see where she feels she must reform...return to Church, leave Jude, as they are not legally married . Jude's solution is to marry. But Sue has adopted the Church position that her first marriage is binding. I can understand why she doesn't feel she can marry Jude. I don't understand why she is going to go back to Phillotson except perhaps to right a wrong.

There is a bit of humor here...

Sue: 'I was going to ask you...'
'To give you away?'
'No. To send my boxes to me."

Jude goes on with his life, has a better job, wants to marry Sue...as if nothing has happened. Where is his grief? Where is his guilt? Perhaps he feels no guilt because he has done nothing wrong?


Do you find his behavior-since discovering the bodies-'believable'?

Ginny's info.: " Christminster was intended for when the colleges were founded,; a man with a passion for learning, but no money, or opportunities, or friends....You were elbowed off the pavement by the millionaires' sons....And by the shift of focus [Jude as a living tragic hero] Hardy helped make the issue iteslf live. In his postscript of 1912 he wrote 'that some readers thought...that when Ruskin College was subsequently founded it should have been called the college of Jude the Obscure.' Hardy may not have had as direct an influence on social customs as Dickens; but he helped."

Ginny, thanks for the research! I think the inequity of the educational system is what Hardy intended to represent in the person of Jude. The speech he makes to the small crowd that recognizes him at Christminster (Part 6, Ch. 1 - "Rememberance Day")is unrealistic, certainly, but states so obviously what he believes: one must follow one's nature, and if it works out, everyone will praise you, but if the effort fails, you will be thought foolish. Just because society did not provide an education for someone in his circumstances does not mean he wasn't by nature a scholar. The book is realistic in the predicaments it presents, unrealistic at times in the way the plot evolves and in the devices the author chooses.

JO, thanks for bringing that out of Chapter 1. Thought we were going to miss it and it's important. There was so much in those two chapters! Feel like we could have spent another week there.

"One must follow one's nature, and if it works out, everyone will praise you, but if the effort fails, you will be thought foolish." Jude asks the crowd, (and Hardy asks his readers) an important question here about following one's nature:

"It is a difficult question, my friends, for any young man - that question which 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 reshape his track accordingly."

Would Jude have been better off following the track he found himself in...that of a perfectly competent stonemason...or should he have spent his life aspiring to become a scholar and a man of the cloth...even if it meant failure? Did he give up too easily? Did he give it up for Sue?

This is an important question in our house right now, as three of the four sons struggle with it. The first seemed to follow the position he found himself in and it led naturally to that which he really wanted to do all along. Which was wonderful for him, but makes it harder for the younger ones, because it doesn't often happen that way. I think I'll go add that question to the heading. Thanks again, Jo!

Yes, that is a really good point, and it IS amazing how often it comes up in real life. In that, Hardy was right on the money.

I see that the Arabella making dimples again is up there, too! I noted that when I read it, and thought she'd not changed much throughout the book, but don't see her as the villain in the piece.

That's also a good point about cruelty, but you do have a choice how you react to it, and, to me, poor Jude just keeps plodding along, getting new jobs, doing his job well, while the entire world around him goes to H.... It's natural he should be depressed.

I thought another "telling" thing about Arablella was her startling remark, when discussing the death of Father Time, that she didn't care so much about the others, as would be natural, and Jude agrees with her! The woman is definitely self centered, or people just laid it "all out" back then, hard to believe. Can't imagine telling a father who has just lost children that.

Also Sue seems to see Father Time's killing her children some sort of vengeance of right over wrong, but I can understand she is unhinged with grief.

Ginny

Ginny, I think she's definitely unhinged. I have had trouble with the whole situation ever since LFT srrived, as I mentioned earlier. The book is increasingly unrealistic in the didacticism of the speeches Hardy found it necessary to include to make his points, and the characters are more and more difficult to understand. I "believed" Sue before, but not now. Only madness, perhaps attributable to her grief, can explain returning to someone she couldn't even stay in the room with before. And Jude!!! He seems to be blaming himself for ever pursuing a normal marital life with her, as if she were not truly suited to such a relationship: "Yours is not a passionate heart-your heart does not burn in a flame! You are, upon the whole, a sort of fay, or sprite-not a woman! ...Perhaps I spoilt one of the highest and purest loves that ever existed between man and woman!" How can he let her go now, crazy as she is, back to a situation she couldn't stand before? It is hard to accept, certainly not as realism.

Jo, I can understand and believe Sue becoming "unhinged" - if I put myself in her position. This wasn't losing children in a car wreck or a fire...this was a murder-suicide!
(I can't figure how LFT managed to hang the little ones without much of a struggle...How did he get them up there on those hooks? Did he strangle them first and then hang them? But why bother if they were already dead? brrr )


I can see why she felt guilty, after the things she had said to LFT. And how the guilt drove her to repent! Once in the church setting, she repents for living with Jude without marrying, for leaving Phillotson after making vows in the church. I understand, (I think) why she is trying to repent and go back to where she feels she must belong- in the eyes of the Church and God.

And Jude! He concludes he seduced her and that he is the guilty one, taking her from Phillotson.
'You were a distinct type - a refined creature, intended by Nature to be left intact!'


So what is Jude saying? That Sue shouldn't have married Phillotson either? 'Intact'?

Will someone please go back and read the second paragraph in Chapter 3 - starting with "They would sit silent...(I got that part), but not the rest of the paragraph. I understand every word (sort of), but I need someone to tell me what it says...

These two chapters are certainly blockbusters. Sue and Jude finally come alive, we are given some insight into the heart of their love, and a well developed portrayal of an hysterical woman. Th has some knowledge of this diagnosis because he uses it through Arabella when she describes Sue's condition to Phillotson as 'sterical. What puzzled me was Sue's frequent references to "God." I don't remember her even believing in God. All the rest of her new philosophy is as well thought through as her prior philosophy. Neither she not Jude are believable as grieving parents. Only once did Sue show any emotion. If we accept Sue's diagnosis as Hysteria, her thinking makes sense. But Hardy doesn't even try to portray Jude as grieving. In fact I cannot recall the children being even referred to by either of them. Hardy's only intent in these chapters is to explain Sue's return to Richard. He does not seem able to portray emotions as they occur and certainly not Jude's who is supposed to be Hardy. Could Hardy have been an unfeeling person?

Yes, I think this is a morality tale. From the time Jude feeds the rooks the farmers grains in chapter one, to Sue's moral thinking in these chapters, Hardy has demonstrated morals. I still think he should have written them in essay form. People could have used some provocative moral thinking in the 19th century. But perhaps more people were exposed to Hardy's thinking by reading a novel than essays.

Jude could conceivably have led the same life even if he had not dreamt of attending Christminster college. I suspect most people do not follow the dreams they had in their teen years. As for Jude, he had to study and aspire in order for TH to acquaint us with the failure of Christminster to educate bright but poor children.

Kathleen, what wonderful points, as usual. Yes, I, too mused over Sue's newfound religion, and am trying to remember if Jude mentioned the children. Yet, he was so sensitive to everything else, as you point out with the scene of the rooks at the beginning. Maybe he was better at everything but children? I'm at a loss, there.

Having just attended, with appropriate sniffles, the graduation from college of my youngest son, I really was struck by Jude's devotion to the University to the point that he'd stand out in the rain to see the procession pass. Really, that just tears me up. I thought of him during the ceremony. I wonder if you could distill the thoughts of everyone in the room, what they'd be thinking?

I know, I think, in a way how Jude feels about his lost dream, and thought of him watching the procession thru the rain: really, it's most unbearably poignant. How somebody could write THAT and then just drop the ball on the children's deaths??? I think I'll look further for that in Norton and see if anything presents itself.

Ginny

I think Hardy shows Jude's grief for the children only in the ways he tries to console and comfort Sue, who would certainly come first with him.

Joan, I reread the paragraph in chapter 3 as you requested, and I think Hardy is saying that Sue in her earlier days conceived of the possibility of a first cause who allowed creation to evolve almost like a dream or idle melody, not consciously planning anything, certainly not the intellect of man. That would rule out a creator who would peruse and persecute man for any of his follies, but as she and Jude sit in quiet grief, they begin to believe that they are "fleeing from a persecutor." Does he mean a god punishing them for stepping outside the rules? If so, this could be the explanation for Sue's reversal about convention and religion. Very disturbing.

WOW!

Well said! Well translated! Well explained!


Yes, Jo, that makes sense and explains Sue's behavior. I felt Hardy was saying something important in that paragraph, but couldn't quite understand just what....


And yes, it is quite a disturbing concept of an unmerciful God!


Ginny, I'd be real interested to know what Norton has to say about Jude's non-response to the death of those children. He didn't show much concern for them or his pregnant wife in that rainy academic procession you describe above . Rather than feel sorry for him as you did, I was appalled at the way he stood there with the wet baby in his arms, pale , very pregnant Sue and the other little ones...no umbrella, no place to stay for the night...not to mention himself, just recovering from a serious illness and the one on whom the whole wretched family depended. I realize Hardy was trying to emphasize how deeply Jude cared about the academic experience he had missed out on. Hardy had no children of his own, and no understanding of what happens to one's dreams for oneself once there are children. Maybe that is the whole explanation!


While we're talking about academic processions, let's take a minute to congratulate young Ryan Anderson for his academic accomplishments:


Congratulations, Ryan! You make your mama proud!

"Jude could conceivably have led the same life even if he had not dreamt of attending Christminster college. I suspect most people do not follow the dreams they had in their teen years."

Kathleen, you are so right! But wouldn't he have been much happier if he had given up the dream once he moved beyond the teen years and had a family to support! He was fortunate to have a skill which enabled him to find work. Am I really answering Jude's question by saying that one should make the best of the situation in which one finds himself, rather than to keep one's dream alive? Now that's disturbing!!!


Be sure to watch Masterpiece Theatre on Sunday night, Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd.
See if you can spot any similarities in the plots, any Hardy characteristics at all. Whoever finds the most, wins a prize! I like prizes! I say this with full understanding that a screenwriter has probably edited Hardy's plot, and dialog beyond recognition. But let's try!

Later!

I am disturbed as much by Sue's reversal as by any other threat or exigency in the plot. She seemed so intellectually secure to me at the beginning.
I think the fact that Hardy had no children may shed some light on Jude's lack of reaction to the comfort of his family and then to the deaths of the children. There's no substitute for experience where children are concerned, and if he didn't deal with them much he may have had a real lack of understanding about their needs and the feelings they create in their caretakers.
Speaking of children and the feelings they engender, Congratulations, Ryan Anderson!!!

Ryan greatly appreciates your kind wishes, was eating lunch when the first was first seen, I excitedly called him over, he said, "Neat, Thanks." He had just sat back down when I saw the second, excitedly called him over again, (he brought his lunch with him this time) and he said, "I love it!"

So thanks, Guys, it was a big day, and you've added to the excitement!

I hope you all have a very Happy Mother's Day and am looking forward to Chapters 5 &6 tomorrow.

Joan, I wonder now, at myself. Never gave a thought to Sue, pregnant and with two children out in the rain while Jude watched the procession. I think that shows how much I've tended to identify with Jude's longings, and also that I have never liked Sue from the beginning, but surely she could have gotten out of the rain, she had no trouble getting out of the marriage!!!

Ginny

In this week's chapters we DO have a believable, consistant "Character". Basically not an admirable woman; you might call her a "Horney Bitch" in fact, but Arabella IS nontheless both believable and consistant. Additionally, as usual, she makes Jude out to be a stupid toad.

Best

LJ

Oh, LJ, believable my foot. I was just thinking the opposite. So now Philloston and Sue are together again, and ol Arabella just happens to come out of the woodwork?? Phooey.

Once again, Miss Sue earns no praise from me, her line: "My chidren--are dead--and it is right that they should be! I am glad...almost."

Forget her.

Norton mentions that "Susanna" is derived from the Hebrew for 'lily." so that's what the reference at the end of Chapter 5 means.

I'm not finding a lot about Hardy and children, but am enjoying reading the critical reviews included here, and they run the gamut of reaction, as you can imagine.

I did pause over this line in Chapter 5: "Gillingham looked at him, and wondered whetherr it would ever happpen that the reactionary spirit induced by the world's sneers and his own phycical wishes would make Phillotson more orthodoxly cruel to her than he had erstwhile been informally and preversely kind."

HAH??

Ginny

Still dragging a bit behind...promise to get started on this week's chapters this evening. Won't even read your posts until I've read them...

I hope you were able to watch Part First of Far From the Madding Crowd last pm on Masterpiece Theatre. It was an eye opener... shows how well Hardy's stories adapt to film. I see how Jude's story would make a great film. Will have to locate a video soon.


This is the first of Hardy's novels, "not yet gloomy", we were told.
Again the beautiful country setting - the farmers, the shepherds, class distinction, bloody animal scenes, casual coupling in the fields...


...the lovely, but ambivalent heroine, Bathsheba Everdene, who has never had a sweetheart, doesn't want to marry Gabriel Oaks, turns down his marriage proposal because she "doesn't want to be any man's property." Yet she continues to be flirtatious with him,... "you'll never be able to tame me", she taunts him.. When asked, "did you love him? she answers "No, but I liked him."
And then there's Mr. Boldwood...the older man she may marry for protection and for the desire to be cherished, as she tells him, "I will try to love you."

Does this sound familiar? If you missed it, you make find a recast this week before next Sunday. If not, I recommend you watch Part II. It wouldn't be hard to follow and it is quite exciting to recognize so much of what we have been reading all these weeks.

A few comments before moving to the new chapters...


I was unable to find anything about the lack of feeling on the loss of the children, but did find some discussion of the deaths and lack of realism.

William Dean Howells:
"There are many displeasing...revolting incidents in the book. They make us shiver with horror, grovel with shame, but we know they are deeply founded in the condition, if not the nature of humanity..."


Seymour-Smith:
"Jude may not be a realistic novel in the accepted sense, but it is psychologically realistic."

Hardy in a letter:
"One thing I did not answer. The 'grimy' features of the story go to show the contrast between the ideal life a man wished to lead and the squalid real life he was fated to lead. The idea was meant to remain all through the novel."



Seymour Smith:
Many such shocking novels were written at the turn of the century. Jude is an early example of this tremendously disturbing genre. Hardy wanted to force his readers to look at the sordid side of life.
The age, the novel-reading public and their falsely pious spokesmen - those who appealed to the dishonesty inherent in society - deserved to be shaken up. It took vulgar sensationalism ..."


Oh there's just so much. I'll sum up the reaction to the novel during Hardy's time by saying that the readership was excited and upset at some of Hardy's work, but not at the same things we are criticizing..

Back tonight!


Joan

Ginny, I didn't intimate that the plot was believable - only Arabella. I've met a few "Street people" just like her. Her only claim to respectability or even decency is her (Probable) refusal to sleep with more than one man at a time.

Best

LJ

Now wait a minute, LJ! Is Arabella 'consistent' - or has she undergone some sort of change in these chapters?

"Tis hard for a woman to keep virtuous where there's so many young men!"


When Jude suggested London as affording the most likely opening in the liquor trade, she replies:
"No - the temptations are too many...any humble tavern in the country before that for me."
Why is she saying these things? Do you believe her? If so, isn't this change?
And then when she's telling Jude about Sue's wedding:
"She felt he was her only husband and that she belonged to nobody else in the sight of God A'mighty while he lived...Perhaps another woman feels the same herself too-
I feel exactly the same as she!"
Do you believe her? If so, this is not our old Arabella, is it?

Jude apparently is not believing it. "I don't want any cant!", exclaimed Jude.
How did you understand that remark? what does Arabella want with Jude? Do you think she loves him - in her own way?

I'd say that Jude is the only consistent one of the bunch! All Arabella had to do was cry and he let her into his lodgings.

I agree,Ginny, Sue has gone over the deep end, and her comments about her children are hard to take. But they provide some insight as to her state of mind and her reasons for returning to Phillotson. The children were "sin-begotten...and therefore sacrificed to teach me how to live...That's why they have not died in vain."
She does break down and sob for the first time when Mrs. Edlin asks, "why do you condemn to hell your dear innocent children? I don't call that religion."

Gillingham wonders if the scorn heaped on Phillotson by others - and his own physical desire for Sue would make him treat her more cruelly than before.when he was so overly understanding and kind to her. There are several indications that Phillotson will be firmer with Sue this time - "a little judicious severity perhaps..."

Oh, dear. The chidren were "sin-begotten...and therefore sacrificed to teach me how to live...That's why they have not died in vain."

Oh dear. WHAT a little ego. So the children were sin begotten by HER and so THEY have to die so SHE can turn around and be taught how to live?? Oh dear. Better for her to pop off.

No sympathy at all or empathy here, I'm afraid, for poor little Soo.

I think Philloston is believable: he wants his pride and reputation and maybe his old job back, and I bet he's going to be as evil as an old snake when she shudders at his approach.

As far as Arabella: the best port (any willing man) in a storm, and she KNOWS Jude is tender hearted. I thought by the "cant" remark Jude meant he didn't want to hear any more rationalization about what "God has joined together" coming so closely behind Arabella's speech. Apparently A. can't live without a man either. Sue DID try for about a week, but apparently Arabella can't at all.

Ginny

Well, it seems to me that anything Arabella says is merely to get Jude back and she wants him back because all her other Lover/Husbands are gone. Come on girls, Don't be so nieve.

Best

LJ

THAT'S what I just said, LJ! Any port in a storm and he's the most vulnerable, as she knows he's tender hearted.

Ginny

I think we all agree this time! Arabella doesn't care one bit whether or not she is Jude's wife "in the eyes of God" - she just wants a man and a position in society. Jude has a profession, however humble, and can live in Christminster as a recognized artisan, at least. She's tired of bopping back and forth hunting some kind of permanence, and she certainly wants a man. As for Sue, she's crazier and crazier, hence the shocking remarks about the fate of her children. That vengeful, insistent God she conceives is bearing down upon her. She would have laughed, - gently, perhaps - at such a notion some years before.

Yes, Jo, we agree about Arabella's motives...(we haven't heard from kathleen yet)...I really didn't believe she could have changed so completely. I don't believe she is "horny" this time, but I think she realizes she needs financial security...and as you said, Jude has a trade and is in a position to support her - in a better position to support her, a true wife, than he was able to support Sue. This is the same Arabella who earlier says, "Poor people must live."

It is too much of a reach to believe what she is saying to Jude about her religious belief that he is still her husband in the eyes of God. Sue's new-found religious fervor has caused her to abandon Jude and suppress all of her feelings for him. Arabella's dalliance with religion in a previous chapter was immediately abandoned when she saw Jude at the fair. She's not really doing a one eighty again this time. It's all an act! I think it is the need for economic security...not attraction to Jude, that is motivating her this time. What do you think?


I made a note earlier from an essay by Phillip Weinstein which I think sums up the Arabella-Jude relationship:
"Arabella is as canny about daily survival and as ignorant of ultimate purposes as Jude is learned in cosmic platitudes and inept in local procedures."


A question for LJ(and you all)- do you think of this novel as a love story? Do you think Hardy intended it as a love story?

Later!
Joan

I think Hardy's purpose was social commentary and perhaps reform. The novel does that well. It does NOTHING else well.

Best

LJ

I would say that Hardy is experimenting with this novel, not content to continue the style of the times (realistic novels of manners - and romance), or that of his own previous novels- And I would say that it is very difficult to step out into uncharted territory and do it well the first time out! However it was to be his last novel, so we will never know what he learned from the experience. We do know he was not happy with Jude either. I will be interested to see what they did with the story in the video. I'll bet anything they made it into a romance...and very realistic too...


Jo- about Sue getting "crazier and crazier"...you may (or may not!) find this interesting...


Freud was making headlines as Hardy was writing his novels...Here's something from Freud's discussion of conscience in Civilization and Its Discontents, which just might have influenced TH when portraying Sue's hysteria and religious conversion. I'll include the context, but highlight the parts which may have caught Hardy's eye.

"The individual's aggressiveness is introjected, internalized; it is, in point of fact, sent back to where it came from - that is, it is directed towards his own ego. There it is taken over by a portion of the ego, which sets itself over against the rest of the ego as super-ego, and which now, in the form of "concsience", is ready to put into action against the ego the same harsh aggressiveness that the ego would have like to satisfy upon other, extraneous individuals. The tension between the harsh super-ego and the ego that is subjected to it, is called by us the sense of guilt; it expresses itself as a need for punishment...

As long as things go well with a man, his conscience is lenient and lets the ego do all sorts of things; but when misfortune befalls him, he searches his soul, acknowledges his sinfulness, heightens the demands of his conscience, imposes abstinences on himself and punishes himself with penances."

And if you interested in this aspect, here's some more Freudianisms which Hardy may have read:


In his function as a neuropathologist Freud came to realize that he had no clear understanding of neurotic patterns despite his thorough studies of the human brain. From 1895 onwards he associated intensely with the Viennese internist Josef Breuer. Both discovered that hypnosis removed neurotic symptoms. The case of patient Anna O. became famous.

By applying this method, Freud came to understand the correlation between emotional disorders and the formation of mental (at that time mainly hysterical) symptoms. Through hypnosis as a method of "mental catharsis" the patient recalls and relives repressed traumatic situations and is eventually relieved and healed. Freud was now convinced that functional diseases had a mental cause. In the following he discovered how mental energies may cause physical symptoms.

After breaking with Breuer Freud found out that the abnormal emotional state of neurotics was almost invariably associated with conflicts involving the sexual impulse. Based on these findings he developed his theory on repression and defense as well as the sexual aspect of neurotic behavior.

Freud was unjustly blamed with "pansexualism". His theories created a storm in medical circles and were often and heavily rejected. However, what Freud had theoretically taught most of his life was rather a "dialectic of the sexual impulse" than its omnipotence. After breaking with Breuer Freud carried on his research work alone. Instead of hypnosis he applied the method of "free association" with his patients and soon recognized the traumatic impact of early sexual experience during childhood, seductions on the part of adults, above all the parents.

Later! Off to work! And late again!
Joan

Joan, Thanks for the Freudian possibilities to explain Sue's thinking, but in view of the predisposing factors of bereavement, and post-partal depression, I don't think we can use the pieces you found. The fact that Freud was well known at the time makes me more convinced TH knew of hysteria. I wish I knew if Freud went into either or both of the traumas Sue went through. I would agree Sue had a fragile ego, that she (like all humans) was neurotic.

Now to the opposite of Sue...Arabella. I've known several women who would do any, and everything to have sex with men they were attracted to. Are such women sluts, free spirits, crazy? Who can say? Strangely, I find Arabella the most complete character in this book. She is real in her thinking, her actions, her plotting. If only TH had been able to portray Sue and Jude as consistently real as he did Arabella. My reaction to her actions in these chapters is disgust. Not only is she devious, manipulative, but heartless, and cruel as well. I don't think her persuit of Jude was based on anything other than the attraction for him she felt from the beginning. She is also domineering and has a likely ploy in in Jude. She treated him no better than the pigs she tended. YUK!

As for Jude, he was and is a poor soul. Hardy's portrayal of him in these chapters is the best articulation I've ever read of someone who is literally dying of a broken heart.

I watched "Far from the Madding Crowd" last Sunday. At the beginning I thought the hero, Gabriel was another Jude, especially when he killed the dog. But then I got caught up in the story and forgot TH. When it was over I realized what was missing from TH's book, but so well done on film that it gave the character's the depth I missed. Much of good acting is the facial expressions, especially the eyes. If TH could have caught the emotions that would be expressed by good actors, the characters in the book would have had depth. There was a picture of Hardy at the end of these first two parts. He looked to me like a self righteous intellectual...there was no exlpression in his eyes.

This is at least the fourth time I've tried to post here in the last two days. In response to the comment of Joan's source, "Arabella is as canny about daily survival and as ignorant of ultimate purposes as Jude is learned in cosmic platitudes and inept in local procedures," I have to agree! Arabella wouldn't know "ultimate purpose" if she tripped over it, and if Jude had any canniness about "local procedures" he would never have been in this predicament.
About the Super-ego: I think Sue's is definitely in charge, and after more consideration, I think Jude's is, too, or he would have fought harder against her leaving to remarry Phillotson. I don't think Freud intended all dysfunction to be attributed to sexual guilt or confusion.

Before we leave this section, I think we should note the converstion between Phillotson and his friend Gillingham. When they discuss how Phillotson should respond to Sue in their resurrected marriage, it sounds as if they are discussing dog training! "Women are so strange ...they tempt you to misplaced kindness. ...a little judicious severity. perhaps...."
"Yes, but you must tighten the reins by degrees only. Don't be too strenuous at first. She'll come to any terms in time."
Their subsequent remarks reveal that Phillotson (whom I respected and felt sorry for previously) is concerned about making up for the status and position he lost when he let Sue go. He knows this reunion is contrary to his deepest beliefs, but he will pretend he thinks it's proper in order to reclaim the esteem of his superiors. Ugh! What a moment for Mrs. Edlin to enter and voice her disapproval of this marriage as a fate for Sue. She knows Sue's wacky, and sympathizes, and she also says people are taking this marriage buisness too seriously! In her day they reveled and spent their money and they had to borrow half a crown to set up housekeeping! What does Hardy think? That people would be happier if they were more casual about economic security, or maybe about marriage itself? Maybe he just needed a voice to conter Phillotson's manipula

Here"s my last sentence:

Maybe he just needed a voice to counter Phillotson's planned manipulation, or maybe he thinks marriage should be happiness, which the idea of a contract fraught with many motives somhow negates.

JO, what fabulous posts. And here I thought you were using a new word, "manipula." ahhahahahah

Kinda like "catapulta." That's a good point about Phillotson and Gillingham and their training of the little woman, and also about Hardy's inclusion of Mrs. Edlin. Not the first time we've seen her. Wonder why Hardy, unless it's for the reason you said, constantly sees fit to tell us what the Gillinghams and Edlins think??

Was Hardy that concerned with opinion? Maybe so, since the reaction to this book caused it to be his last novel.

Ginny

Ginny, aren't Gillingham and Edlin society's opposites? Gil the straight and narrow, conventional, Edlin the earthy, intuitive, peasant survivor? Doesn't Hardy like her much better?

Was there ever a more unlucky man than Jude?Does anyone see the parallels with the story of Job? It is a 19th century retelling of the old story. At times I was so sad for Jude I cried. I admit I have been lurking here for months. It is good to finally add to the discussion! Thanks. I admire all of you.

Marg, HELLO!! Don't you dare lurk another minute, especially since you and I agree on the Job parallel! HA!! In Job, Job never lost his faith. I don't know how Jude ends, but he's never lost his dream of or yearning toward higher education, and Hardy has characterized Oxford/Christminster as the "holy city!" But then Sue has turned TO religion. Interesting! You make an interesting point.

And so does our Jo! Society's opposites? Like her better??? hahahah, I don't know, I imagine if you say so it IS, but am going back to see!! I'm not sure WHAT to make of Gillingham, and like your bringing him up.

Ginny

This week's chapters almost take off as an entirely different novel. It makes one wonder whether Hardy, after plodding along, suddenly went into a hypomanic phase. His disaffection with his work would relate to the need to restart the whole darn thing to make it hang together.

Certainly, as a period piece, with major social axes to grind, one can presume that the average reader of the day would have become so wound up either pro or con, that literary merit would have been moot.

Best

LJ

Far From the Madding Crowd tonight on Masterpiece Theater!
Even if you missed Part I, this is good, classic Hardy...and it is fun to note the many similarities to Jude...


Goodness, a tide of posts! And so many excellent points that we might have missed without them. You all DAZZLED this week!

The very best part was the appearance of a lurker! It would not be an overstatement to confess that my heart leapt when I read Marg's post! Elated to know you've been with us! And yes, I agree - Jude is Job. I have a question though. Job was rewarded handsomely for his steadfast acceptance of God's will. Brand new family, more sons and daughters and lived to an incredibly old age! Will Hardy see fit to reward Jude in any way at all for his persistance?

kathleen, I thought that the Freudian idea expressed in this exerpt may have influenced Hardy's portrayal of Sue in her self-flagellation:

"As long as things go well with a man, his conscience is lenient and lets the ego do all sorts of things; but when misfortune befalls him, he searches his soul, acknowledges his sinfulness, heightens the demands of his conscience, imposes abstinences on himself and punishes himself with penances."

She was able to live according to her own unconventional system of values, until tragedy struck and it was impossible to continue with Jude on that same track. Her value system had brought on the tragedy in her mind, resulting in her self-punishment. Do you agree?


Will be back to marvel at the latest posts, before we move on to the next chapters...right now I have a house full of "guests" (college kids with loud instrumentation - and amplifiers!) and must see what we are doing about breakfast - and church...


Later!

I just realized I skipped Chapters 5&6!!! My calendar finally got me in trouble. I've been trying for a year to get control of it but so far no luck. May has been so hectic, I wake up in the morning thinking if to-day is Monday, I have to be at the library by 10. Skipping those chapters hasn't been the only mix-up. At any rate, my contribution on 5&6:

Sue reads like someone in a Psychiatric facility. Interestingly I find her more real here than before the children were killed. Could it be that Hardy can imagine, and articulate acute emotion more readily than the routines of the daily lives of his characters? And Mrs. Edlin! She is a treasure. Do we know who TH had in mind with her? She has the insight, and the courage to see clearly what Sue is doing. The whole scenario among Mrs. Edlin, Richard, Sue and Mr. Gillingham is brilliant. TH may have been thinking through how he was going to end the book when he wrote this chapter. He has lined up the pros and cons of Sue returning to Richard. The only one to waver is Richard. TH certainly makes as strong a case for Sue to atone for the sin of loving as he did for Richard not trying to stop her from going to Jude.

Then TH takes us from civilized reasoning to the tawdry deviousness of Arabella . A witch she may be, but a consistent one. She hasn't changed at all since we first met her. How easily Jude succumbs to her, to liquor, to hoplessness.

Kathleen, that easy succumbing in Jude's part makes me think he is participating in the self-punishment. Sue is punishing herself in a more active,obvious way; Jude is letting it happen.

There were very strong parallels between Jude and Far From the Madding Crowd, didn't you think? Although I agree the characters are better portrayed in Madding Crowd Don't know if this is because of the screenwriter or because it was a portray of Hardy's first novel. The only way to find out is to read the book!

Mr. Boldwood and Phillotson, both older men taken with a young, indecisive girl. Both finally lose patience and become aggressive toward her.


Bathsheba, who dislikes the whole idea of marriage, marries Frank Troy because of jealousy.


Suicide is the solution to difficult situations.


Genetic inheritance...and fate...


The Fair! Everyone is there!


The fear that Bathsheba will go out of her mind in her grief...

Dead baby

Did any of you watch it? Would be interested in your reaction.
Back in a few minutes.....

Jo, I don't know what Jude is doing! No, he doesn't seem to be participating, he seems to be escaping... He seems to have no plan for the future, although he does have his tools and a way to support himself. He does ask about Sue, but seems strangely removed and resigned to her decision. Alcohol is his only solution!
Jo, I don't see Jude in charge at this point...in fact, I never saw him in charge of any situation...ever! Oh! Except when he had all his babes and pregnant wife stand in the rain to watch the Christminster procession. He was responsible for that disastrous decision.


I don't think Arabella is...or ever was...interested in Jude sexually! She is interested in him strictly for economic reasons, ...if you ask me! But I do agree with you, kathleen, she is manipulative and heartless, no matter the motivation.


I also agree with you - TH did not spend much time portraying human emotions - as he did on expressing the social problems of the time.

Gillingham and Mrs. Edlin seem to be devices Hardy is using to contrast conventional attitudes toward marriage and common sense. Yes, I think Hardy likes Mrs. Edlin's philosophy...in fact I think Mrs. Edlin is expressing Hardy's own views.
"What does Hardy think? That people would be happier if they were more casual about economic security, or maybe about marriage itself? "

I get the impression that Hardy does much criticizing without offering alternatives - in most instances. As far as marriage is concerned, yes, he thinks one should be happy and if not, an easy divorce is the solution. And yet, he didn't consider it in his own case - a divorce from Emma...

LJ, I have been thinking about your comment regarding the literary merit of the novel. I do remember early comments about the beautiful, expressive writing in the opening chapters. Has that been sacrificed for the "social axes" - or merely overlooked. Let's pay close attention to the writing as we read these last chapters...
Am looking forward to the next chapters, Hardy's "hypomanic phase" - as he attempts to make the whole thing hang together..."

ps Hey, Ginny! I was just looking at the schedule for the remaining chapters. It seems that we finish the book the week before you leave for Italy! Did you plan your trip around our schedule? How considerate you are! We all thank you!

Joan, o no, you finish the week before, and I miss out on a MONTH of whatever we choose next? HOW will I ever catch up. O phooey.

JO: Yes, I do see a contrast in characters, never gave much thought to Gillingham other than he did try to be a friend to Philloston and seemed to stick by him. The Mrs. Edlin character is more strongly drawn, I think, but neither stopped me when I was reading, and had to go back to see your point. Yes, that's the good of a book group, you do see things together you wouldn't alone.

I got hung up on Far From the Madding Crowd with the stupid bee thing, there's no way you could drop a BEE HIVE in an open basket and not be covered with bees, stupid. And then the sword thing. Stupid. Mercy, and JUDE gets criticized!!

I thought these chapters were very dramatic and passionate. Hardy does a really good job here with poor befuddled and overcome Jude, that long walk, sick, the longing, pretty forceful writing for the time, I think?

So Jude is coughing, TB?? And out in the elements with his rug...some wonderful lines..."Hope, that lives on a drop and a crumb, made him restless with expectation."....and how Jude strained to hear if Sue was coming. How pitiful that scene was.

Then Sue reveals they are celibate in her marriage to Philloston and Philloston suggested it?? Wonder why? Wonder if true??

Can't imagine walking five miles in the cold rain??? In these books, tho, they all seem to think nothing of it. I know when I was in England last August, my English friend, who is considerable older than I, thought nothing whatsoever of a fast hour's walk in the afternoon, and wasn't the least winded.

Now, want to go back and read Kathleen's post again, they're always so good.

Ginny

Yes, I think we must all read kathleen's post...not the last, but the one prior to that. She had skipped chapters 5 & 6 and posted on 7 & 8. I'm going to do that next.

First I want to defend Thomas Hardy and the bee incident in Far From the Madding Crowd. Poor man! Needs all the help he can get with this crowd! I thought he was too much of a country boy to be inaccurate in his beekeeping chapter. Think it must have been a screenwriter...or a director. Anyway, here's is Hardy's chapter on the beekeeping, as he wrote it:

Far From the Madding Crowd


I think it's safe to say that Jude is suffering from TB at this point. I remembered an earlier line as soon as I heard he was coughing...

" Jude had no heart to go to his work that day. Neither could he go anywhere in the direction by which she would be likely to pass. He went in an opposite one, to a dreary, strange, flat scene, where boughs dripped, and coughs and consumption lurked, and where he had never been before."

Neither Jude nor Sue seem to be the picture of health!

I really appreciated the light-hearted scenes in Chapter 7, didn't you? Certainly a relief from the grim, angst-filled chapters we've just finished...even though Jude is once more being led on by Arabella! He certainly is a wimp in my opinion. I don't feel a bit sorry for him!


I think Hardy's humor is at its best - from the raucous scenes between Arabella and her father, and the townsmen at the pre-nuptial "stag party"...to the dry humor and finally the dripping irony and biting satire.


Arabella to Dad..."It's Jude (upstairs) He's come back to me." Now that's funny!


Jude:"I'd marry the Whore of B---rather than do anything dishonorable." Really droll.


Arabella wants plenty of good liqueur "to keep Jude 'cheerful'."


Arabella tells Tinker:"Jude and I find we can't do without one another."HAHAHAHA


The landlord has his doubts that Arabella and Jude are truly married until he recognizes "genuine wedlock" when he overhears Arabella haranguing Jude, throwing her shoe at him...

JOAN: "Mens Insana in Corpore Insano"

Best

LJ

Joan: That sure was a different scene from the one in the Masterpiece Theater production! Maybe the director thought he'd play a bit with the audience!! Like the book better than the stuff I saw, so he was a sergeant?? Looked like a ballet dancer, o, o, will shut up!

Thanks for the reference, I enjoyed it!

Ginny

Whom do we pity more, Sue or Jude? Jude, of course! Don't feel a bit sorry for Sue, except, of course, in the loss of her children. She brought the rest on herself, and remains unrepentant of her wilful actions, her remarriage and her newly found religion notwithstanding.

Ginny

Not only did I read the wrong chapters "that week," I became carried away playing Free Cell and forgot to watch the second week of "Far From...." I'm taping the repeat this week-end so will probably watch it Monday. From the comments, it reads rather gruesome.

For once I have the time to answer the lead questions so here goes:

I am definetly sympathetic to Hardy's biting criticism of church doctrine and social convention as well as just about all his preaching.

Hardy did not develope his two lead characters, Sue and Jude, well enough for me pity either of them. He used them as vehicles to portray his beliefs, and there I found him very convincing.

Love story? Surely you jest! I'd settle for TH's definition of love. I agree with LJ, it is a tale of morality.

LJ's brilliant review for me is too hard on Hardy. Although I can understand what he says, I also understand why this19th century book is considered a classic. In what other book do we find the hypocracy of the church, institutions of higher learning, marriage, small town mores so courageously articulated? Unfortunately what he said then is true in our own time, a century later.

Kathleen. You're indeed correct, and I've mentioned the value of the writing as social commentary. Others have pointed out the place of this novel in the development of modern literature. In that sense I won't belabor the thing by a further diatribe but would simply say its a bit too "Primitive" for my tastes.

Best

LJ

Chapter 7 is funny, mostly because of Arabella and then Jude getting so drunk and vowing while in his cups to always do the honorable thing - sad, too, because it never has done him much good! The funniest scene is still the ruckus that broke out in the schoolroom when Phillotson declared his intentions in freeing Sue, and the townfolk got into it with the traveling players and other fringe characters who rose to his defense.

Chapter 8 is sad whenever Jude wraps himself up and goes to find Sue, then returns in the rain. This is an intimate, personal tragedy if not an Aristotelian one. I pity Jude and Sue, but Jude the most because he is still sane, clearly and fully appreciating the losses they have suffered individually and as a family. I don't think Sue is capable of realizing it as he does.

Yes, Indeed the "Wrapped up" Jude plodding consumtively thru the storm was a melodramatic moment, the male counterpart to "Little Nell", but the drunk part could have been real only if Jude were a mindless imbecile.

Best

LJ

All right, all right, LJ!!! I can't help it if I'm a pushover for a sad scene and a suffering hero! Geeez!
I think Hardy wanted to write a love story, but the "romance" is subsumed in his criticism of society and the church as they affect the individual who cannot fit a mould - either one into which he has been born or one that society provides. If we accept Jude as a man of talent whose talents are frustrated by his lack of power or position that would "qualify" him for higher education, and in the sense that he makes a fatal human error in his initial entangelment with Arabella, the story is a tragedy.

OH, good point, JO. Good tragic flaw. And I came in here to say in these two chapters it's pretty clear what Hardy has in mind. So no, in answer to the question above, I don't think this IS a love story, I think it's a tragedy, and I do endorse Jo's flaw. But it's Jude's WHAT that causes his entrapment by Sue? His falling in love can't be the flaw, what caused that? His idealism, I do believe, his idealism without the ability to convert it to reality, is his tragic flaw.

I think in these sections Hardy makes it quite plain what he's about:

In Section 9 Jude says "All that has been spoilt for me by the grind of stern reality."

And: "representing the polite surprise of the University at the efforts of such as I."

And: in Section 10: "I hear that soon there is going to be a better chance for such helpless students as I was, There are schemes afoot for making the University less exclusive, and extending its influence...And it is too late, too late for me! Ah--and for how many worthier ones before me!"

I mean, pretty clear here. And Arabella is plotting for her next husband; "Weak women must provide for a rainy day." And Sue keeps on clenching her teeth, really, I find her most irritating. She's a true mess.

Norton says the line about "that the very wind seemed to blow on her with a touch of deference..." is from Hamlet, for those of us who didn't recognize it, like me. I think the only thing that lighted on Sue with deference was Jude's own fantasy. She's a mess!

Ginny

Ginny dear, I am not going to read your post till this evening, as you have done your homework, and I haven't. I'm still finishing up with last week's chapters. I imagine you're up-to-date because of your impending trip? This is not like you at all!
Here's the post I came in here to drop off:


Your posts are great! So helpful in noting Hardy's weaknesses, while appreciating his strengths. I can't imagine getting so much from this novel without your input. Thank you all!


We all seem to agree that these characters are not well developed as they could have been, had Hardy not been busy trying to do and say so many other things at the same time. For many reasons, the characters were often merely puppets expressing his own views - leaving us to complete the characters on our own in an attempt to follow the plot. For this reason, I believe we differ in our assessment of these characters.


Am I the only one who accepts - understands and sympathizes with Sue? I will attempt to explain why and would appreciate your response - whether or not you agree with me.


Sue grew up with few feminine role models. Her parents marriage failed for mysterious reasons...Aunt Drusilla made sure she understood the family history and that she should never marry. Her father provide her with just enough education to expose her to the classics, philosophies and life styles which differed from the Victorian conventions of her time...but not enough education to support any sort of independent life style...
Sue believes she has some control of her life...and future life style when we meet her. These plans do not include a stifling, conventional marital life . What are the alternatives?


Her attempts to acquire skills to support herself fail...because of her own unconventional behavior. She finds herself apprenticed to Phillotson at Jude's insistence. She could support herself as a teacher someday...
Although she has never exhibited much sexual drive, she is attracted to Jude...their shared love of the Greeks, his sympathetic understanding and acceptance.


But jealousy and a need for support causes her to agree to marry Philottson.
This was not a well thought out plan. The reality of marriage is overwhelming. Phillostson sees her misery and agrees to free her.


She attempts to follow her nature once more, defying convention, believing that she and Jude can live their own platonic relationship. The threat of Arabella causes her to abandon herself to Jude...and to agree to marry him, rather than have him return to Arabella. But the idea of another marriage petrifies her..she fears that once married to Jude, he will no longer love her. That the marriage would be doomed as all Fawley marriages were...as all marriages were...
She finds that Jude is willing to live with her without convention, because he loves. She admits guilt at bringing children into the world. They are the result of her defying her own nature to keep Jude. She does accept the children ...and Little FT...seems to be a good mother, although she clearly knows nothing about raising them as is shown through her conversations with LFT.


The murders, suicide and still-born infant are too much! She sees them as condemnation of her beliefs that she could live outside of marriage, without the blessing of society and the church. No way can she continue to live with her beloved Jude.
(Yes, of course, I believe this is a love story...albeit one between two unrealistic people!)
If Sue accepts the fact that she is damned for living outside of marriage, she must leave him. She can't marry him, as Jude suggests, not because of her old fear of marriage and what it might do to their love, but because the church tells her that she is still married to Phillotson. She returns to him to set things right, and as a penance toward atonement.


Her whole anguished exchange with Jude in Chapter VIII indicates how distraught she is at this point, torn between her nature and convention. I feel she is truly psychotic at this point!


Jude seems to see their situation clearly, but still hangs on to optimism, to hope

"I was gin-drunk; you were creed-drunk. Let us shake off our mistakes and run away together."

Had she agreed, Jude would not have taken that walk in the freezing rain...
Why did Hardy make a point to tell us that Sue didn't see Jude's blanket? Would it have made a difference if she had?


Off to read Chapters 9 & 10. Back later this evening to catch up with Ginny!!
Hope you are all enjoying a lovely Memorial Day!

"She admits guilt at bringing children into the world. They are the result of her defying her own nature to keep Jude." Joan, do you mean having children defied her nature, or having them with Jude to whom she was not married defied doctrine and convention? If the former, then how would she have expressed love for Jude in those days without the natural biological result? Is it her nature never to have sex - is that what Hardy wants us to conclude?

Accept ?, Understand?, Sympathize with Sue ???

HOW ???

Sue is not just a poorly integrated (Emotionally, socially, intellectually) "Person", She's an abberation !

If I visualize this character, I see some sort of Sci-Fi monster with irregular "Holes" in it.

Best

LJ

Jo, I just looked back at my last (wordy) post and realize that I can distill all the reasons for my understanding of Sue's unfortunate psyche into two short sentences:


Sue's natural inclinations are totally out of sync with the accepted social standards of her day. Each time she surpresses her instincts to conform with society's expectations, she is devastated psychologically.

This is the Sue I understand..and sympathize with...especially at this last meeting. She is so unhappy with Phillotson and her heart goes out to Jude...yet she fights her instincts because she knows where they have led her before...

I think she loved Jude in her own way - but not sexually. If she had it her way, she would talked Jude into a Platonic , intellectual friendship. But she felt threatened by Arabella and realized that even Jude wanted a conventional marriage. So she closed her eyes and 'thought of England' in order to keep her dear Jude. This was against her nature. The children were a result of this 'union'. So, yes, she conceived those children against her nature - and it would have been the same situation with or without the marriage contract. Of course, the fact that she did not marry Jude (in not marrying she is following her own inclination) made things worse as far as her little family's acceptance in society was concerned - which led to the tragic deaths.


Yeah, LJ, there are lots of holes, and Sue's aberrations are extreme. But if you take her as she is presented to us, abberations and all, for whatever reasons... and then watch her try to find her way through the expectations of others...failing each time, don't you feel a bit of sympathy for her? She has no idea which choice is preferable!


I don't know what she should have done with her life when she realizes she is 'different'. Forget Hardy's story for a minute. Try to imagine Sue's future if Jude had never located her in Christminster. LJ, I'll be interested to hear your plan for Sue.

That was a good post, Joan! I can understand what you're saying until we hit her attitude about the children, then I have to veer off again, but nobody's perfect.

You would think, however, that she'd have learned by now how to make her own iconoclastic way in the world. Is the extent to which she hasn't managed to manage in the real world her tragedy?

Ginny

Yes, Sue sure is a tragic figure...and her inability to function in society or outside of society's rules, no matter how many concessions... is her flaw! What an example she is of Hardy's belief that man's fate is predetermined!


So Jude's suicide is that walk in the cold rain, knowing that in his condition, it will probably kill him. Is this really suicide? (Perhaps something more will occur in the last chapter?)


Arabella is dumbfounded! - "Well, I'm blest! Kill yourself for a woman!

There's a line from As You Like It:"Men die from time to time, but never for a woman."
Is it natural for man to kill himself over the loss of a woman? Jude has sustained the gruesome deaths of all his children...without missing a day of work! Is it believable that he would end his life over the loss of Sue? Or is it more than the loss of Sue which leads him to this final depression?

Jude says he only had two wishes...to see Sue, and then to die. (Notice that there is no longer a thought of his Christminster dream). What if Sue had agreed to leave Phillotson again and go off with him. Surely he would not wish to die then. Do you suppose Jude understood Sue so well that he knew she would not accept?

Ahh, you're question is well put, but I can't repair Sue without rewriting the book.

Best

LJ

Jude made that walk in the rain because he wanted to see her one more time. Even when he begs her to forget that she has been "drunk with creed" and to come away with him, he already knows that she won't do it. I tried to post yesterday about what Joan and Ginny said in their posts, but I "timed out.' I'll have to come back later!

We have been in conflict and even confusion over the characters. I wonder - what if Jude and Sue had met before he was involved with Arabella and before Sue met Phillotson? Would they have happily (?) united? Sue, as I understand her and as Joan has eloquently characterized her, wanted a relationship quite different from the one Jude wanted. What would have happened? The question is aimed at their personal relationship and their relationship with the rest of the world.

THAT is an excellent question, Jo. There would have been no impediment to their marriage, and they certainly could have gone on together, and there would have seemed no reason for the children to die, in fact, there would have been NO Father Time.

Ginny

It would still have been a tragedy.-------For Sue? ---For Jude?------- For Both?

Best

LJ

If we look at this book as something TH decided to write in order to articulate his beliefs about the church, marriage, the social mores of the day, the story line is secondary. He invents characters loosely fashioned on himself and people he knew, puts them in places he knew well, and developes their story as he goes along. I think that accounts for the disjointed characterizations we felt in a number of chapters...he made Jude and Sue say (or not say) do (or not do) what his imagination wanted, but he had too little knowledge or experience to pertray a clear picture, e.g. the children, and Sue and Jude's parental emptiness. At the point where Jude gave his lecture in the street at Christminster in the pouring rain, I suspect Hardy was ready to start shaping the end of the book. After all he had covered the beliefs he wished to share with readers. So he kills the children, throws Sue into hysteria, has Jude believing life will continue as it was. I find Sue's complete turn around fascinating. Why did Hardy do this to her? Was it just a clever twist in the plot? Was it expressing his belief that " duty is the highest road"?, Did he know someone who went through such sensless abnegation? Certainly TH was working through something about women' attitude towards sex, but he hadn't resolved it enough to share his thinking on it. Because Jude at the beginning of the book (in the haystack, with his hat over his eyes) says he does not want to grow up, Hardy probably knew at that point he would kill Jude at the end. Of course this could mean that he himself did not consider life worth living. I say Hardy meant for his hero to commit suicide because he knew life with Sue was over. Did TH love someone that much or did he know someone who did? As for Arabella, I was wrong about her interest in Jude being just sexual; TH makes it cleare here was a woman who could love but not to the extent Sue's type would. For sure those two women were meant to be opposites, unlike the two men. They were much alike.

TH has Jude understanding Sue's nature (after all Jude is fashioned on himself) and that comes across in the story. He even understands her change in thinking. When Jude says to Mrs. Edlin "Strange difference of sex, that time and circumstance which enlarge the views of most men, narrow the views of women almost unvariably." ..."our ideas were fifty years too soon to be any good to us," he's telling us going against the mores of the day can be life threatening. He should be around today!

kathleen, I think that TH started out with one story in mind, and it changed into another as he went along. Architect that he was, he had crafted a well balanced story, but lost control as he introduced more and more of his own negative criticism of the large bureaucracies which stood in the way of a man's self-fulfillment. As this happened, he neglected to flesh out his characters and they became in his own words, "puppets".

"Of course, the book is all contrasts - or was meant to be in its original conception. Alas, what a miserable accomplishment it is, when I compare it with what I meant to make it! - e.g. Sue and her heathen gods, set against Jude's reading the Greek Testament; Christminster academical, Christminster in the slums; Jude the saint, Jude the sinner; Sue the pagan, Sue the saint; marriage, no marriage; etc.etc."

In another letter, he defends the "grimy" features of the story, saying

"they go to show the contrast between the ideal life a man wished to lead, and the squalid real life he was fated to lead. This idea was meant to run all through the novel. It is, in fact , to be discovered in everybody's life, though it lies less on the surface perhaps than it does in my poor puppet's.

You know, I have been kind of down the last week ... I'm wondering if Hardy is getting to me...to the Sue that is in me. This is big birthday weekend in our house...and at the turn of the ten's digit once more, I am confronted with my own mortality, with the choices I have made...

Later!!!

...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY. You've achieved another step in the process of "Growing up"

Best

LJ

Happy Birthday Joan!
Don't let TH get ya! We're not his "puppets"!

OOOOO - good questions! If it hadn't been for some of the background material on Hardy, I would quickly say Jude really did not understand Sue - at least not much more than I do! But Joan, I believe it was your biographical research that let us in on Hardy's fascination with "ethereal" types - women not really earthy or lusty. When she goes back to Phillotson, he seems to be in a desperate, puzzled rage. Before the deaths of the children and her drastic decision he understood her as much as anyone could, but that wasn't enough to create a truly happy relationship. About the third question, I think if ONE THING had gone well for him, such as his dreams of a scholarly career, he might have managed to survive, but he's Job on the ash heap at the end.

Well, here we are at the end, and it's eerie how so many of our book clubs are ending up at the same time, eerie.

Poor Jude, dying of ?? comsumption?? and Arabella off to see the boat races, which TH has neatly sandwitched in the book, framed as it were with the Commencement and the eternal memory of Jude's failed hopes. It's sad, really.

How can anybody blame Sue for not coming if she wasn't called??

In answer to the questions above, I don't think Jude ended his life at all. TB will kill you with or without your consent, and I thought that was what he had? Yes, he was exposed to the cold and damp, yes, but I don't think that killed him, obviously he kept on. Not as familiar with TB as I should be, my grandfather, a train conductor, died of it in a sanitorium?? sanitarium?? but it killed him with no help from the elements, and left his widow and three small children.

I don't think suicide is intended here. A walk off a bridge is suicide.

Ginny

I read the final chapter yesterday, and even today feel unable to articulate my reaction to the conclusion. Of course it was a mean, bitter, quiet, lonely death, with the faint organ notes and the hurrahs from the Christminster Remembrance Day celebration ringing in his ears ...mocking him, as he whispered the despairing words of Job through his parched lips.


Is this the way a man dies? With unfulfilled dreams and regrets as he slips away, realizing it is finally over? I fear that may be the case.


For a man who learned the Scriptures and had clerical ambitions...maybe even becoming a bishop one day, Jude gives little evidence of a spiritual life, or confidence in an afterlife... His final words deal with regret that he was ever born...no call for forgiveness, no repentance...no hope for - or fear of an afterlife.......


Ginny and Jo, so good to hear from you! I think the only way to talk about this final chapter is to talk about parts of it.

No, I didn't feel it was suicide either...was expecting worse! Thought Sue was going to do herself in too! So the only grotesque death was the murder/suicide of the children. Hardy needed something really gruesome to cause Sue ... and Jude to react, but had no intentions of continuing in that manner.


What did you think of the ending? Could Hardy have done it any differently?

Job, I forgot the Job quotes, but not the quotes of the truimphant Job, but the despairing one! Interesting!!

Ginny

I don't see any other ending as possible. Before he dies,Jude explains Sue: "She was once a woman whose intellect was to mine like a star to a benzoline lamp. (Don't know what that is, but surely much dimmer than a star!)Then bitter affliction came to us, and her intellect broke, and she veered round to darkness."
Has Hardy sacrificed character and natural plot development to his social criticism?
Did anybody else notice Mrs. Edlin again - voicing her protests of Sue's unnatural, self-destructive behavior? She seems to be Hrdy's common-sense character, who, of course, is largely ignored!

Jo: She's almost like a Greek chorus, isn't she?

Ginny

Have you finished that last chapter yet? Would love to hear from some of you lurkers who have been reading the book, following the discussions. What did you think of the final scene?


The more I think about it, the more I think of it...that it was masterful!


This scene is so well suited for the stage, isn't it?


Yes, Mrs. Edlin does fill the role of the Greek Chorus, doesn't she? I think she provides a great contretemps to Gillingham (was that his name?) Finding her again in this last scene with the same familiar refrain...and this time filling us in on Sue's current state.


Leaving Sue off the stage at this point is more dramatic than bringing her on again...dramatic emphasis of Jude's loss and stark, lonely death! I was moved that the old Greisbach testament he was looking forward to reading the day Arabella threw that pig pizzle at him was gathering dust on the shelf in that lonely room.

Setting the scene on a beautiful, glorious day in Christminster, on Remembrance Day...with all the accompanying noise-the cheers, the laughter, the organ music - finding its way into the death chamber, reminding Jude of his unfulfilled dreams...emphasizing the fact that he was there, but not a part of Christminster, where he had always wanted to be. Hardy's use of bright colors outside the room, in contrast to the stark room, the gaunt, gray figure of the dying Jude - goes further to emphasize the lonely death. Didn't you get the feeling he was a lot older than 'approaching thirty' ?


And then of course, there is Arabella! Stealing the scene...practicing those dimples..."hatted, gloved and ready", looking ahead to better days.


There were some typical Hardy contrasts to be found here...Arabella's dreadful act, leaving him alone to die would have been the behavior we have come to expect of her. "In a provoked tone, 'why did he die just now!" is classic Arabella. But Hardy throws in some curves as she tells Vilbert, "I shan't talk of love today", and the "imprint on her mind's eye of the pale, statuesque countenance...of her 'poor man'...there is more to her...not much more but she is somewhat more human and believable...

So much more...must go to work!

Write!

Later!!!

Joan...my vote for the next book #1 Middlemarch, #2 Hard Times.

My reaction to the end of "Jude the Obscure"...since I couldn't become involved with the characters, and Jude's death was a given, the only reaction I had was, "Why did TH have him die on a beautiful day, during a festival, and alone? If the setting was meant to be symbolic, I can't figure out, of what? Is he only saying life goes on, Jude's death didn't even matter to his wife?

I think he died of untreated pneumonia. I also think he had meant to commit suicide, just didn't think it would take so long. Perhaps, if he had succeeded in an intellectual involvement with Christminster, no matter the kind, he would have had something to live for, and his loss of Sue would left him at least interested in living.

I loved that comparison of Mrs. Edlin to a Greek chorus. If I'm not mistaken, they were used as the voice of objective reality. So in the end the one character who is happy, with something to live for, is of all them, Arabella. TH is saying something here, too. Is it that the ones who live only for the moment, by their wits, with no committment to any one are in the end better off?

The last five pages in the book I have is an Appendix by TH. He classifies his "fictitious chronicles." The groups are Novels of Character and Environment, Romances and Fantasies, Novels of Ingenuity. Guess which one Jude is in? ..the first, Novels of Character and Environment. They"...approach most nearly to uninfluenced works; also one or two which, whatever their quality in some few of their episodes, may clamim a verisimilitude in general threatment and detail." Autobiographical? and "Differing natures find their tongue in the presence of differing spectacles. Some natures become vocal at tragedy, some are made vocal by comedy, and it seems to me that to whichever of these aspects of life a writer's instinct for expression the more readily responds, to that he should allow it to respond. That before a contrasting side of things he remains undemonstrative need not be assumed to mean that he remains unperceiving." Could this be applied to the emotionless portrayal of the children? If so, and he perceived how others might have portrayed it, why was he so cold?

Will I read another of Hardy's books? They are certainly not high on my list, but I can't say categorically 'no'. Would I find him an interesting companion? I think not, but I would have enjoyed conversations now and then. I hope we will all be participating in the next discussion.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOAN!!!! Those two figure markers do roll around all too quickly, but not to worry...the more we celebrate, the more precious the next one seems.

Yes, one can just see Sue singing the "Mad Scene" as Lucia or contemplating her reflection like Lady MacBeath.

I admit that this is an admirable and even current commentary on social idiocy, eccliastical perfidy, etc. etc. but as a "Novel" as a "Literary Classic", to me it's a nonentity.

Best

LJ

kathleen, I am going to have to agree with Ginny on the suicide question. I think Jude wanted to see Sue once more, even if it killed him - to try once more to get her to change her mind. I still don't know why TH goes out of his way to mention that Sue did not notice that blanket in which Jude had wrapped himself for the journey. Would she have known somehow just how sick he was if she had spotted it...and changed her mind?


You note that Arabella is the only character who is happy in the end with something to live for, and question whether TH is saying that "the ones who live only for the moment, by their wits, with no commitment to any one are better off in the end." I think that's exactly what he is saying...those who pay no heed to the powerful clout of the established institutions of the church, the university...those who ignore them altogether, can survive, as did Arabella.


What do you think of that? Do you agree with Arabella's approach?


Funny you should ask, "is TH only saying life goes on, Jude's death didn't matter - even to his wife?"


Yes, I think that is exactly what he is saying, with a voice dripping with bitterness and irony.


Here's something I read yesterday in a review by Ian Gregor:

"Endings were always a source of difficulty for Hardy - because they implied unity, where he sought plurality, they expressed finality where her sought continuity. Jude was to provide him with a particular difficulty because, the plurality of meaning is expressed in the very form the novel takes, it is an inseparable part of its unfolding movement. There seems nothing within that movement which indicates a natural point of rest, "an ending."
Furthermore Hardy would seem faced at the end of his novel with making two rather different statements about Jude: he wanted to express the end of his career in terms which are unequivocally and inherently tragic; and also to show that tragedy is contingent on human institutions, on Jude's own failure of temperament.


According to D.H. Lawrence, Hardy wants to combine 'the war with God with the judgement of men.' He sought to express an apprehension of contraries so deep that his kind of fiction could no longer accommodate them without collapsing into radical ambiguity or incoherence.(That was for you, LJ!
In Jude, Hardy was still committed to a fiction which pressed for a conclusion. It is difficult to see how that last hard-won ending could have been anything other than the ending to his whole fictional journey."

This was his last novel. Would I read another? I have put Hardy high on my list of must- reads...Return of the Native, Tess of the D'Urbervilles... . Also intend to get my hands on a video of Jude to see how that production plays. My library doesn't have it, perhaps a video rental place........


I noted your vote in your post and moved it into the UPCOMING GREAT BOOKS discussion...also recorded your choices in the chart in the heading. We're trying something a bit different this time, allowing voters to reenter the booth and change their vote. Here's the site for that discussion if you had trouble finding it:


Upcoming Great Books
LATER!!!

Joan, Thanks for putting my vote where it belongs.

Sorry, I still think Jude attempted suicide...he even admitted as much to Arabella when she asked him if he had gone to see Sue. He wanted to die knowing he had seen Sue for the last time.

Even if Jude had been naked under the blanket, Sue would not have changed her mind. Remember how she obsessed about kissing him? She was so mentally ill, she was self-destructive, but she didn't have Jude's courage, nor his ability to be objective about his motives. The description of her by Mrs. Edlin at the end enhances the picture of a woman who does not enjoy her God's love, only his continuous punishment. Although there may be a hidden agenda in so portraying the end of this book by the author, it is too obscure for me.

Do I believe Arabella's way of life was right? In a sense, yes. She got out of it far more than she put in, but I don't think such people are interested in, perhaps not even capable of, thinking about societal issues. For those of us who do, there is often much discomfit in what conclusions we reach, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

I agree with D.H. Lawrence' comments on this last book of Hardy's. It was obviously a struggle, more challenge for the analyzers than enjoyment by readers.

If you do find the video, and/or read another one of his books, please let us know your reaction.

Tell you what, a word of praise from Kathleen is like a shining beacon, have floated all over the place since I read it, thanks!!

As ever, Kathleen's posts are as good as the book. She said: " Is it that the ones who live only for the moment, by their wits, with no committment to any one are in the end better off?"

That's the question I kept wondering about myself, as it does seem Hardy has gone to great lengths to portray Arabella as a sort of almost....is SHE a sociopath? LJ is up on these terms? I mean there he is dying, and she's??? practicing dimples.... But IS there a conclusion to be drawn here?

I'm torn between Hardy got confused himself and the thing got away from him and so we're confused, and...

'Tis a bitter bitter view of the world, my friends.

Also kept thinking all thru the ending "O, I died for love." Now WHEN was it popular in literature, (BETCHA Jo knows this) for the disappointed lover to pine and die? That's what Jude is doing. Maybe he DID intend suicide, looks like he could have hunkered down by a lamppost out in the wilds, if so.

Then she said, "I think he died of untreated pneumonia. I also think he had meant to commit suicide, just didn't think it would take so long. Perhaps, if he had succeeded in an intellectual involvement with Christminster, no matter the kind, he would have had something to live for, and his loss of Sue would left him at least interested in living. "

OK, never thought of pneumonia, and don't know how long it takes. But that statement about intellectual connection with Christminster is really something...and Hardy really played the LACK of the connection right to the last, too. Even in the dying man's ears. Poor guy.

Then the Birthday Girl lets loose with smashing comments that sizzle and flash, to wit: "to show that tragedy is contingent on human institutions, on Jude's own failure of temperament."

Now, THERE are some more thoughts to ponder. Jo? Is tragedy in literature contingent of human institutions? I'm definitely out of my league here...

I keep coming back to the definition of tragedy that I know, that the protagonist, who is a worthy person, fails, but through no fault of his own, rather through a "tragic flaw" in his own being? But how could the "tragic flaw" be no fault of his own, couldn't he do something about it?

We can see my confusion here, and I'm so glad we read this, as I surely didn't get any of this out of it the first time.

Ginny

Also here's another definition of tragedy from Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia: "The spectacle of a human being of nobility, idealism and courage in conflict either with his or her own frailty or with a hostile or indifferent universe."

So, if THAT'S the definition of tragedy, IS this a tragedy??

Ginny

By that definition it certainly is a tragedy. By the definition that includes a "tragic flaw," it is more ambiguous. Joan's critic says it includes " a failure of temperament." Could this be stretched to include the idealism you (Ginny) mentioned so many posts back? More and more the book sound like a tragedy- the more we discuss it. Maybe LJ thinks the discussion is a tragedy!

- There's no question about the "hostile or indifferent universe." That's the way Hardy sees it - that's what Jude experiences.
In Tennyson's Arthurian tales, Elaine, the Lily Maid of Astolat, dies for love of Lancelot, and her corpse is floated down the river to Camelot so that he sees what he has done! Victorian romanticism or an echo of earlier version, including Malory's Morte d'Artur? Hardy would have been acquainted with both, surely, and could have been putting his own cynical twist on the idea.

Jo: I've always wondered about the tragic flaw concept? Now, in Othello I thought his tragic flaw was his pride. But how can you be of noble nature and not overcome your personal shortcomings?

I'm beginning to think this IS a tragedy, hahhahah but NOT the discussion itself! A triumph, that's what this discussion has been!!

Ginny

BUT Jude is the tragic hero, not HER!!

By any definition the tragic hero must be human and therefore flawed. He also must be worthy of our attention for specific reasons, such as heroism, imagination, ambition, goodness despite his weakness, - on and on and on! If the hero overcomes his shortcomings in time, then there is no tragedy! The whole concept is based upon the idea that he does not, or cannot, do that. Also, there must be something aboout him that makes us feel deeply for him, usually because we can understand or relate somehow to his suffering. That's Jude! I was able to relate to Sue early in the book, but not after I saw her conflict about how to behave in her relationship with Jude.

Ginny, a "tragic flaw" could be genetic. In Jude's case it's probably depression which he showed symptoms of in early childhood, and LFT certainly inherited the gene. Suicidal thoughts are a symptom of this illness, so Jude's wish not to grow up, and his intent to committ suicide would fit. His relationship with Sue enabled him to over come the depression,and he found peace. Once that was gone Jude lapsed back into depression and made the decision to die. Based on what Joan and Ginny found out about Hardy's life, it wouldn't surprise me he too was a depressive, but not a suicidal one.

I still cannot see this book as a tragedy. Jude's life was, but that wasn't the main theme in the book. TH used the book as a vehicle to portray his ideas on the social mores of his time (LJ says it so much more elegantly). If the story was to be tragic, than the lives of the people in it would have been tragic, but Jude was the only one.

As we are still "open" here, I'll add that I think the story was Jude's personal tragedy, not of heroic dimensions, but that of a victim of the social mores you cite, Kathleen. Hardy certainly wanted that criicism to take precedence over the stature of his character, but he still provided us with enough about Jude to engage our sympathies: his lonely ambition, his skill as a craftsman and his persistent interest in scholarship, and his unswerving desire to do what he believed to be right, especially for Sue and for him.

Where shall we go from here, this grim, quiet room, so far removed from the gay, throbbing celebration of Christminster just beyond its walls?





To Marygreen perhaps? Passing the "Thither" marker, on to that lonely hilltop, from which one can make out the towers of Christminster on a clear day...not far from the pond in which Jude's own mother drowned herself?


Whatever the 'tragic flaw', whether a genetic tendency to depression and suicide, or loss of hope in the face of oppressive social mores, Jude's death is indeed a personal tragedy, "a tragedy of unfulfilled aims", as Hardy describes in his preface.


Jude's most serious betrayal is that of his own dream, as he abandons the pursuit of education when he first comes into contact with Arabella's sexuality, which represents all worldly distraction. And dominating the book, there is the sense of Christminster's betrayal of Jude and his ambitions. and on an even grander scale, the betrayal of his church and those 'social mores' of his time.


Hardy has also "inserted the ironies implicit in Jude's quest in his rejection of that valuable possession of his craftsmanship for the sake of the false grail. His obsession with Christminster goes against the grain of his background, training and best instincts."

'For a moment there fell on Jude, a true illumination, that here in the stoneyard was a centre of effort as worthy as that dignified by the name of scholarly study within the noblest of colleges.'

Who has planned this "return of the native"? Is the Marygreen burial spot really the only logical place in world? A practical solution for Arabella, a psychological solution for Sue, happy to have him 'home' with her...


Hardy's poem, The Scholar-Gypsy, issues an urgent warning with a prediction which closely matches Jude's case:

"But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly!
For strong the infection of our mental strife,
Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest;
And we should win thee from thy own fair life,
Like us distracted, and like us unblest,
Soon, soon thy cheer would die,
Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfix'd thy powers,
And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made;
And then thy glad perennial youth would fade,
Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours."

And now Hardy Boys and Girls, let us throw our fists of earth and leave this poor boy to his obscure resting place.

"ITS A SHAME THAT HE WON'T KEEP,

BUT IT's SUMMER AND WE'RE RUNIN OUT OF ICE"

Best

LJ

Will this folder stay open a little longer? I am behind.

Joyce, so good to hear from you! Noticed your vote for the next selection. As soon as it is announced, we will open the new Great Books discussion and Jude will be closed. It will be available on a READ ONLY basis though. You will be able to scan through the rest of the discussion, though not participate. How far from finishing are you?
You are welcome to bring forward any questions or comments concerning Jude in the new discussion. I look forward to seeing you there.
We will be putting in background information there, but certainly free to chat right up to July 6.

Let me know how you're doing?

Later!!!

Joan

Joan, thank you for your message. My reading of the book and the posts has been sporadic to say the least. I think Jude is a tragic figure. I see him as a man "more sinned against than sinning", living in a society where where true "morality" is "more honored in the breach than in the observance".