3 Review(s)

Jude the Obscure is a haunting love story and a raging indictment of Victorian society. In addition to its literary qualities, the novel is a rich source of social history, accurately reflecting the encroachment of the modern, developing world on the rural traditions of England. Of all the creations of Thomas Hardy, Jude is the most outspoken, the most powerful and the most despairing. The novel caused an uproar, and the Pall Mall Gazette castigated it as 'dirt, drivel and damnation'. Even Hardy's friend Gosse found it 'grimy' and 'indecent'. Jude Fewley, a young Wessex villager of exceptional intellectual promise, conceives the ambition of studying at Christminster. But he is trapped into marriage by the coarse, beautiful barmaid Arabella Donn, who makes him think he has got her pregnant, and shortly afterwards deserts him. His academic ambitions being thwarted by poverty and indifference of the authorities at Christminster, he finds fulfillment in his relations with his cousin Sue Bridehead. Sue has also deserted her husband and now lives with Jude. But, as social outcasts living in abject poverty, both are extremely unhappy...tragedy...strikes...children are killed....