9.

JUDE THE OBSCURE (1896)

The novel, Jude the Obscure has two central themes :

education and marriage. Hardy calls it the tragedy of

unfulfilled aims. The aspirations of Jude, who is the hero of

the novel, are thwarted by two women, who play major roles in
his life. Jude first aspires to become a Bishop but he is

tricked into marriage by Arabella Donn, the daughter of a pig-

jobber who is in search of a husband. The marriage goes to
pieces and Arabella emigrates to Australia.

After Arabella's departure Jude again tries to enter the

university but, he is rejected by the college masters. He

realises the collapse of his university hopes. At

Christminster he meets Sue Bridehead, who is by relation his

cousin, and falls in love with her. Sue is an emancipated

woman, a woman who has read widely and has most advanced views

about marriage. Here he meets Phillotson, the school-master,

whom he had known from his childhood. Through Phillotson,

Jude helps Sue to secure entry into a teacher's training

college in Melchester where he aspires to a lower goal - to

enter the church as a licentiate. When Sue finds out that

Jude is a married, man, she marries Phillotson. Frustrated by

Sue's marriage Jude spends the night with Arabella who has

returned from Australia. He finds no help for his moral

perplexities, and experiences a weakening of faith and of

ambition for the ecclesiastical life. Sue's hasty and
unconsidered marriage turns out to be a failure, because she

378
realises that there is an extraordinary bond between herself

and Jude. She cannot endure physical relationship with

Phillotson and begs him to let her go.

With Sue's arrival Jude finds his feelings for her to be

inconsistent, with his ecclesiastical ambitions and,

therefore, burns his books and abandons his hope to be a
clergyman. Both Sue and Jude secure divorce from Phillotson

and Arabella respectively.

Jude seeks fulfilment with Sue; but her unwillingness to

marry brings upon them such a stigma that they are driven to
wandering from town to town.

Two children are born to them and the third, Jude and

Arabella's son, Father Time, comes to live with them; Arabella

is married and living in London with an Australian hotel

keeper.

After years of wandering Jude aspires to live peacefully

in Christminster; but there, he feels his humiliation more

keenly and is faced with the catastrophe of his children's

murders by Father Time who thereafter commits suicide. The

incident comes as a blow to Jude and Sue. Jude loses his

faith in God and Sue turns religious. She takes the death of
her children as a retribution and as an act of penance she
remarries Phillotson and Jude is again entrapped in a loveless
marriage with Arabella. In the end Jude is seeking nothing
more than his own death by exposing himself to rain and cold.
He recovers from this but eventually dies. Arabella goes

about attracting a new lover.

There are signs in Jude the Obscure of the kind* of

strain that inevitably results when a writer is grappling with

a vision of society that has become almost intolerant. The

main characters are modern, rootless, and their inner

restlessness is reflected in the constant changes of
locations, journeyings, boarding of trains, living in inns of
temporary lodgings.

Through the relationship between men and women, in +he-

1890s, Hardy was paving a new way for the modern writers.
Hardy's descriptions of the complex pattern of the

relationship between Sue and Jude, with its struggles,

gropiTrt^S*., bewilderment, rationalization and nuances of

feeling, was a considerable achievement. To the writers, who

wanted to reject the norms of the traditional novel, Hardy

pointed the way. Here the novelist develops a moral vision

beyond the immediate anarchy and chaos. In the nexus between

sin and suffering we havefhetheme of a conflict between the

traditional moral values and moral anarchy. There is a

perpetual tension which ultimately results in the emergence of

a tragic pattern inhering a moral significance. The
protagonists Jude, Sue, Arabella and Phillotson all look

before and after and pine for what is not. Love is a mirage
whereas sex does not satisfy. Their attempts toreconstruct
their broken family lives are of no avail. They painfully

realise the futility of seeking love in sex and family union

380
in broken homes. Set against the Victorian background of smug

moral complacency, the novel reveals a spirit of revolt, even

anarchy in defiance of the conventional code of social

morality. Jude, Sue, and Arabella seem to be groping their

way like the babes in the darkling wood in a seemingly new

urban civilization with great individual freedom, often

verging on profligacy and licence. It is in its ache of

modernism that Jude the Obscure ceases to be a typical late

Victorian novel.

When Jude the Obscure was published, it caused an

uproar. It was greeted by the bitter and hostile critical

reaction. The reviewer for the Pall Mall Gazette entitled his

review Jude the Obscene, and Jeannette Gilder entitled her

review in the New York World Hardy the Degenerate. In England

Mrs, Oliphant lashed at Hardy in a review entitled The Anti-

Marriage League. The Bishop of Wakefield threw the copy of

Jude the Obscure into fire as he was disgusted t/ith the

insolence and indecency. He managed to get it banned from

W.H. Smith's circulating library. Reactions to Jude ran to

even more ridiculous rather extremes among the ordinary

readers than among the professional critics. Hardy received a

packet of ashes from someone in Australia who said he had

burnt the book. The publication of the book shocked the

Victorian public because Hardy treated the sexual under theme

more frankly than was normal and acceptable. He was

challenging contemporary opinion more sharply because instead

of man's sexual feelings he was dealing with a woman's

381
feelings and it was regarded as even more indelicate a. subject.

In a sense the real subject of the novel is not 'the tragedy

of unfulfilled desires," it is about "a deadly war waged

1
between flesh and spirit." The novel describes the
2
destructive power of sexuality "the strongest passion known to

humanity." In the delineation of Sue's character Hardy was

3
far ahead of his time. But Hardy's "public" as Sir Douglas

George wrote, "was not yet ripe for his gospel and he bowed to

its decision" and gave up novel writing after the publication

4
of Jude the Obscure.

Hardy wrote to Mrs. Henniker, "A novelist, had to be

twenty five years ahead of his reader to command attention."

5
This is expressed in the reflections of Jude at the end of

the novel. To Mrs. Edlin he says, " ... the time was not

ripe for us ! Our ideas were fifty years too soon to be any

good to us."
6

SUE BRIDEHEAD

What created such furore was Hardy's delineation of man-

woman relationship outside marriage, his questioning of the

goodness of social and religious institutions of the day.

Hardy presents an analysis of the whole basis of Victorian

moral code not through Jude, but through Sue. His delineation

of woman is quite contrary to the Victorian ideal and social

norms, of the age. Sue Bridehead, the heroine of the novel, is

a break from the stereotype Victorian heroines. She is an

emancipated new woman with radical thinking. She questions

382
the conventional religion, the strict ethical code of the

established church and the laws to which majority are subject.

She is against the tyranny of sexual orthodoxy. Her bold

declarations and challenges led to a deep enquiry and

precipitated the birth of a new woman,

who was coming into notice in her thousands every year -

the womanyfeminist movement-the slight pale sbeachelor"
girl-the Intellectualized emancipated bundle of nerves
that modern conditions were producing.
7

The whole of the nineteenth century became a series of

conflicts and contradictions. The radical ideas and trends

stimulated dreams of emancipation in Victorian women, which

inspired them to rebel against contemporary norms. The

feminist and liberal ideas in various forms found their ways

into the works of the major authors. Hardy was one of them.

Sue in the beginning is introduced as rebellious, an

admirer of J.S.Mill, quoting from his essay On Liberty. She

expresses her views on marriage rituals and mocks that she

will be given away like "a she-ass or a she-goat or any other

domestic animal."
8

Here we are put in mind of Henchard's treatment of Susan

under the effect of rum with furmity, when he tried to sell

off his wife like cattle. But Sue is not Susan. She is a

woman who refuses to be a mere plaything in the hands of men.

What is interesting about Hardy's women is their range and

variety. Like women in Shakespeare or later on in Tolstoy,

383
Hardy's women refuse to be mere types. They are both types

and individuals - quite a few of them striving to shape, even

control their own destiny, no matter how formidable be the

odds against them. It is here, in their quest of freedom,

that we see what Hardy calls 'the ache of modernism". Sue is

one of the modern women.

In a sense Hardy"s women belong to the two different

worlds : the old and the new; the older women clinging to the

conventional scale of values, the younger ones setting out in

search of salvation through release often verging on anarchy

and revolt. Sue and Arabella belong to the younger

generation, and the modern. The paradoxical thing about Sue

is that at the end of the novel, she accepts the very marriage

vows she had previously jeered at. Through the character of

Sue Bridehead Hardy expresses his own views on marriage. To

Mrs. Henniker he wrote -

... You know what I have thought for many years - that
marriage should not thwart nature and that when it does
thwart nature it is no real marriage and the legal
contract should therefore be as speedily cancelled as
possible.
9

Sue feels that Christian matrimony is a sordid contract

based on material convenience. She thinks that marriage is an

'iron contract". She 'would much rather go on living always as

lovers, and only meeting by day". She tells Jude, "I think I
10
should begin to be afraid of you, Jude, the moment you had

contracted to cherish me under a Government stamp, and I was

384
licenced to be loved on the premises by you." She is an
11
admirer of J.S. Mill and protests as Mill had done in

The Subjection of Women (1869), at "the lowest degradation of

a human being, is that of being made the instrument of.an

animal function" contrary to her inclinations. To Mrs.

12
Henniker^

Hardy wrote -

If I were a woman I should think twice before entering

into matrimony in these days of emancipation when
everything is open to the sex.
13

Sue does not want to marry Jude because she believes in

platonic love. She says,

My liking for you is not as some women/s perhaps. But it

is a delight in being with you, of a supremely delicate
kind, and I don't want to go further and risk it by an
attempt to intensify it I
14

In his letter to a close friend Hardy wrote about Sue's

temperament and reasons for her refusal.

... it is that she fears it would be breaking faith with

Jude to withhold herself at pleasure, or altogether, after
itf 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.
15

Sue voices Shelley's views that "Love withers under

constraint, its very essence is liberty." When she argues

16
with Phillotson about their married status she indirectly

expresses Shelley's views.

385
 A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as
they love each other? any law which should bind them to
cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their
affection would be most intolerable tyranny, and the most
unworthy of tolerations,
17

Sue is a typical study in psychology. She enjoys talking

about love and sex but gets frightened as soon as there is a

possibility of intimacy. When she marries Phillotson, she

certainly has no idea that Phillotson will demand such

relations from her. She admits, "I had never fully thought

out what marriage meant even though I knew." To

18
evade Phillotson she jumps down the window and admits that "It

is a torture to me to live with him as a husband." In her

19
relations to Jude - whom she laves - also she holds herself

back. She is a paradoxical character. In her she combines

profound conservatism and passionately liberal reforming

tendencies. She refuses to accept the traditional female role.

She is clearly a sharp image of inconsistency with paradoxical
notions. She is full of contradictions and yet dependent,

kindly and cruel, enticing and cold. R.B.Heilman points out

that Sue's inconsistency has a pattern.

... her unceasing reversals, apparent changes of mind and

heart, acceptances and rejections, alternations of warmth
and offishness, of evasiveness and candor, of impulsive
acts and later regrets, of commitment and withdrawal, of
freedom and constraint, unconventionality and propriety.
She is cool about seeing Jude, then very eager, then
offish.
20

Like xLa Belle Dame Sans Merci' she wants to be sexually

attractive and powerful but to remain sexually inaccessible.

386
She nevertheless lives with Jude and bears him three children

yet "... her intimacies with Jude have never been more than

occasional, even when they were living together." Sue lacks

21
Physical passion and submits to it only if it becomes

unavoidable. We find in her, frigidity and submissiveness.

She does not want earthly love, she does not want to be loved
as a' woman, she wants to be loved as a comrade, as a friend.

Her tragedy is that all three men in her life want her as a
woman, a woman who is generally meant by men to be taken and

enjoyed. These men suffer because of their attitude towards

woman. Hardy wrote to a friend -

There is nothing perverted or 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.
22

None of the men in her life understands the real Sue. Her

tragedy is the tragedy of what man has made of woman.

Society, religion and male chauvinism finishes Sue at the end.

In a review on Dr. Rosemarie Morgan's book Women and Sexuality

in The Novels of Thomas Hardy. V. E. Jesty points out that -

The approach to Jude is sociological. The novel is

usefully placed in the context of the political situation
of women at the time, still voteless and subordinate a
century after Mary Wollstonecraft. She shows how men's
and women's behaviour is conditioned by this and relates
Sue's split personality - now a little girl, now ethereal
goddess - to this, yet is able to argue persuasively that
she 'becomes the objective voice for Hardy's own case, his
own political view.' Much of her analysis of Sue's
repressed sexuality (often dismissed as non-existent by
her lovers) throws new light on Hardy's subtlety in his
presentation of her. Especially illuminating is Dr.
Morgan's account of the morning after Jude's and Sue's
first night in bed together. She points up the contrast

387
 between Sue's subdued manner and Jude's happy contentment?
he apparently has not noticed that the night has not been
quite so delightful for her.
23

Sue is no doubt a very complex character. She suffers from

the inner conflict which she herself cannot understand.

Gillingham describes her as '“a tantalizing capricious little

woman', Aunt Drusilla remembers her as a child with --tight

24
strained nerves', Hardy tells us about 'the elusiveness of her
25
curious double nature', and of her capacity for 'inflicting
26
pain again and again, and grieving for the sufferer again and

again in all her colossal inconsistency.' Sue describes

27
herself as sa woman tossed about all alone, with aberrant

passions, and unaccountable antipathies'. Sue's behaviour has

28
earned various labels from the critics. She is called 'a

neurotic', "a sadist'. sa pervert', 'a mingled being', 'all

nervous fastidious woman', 'a frigid woman', 'sexless' and so

on. She takes delight in arousing love but does not

reciprocate. She hurts and tortures Jude and inflicts so much

suffering on him that he cries, "crucify me - if you will."

29
In her conversation with Jude Sue presents a strikingly
accurate self -anal ysis of her owr^self. When she first meets

Jude she admits she did not love him. It was -

... that inborn craving that undermines some women's

morals almost more than unbridled passion - the craving to
attract and captivate, regardless of the injury it may do
to the man ... a selfish and cruel wish to make your heart
ache for me, without letting mine ache for you.
30
Because of this she feels a sense of guilt and self-

righteousness, which is a definite behaviour of a sadist.

388
Freud has diagnosed such characters through psychoanalysis.

His account was written in 1917 whereas Jude the Obscure was

published in 1895 and Hardy was quite ahead of him. Through

the character of Sue he was describing the modern woman of the

late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Through

his "awareness and sensitivity he was able to observe and

understand such psychological problems and then create a

character which embodies them more than twenty years before

Freud diagnosed them through psychoanalysis." Rosemary

31
Sumner observes that thereare "many qualities she has in
common, with Henry Knight in A Pair of Blue Eyes and Angel

in Tess of the D'Urbervi1les- their abstemiousness, especially

in sexual matters, and their consequent claims to virtue,

their: rationality -make clear that these particular
psychological characteristics have interested Hardy for a long

time; with Sue, he reaches a fullerand more profound

understanding and realisation

of them." In his letter to
32
Gosse, Hardy wrote "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 until now." In his letter

33
to Mrs. Henniker he stated, "Curiously enough, I am more

interested in the Sue story than in any I have written."

34

In all her human relationships we observe Sue's

characteristic behaviour. When there is a barrier she can

feel affectionate and even passionate. At the end of the
novel for the first time when sie realises that she will never

389
see Jude again she says,
"I love him ~ 0, grossly." Even as a
35
mother she has never felt what Lawrence's Miriam felt for her

children. Her interest in them is aroused only when they are

dead. The impression we get of Sue is that of a cool detached

mother. She struggles hysterically to get to their coffins

only when they are buried.

After the death of her children the stigma of illicit love

tortures her. She is smitten with a sense of sinful

indulgence in the past. Disaster makes Sue give up her modern

emancipated out look. She believes that the sin of the

parents has visited upon her children, and that they have died

to save her from sin. She says -

My children - are dead - and it is right that they should

be ! I am glad - almost. They were sin - begotten. They
were sacrificed to teach me how to live - their death
was the first stage of my purification.
36

So she yields to convent ions,while doing so she imprisons

herself in her own scheme of retribution. This self-imposed

punishment is nothing but an expiation for the sense of guilt

she feels. The catastrophe is the turning point of Sue's

life, for it brings a new awareness of moral order and self.

I have thought that we have been selfish, careless, even

impious in our courses, you and I. Our life has been a
vain attempt at self-delight. But self-abnegation is the
higher road. We should mortify the flesh - the terrible
flesh - the curse of Adam.
37

The final retribution comes always with pangs of guilt and

remorse, self-torture and punishment. Sue pronounces on

390
herself a life of severest mortification that she can imagine.

She wants to 'prick' herself "all over with pins and bleed out

the badness" that she has in her. She further says,

38

We ought to be continually sacrificing ourselves on the

alter of duty ! But I have always striven to do what has
pleased me. I, well deserved the scourging I have got !
I wish something would take the evil out of me, and all my
monstrous errors, and all my sinful way !
39

George Wing thinks that Sue is "deranged by grief". We

cannot agree with George Wing. It is not Sue's derangement.

The violent trauma of the death of the children has brought a

sort of soul-searching awakening on Sue's part and it

ultimately brings her awakening to Christianity. She

realises, "It is no use fighting against God." She wants "a

40
humble heart and a chastened mind." She now realises that
41
human beings must learn "self-mastery". She was "wrong-proud"

in her "conceit" but now she can "see the light at last". She

further says, "This pretty body of mine has been the ruin of

me already !" Sue here reminds us of the teachings of the

42
Buddha. He says -

Moral qualities are of greater value than intellectual

accomplishment. None else compels, ye suffer from
yourselves. The diseases of the spirit can be cured only
by the discipline of religion. Dharma is what holds
society together.
43

Sue suffers from excruciating pain which the death of her

children brings to her; but it also brings awakening, the

emergence of her consciousness from the long-drawn dim

391
struggles that preceded it. She rises from the spiritual

slumber. Through the prayers and the visits to the church of

St.Silas she begins to adjust her life and character to the

new light given to her. Sue voluntarily imposes on herself

terrible disciplines to make herself fit for the new life.

She cuts new channels in her mind and violently closes up the

old. This is her purificatory stage. We in India call this

the period of tajoas. Sue does this by wearing herself out

scrubbing the stairs "since eight." The act shows that Sue is

psychologically disturbed and by washing and scrubbing the

stairs she tries to wash away her guilt. Her actions are as

some critics believe the results of a psychoneurotic disorder.

According to James C. Coleman such actions result from -

... the life stresses come from the outside, like a

failure in some task, or from within, perhaps from
repressed hostility or sexual desires. The key factor in
either case is the intolerable anxiety aroused when
vulnerable aspects of the personality are placed under
stress and the basic adequacy and worth of the self are
threatened. In some instances the individual may attempt
to counteract forbidden desires by means of compulsive
rituals.
44

Sue's scrubbing of the stairs reminds us of Lady Macbeth's

handwashing after participating in the bloody murder of King

Duncan. Compulsive hand-washing rituals often represent an
attempt to cleanse oneself of guilt relating to sexual or

other immoral behaviour. #

Sue herself establishes a nexus between sin and

suffering and views the death of her children as retribution

for her own sins. But once this awareness dawns in her mind,

392
she imbibes some kind of moral vision that redeems her of all

her flaws and failings. Now she is altogether a different

woman. This kind of regeneration is not unique in Jude. Even

in an earlier novel like Far From the Madding Crowd the

heroine at the happy ending of the story is a woman redeemed

and her education in the school of life is nearly complete.

Unlike Susan and Eustacia Vye who refuse to change, some of

the heroines of Hardy change so much that they are nearly

reborn as it were. There is a total break with their past.

Sue's marriage devoid of love was a bondage not a union.

Sue and Lady Macbeth are the isolates. Even Brutus's

wife Portia becomes a neurotic like Sue and Lady Macbeth.

Neurosis is a state of mind resulting from extraordinary

tensions to which Hardy's men and women are subjected. These

tensions are built up on account of some hopeless cross­

purposes or from some violated shocks unhinging these

characters. They are faced with some crisis that weigh so

heavily on their conscience that they break down under its

heavy load. Anxiety, uncertainty, insecurity, bewilderment

all mingle in a way that throws these men and women off the

highway of normalcy. Portia, undertook to shoulder a secret

too heavy for her feeble spirit. Lady Macbeth - once the deed

was done, got herself so overpowered that in a neurotic state

she drifted far away from her husband for whose sake she had

master-minded regicide. Turning to Hardy we have a. simi lar

predicament in which men and women are thrown overboard quite

unhinged. Tess's past leaves Angel a somnambulist and in a

393
nightmare he walks alive into a grave with Tess in his arms.

For a moment life and death meet here in a grave collision.

Compared to Tess Sue's suffering is greater. She lives to die

many little deaths. She is Hardy's life-denying survivor

sharing the traits of self-destructiveness with several of

Hardy's characters. Some critics view it as an emotional

illness but in the stoic tradition it is called a trait of

heroism. It is true that Sue is bruised and broken when her

children are dead; but from the ashes of that old Sue there

rises a new, more sober, more practical Sue whom we pity and

admire. There is nothing romantic or passionate about her

going back to Phillotson. Like a martyr she sacrifices

herself on the altq,r of conventionality. Her coarse night

gown is sa very sackcloth O'Scripture.' Her act is that of

self-annihilation and eternal death. At the end of the book

when with clenched teeth she surrenders herself to Phillotson

she says, "It is my duty. I will drink my cup to the dregs !"
45
L.S.J.Butler sees in her a Christ figure -

Like Christ in the garden she herself chooses to drink the

cup of suffering and in both the cases the motivation is
the same s Bod's will be done.
46

Sue's was reconciliation, not resurrect ion. This

reconciliation has a profound human significance. But it would

be sentimental rather than critical to compare her to Christ.

Jesus rose on the cross to save mankind. He died so that we

could live. For whom did Sue rise and where ? On what cross ?

Matrimony to her was a bondage. Her new moral awakening

394
 transformed that bondage into duty. At worst it was a
compromise and not crucifixion. At best it was moral

reconciliation and not resurrect ion. Was the society Sue's

cross ? Or, was it her marriage ?

Sue lived in a world of her own dreams of sensual

*

pleasure and intellectual encounters. She let herself go

unbridled. But traumatic experiences of despair and death

put her through the school of sorrow and sufferings,

eventually awakening herself to the new realities of life.

She was nearly redeemed of the past. Here was a new Sue

altogether talking of spiritual excellence and divine purposes.

..Sue's redemption was moral and it would be far-fetched to call

it resurrection and attribute high-sounding religious

connotations.

To Jude she admits "I see marriage differently now,"

47
and adds that Arabella seems "to be your wife still, and

Richard to be my husband !" When Jude describes their union

48
as "Nature's own marriage" she replies "But not Heaven's
49
Another was made for me there and rectified eternally in the

church of
Meichester." Sue clearly seems to be remembering
50
the marriage vows. She must be remembering what the Bible

says that matrimony is a sacrament representing the

indissoluble union of Christ and the Church. She seems to

remember that "Marriage not to be dissolved but by death."

51

To the married couples I command - not really I but the

Lord - that the wife must not leave her husband and in

395
 c^se she does separate she must either stay single or make
up with her husband.
52

The Bible also says after marriage man and woman are -

Not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined
together, let no man put asunder.
53

Sue also voices the Bible when she talks about adultery. The

Bible says -

And he saith to them whosoever shall put away his wife

and marry another, committeth adultry against her.

And if the wife shall put away her husband, and be married
to another she committeth adultry.
54

It further says -

For the woman that hath an husband, whilst her husband

liveth is bound to the law. But if her husband be dead,
she is loosed from the law of her husband.
Therefore, whilst her husband liveth, she shall be called
an adultress, if she be with another man but if her
husband be dead, she is delivered from the law of her
husband; so that she is not an adultress, if she be with
another man.
55

Sue wants to "make her conscience right on her duty to Richard

by doing a penance", and ‘'drink-' her "cup to the dregs".

56 57
Sue's return to Phillotson is described as her, 'mad self­

punishment' her 'neurotic, relentless determination to punish

herself'. Her conduct is considered to be queer and that of a

neurotic. The critics seem to have missed a point here that

the Sue that has returned to Phillotson is not the Sue that

had previously left Phillotson. Jude realises that -

396
 She was no longer the same as in the independent days,
when her intellect played like lambent lightning over
conventions and formalities which he at that time
respected though he did not now.
58

Jude's belief that Sue has surrendered to the enslavement to

forms is not true. From the neurotic Sue of the previous

chapters there has emerged a new Sue who has accepted God and

religion, who has accepted that moral qualities are of

greater value than intellectual accomplishments. The diseases

of the spirit can be cured only by religion. In order to

deepen the solidarity of the human society we need the binding

force of religion. Sue's acceptance of religious orthodoxy, in

order to adjust her life and character to the new light is

quite voluntary and it brings in her a sense of crucifixion

and a sense of agonizing annihilation. At the end of the

doomed struggle against hostile norms Sue sheds her radical

thinking and feels reconciliation with the world outside and

inside. Sue has as R.B. Heilman puts it, "many of the makings

of the nun". But she also has her weaknesses. She is -

59

- a bright but ordinary person, attempting the career that

would be possible only to the solitary creative intellect,
the artist, the saint, whose emotional safety does lie in
a vision somewhere beyond that of the ordinary community.
Sue does not have that vision* she is everyman.
60

Through the character of Sue Hardy shows the threat of

intellect to the life of feelings and emotions. Through her he

goes through the critical examination of sacrament and

institution of marriage. He discusses the problems of sex,

397
marriage keeping in the centre Sue's expression about women's

response to sex. By sending her back to her husband Hardy

shows his faith in the institution of marriage. We cannot

agree with Mrs. Qliphant When she says Hardy has joined the

"anti-marriage league". In fact through Sue's last act and in

her conversation with Jude before returning to Phillotson we

see that Hardy sounds most "'churchy' as he calls himself. In

his letter to a friend Hardy wrote that-

his only fear had been that the book would be perceived
not as hostile to morality but as too supportive of the
Christian exhortation to mercy and as downright sHigh
Churchy' in its emphasis upon Sue's final return to
orthodoxy.
61

Hardy does not allow Sue to assert her independence or

offer a challenge to the traditional society by her own innate

vitality. Her return to orthodoxy is a triumph of Victorian

idealism and values. Hardy, trapped in the conventionality of

his time, brings Sue back to her husband as he did with Grace

Melbury in The Woodlanders; but Grace's plight is not as

tragic as that of Sue Bridehead, for Grace has no aversion to

her marital life. If Sue does not die like Eustacia Vye of

The Return of the Native and Lucetta Templeman of The Mayor of

Casterbridqe or Tess of Tess of the D'Urbervi1les, she does

suffer a terrible doom, as she does not love the husband to

whom she is reunited. We readily believe with Mrs. Edlin that

'weddings be funerals...' Sue does not die physically, but she

dies spiritually. She dies many little deaths as we all do

during our life span while changing from youth into middle age

398
and from middle age into later maturity. Sue that returns to

Phillotson is a mature woman, she is no more a woman of

independent thinking whom Jude had met in the beginning of the

novel -impetuous and free. Jude asks her-

Can this be the girl who brought the Pagan deities into
this most Christian city ? - Who mimicked Miss Fontover
when she crushed them with her heel ? quoted Gibbon and
Shelley and Mill ? Where are dear Apollo and dear Venus
now!
62

To this Sue admits, "I was wrong - proud in my conceit."

63

It is common among Hardy's heroines that they always

make the wrong decisions or choices which is often seen as
some kind of nemesis. Dreaminess and impracticabi1ity is a

force with them which turn them impulsive. Their dream - world

is shattered by life's realities and circumstances. We see

them in their reactions against circumstances which are mostly

against them, and instead of breaking through these

circumstances we see them yielding to them.

There is the unchanging conventionality below the bright

surface of Sue's non-conformity. Through the character of Sue

Hardy shows the threat of intellect to the life of feelings

and emotions.

Sue reminds us of Shardchandra's Indumati of Garva-

Khandan. Indumati is overpowered with a sense of self-respect

and like Sue challenges the traditional, wifely role of a

woman. She believes in the equality of men and women, hates

male domination and such love that hinders her independence

and liberty. She does not want to be a lifeless and soulless

doll, submitting to the desires of a husband. Sue also says,

“what tortures me so much is the necessity of being responsive

to this man whenever he wishes - the dreadful contract to feel

in a particular way in a matter whose essence is its

voluntariness". Like Sue,Indumati also breaks down at the end

64
by circumstances and goes back to conventionality and

accepts the very ideals she used to rebel against. At the end
of the story we see her turning into a dutiful, devoted and

virtuous wife. Like Rabindranath Tagore's Nirja of The Garden

Sue stands as a case by herself. The book can be divided into
two parts depicting two different personalities of Sue, Sue as

the neurotic and Sue as the balanced woman. Sue is a woman

basically in the traditional mould, who is transformed by

superficial and undigested education into a modern woman. She

shares with the other Hardy heroines the quality of excessive

self-sacrifice. Hardy attributed sex-linked flaws to his

women and that these flaws prevent their emancipation. They

have life-denying impulses. In The Return of the Native and

The Mayor of Casterbridge Hardy contrasts the heroines like

Eustacia Vye and Lucetta Templeman with Thomasin and

Elizabeth-Jane, who do not share these life-denying impulses

with Hardy's heroines. These are Hardy's good types; who are

homely and domesticated. These are the conventional roles

in a tradition-bound society. They are the ideal Victorian
heroines who "make limited opportunities endurable" through
"the cunning enlargement by a species of microscopic

400
treatment of those minute forms of satisfaction that offer

themselves to everybody not in positive pain". These women

65
are happy because of their positive human relationship. In

his poem

"Self-Unconscious" Hardy adumbrates his view that

satisfaction is possible if one yields oneself to the
present moment; the barriers to present happiness are
preoccupations, musings that give the speaker "a half
warpt eye" that blinds him to what "the moment" has to
offer. The poem "You on the Tower" also shows that life
does offer the material for happiness but we must be ready
to receive them. One of the prime obstructions to this
receptivity is obsessive musing, preoccupation with
philosophic schemes or intellections.
66

Sue suffers because she is the victim of this intellect.

Happiness is an achievable value for Hardy. Through the

characters of Thomasin and £1izabeth-Jane he shows this. Sue

instead of accepting her 'present moments' fights against the

hostile norms and then accepts them. Her acceptance of these

norms is like self-execution of Othello and self-blinding of

Oedipus. Through the character of Sue Hardy shows the danger

of trying to live by reason alone.

Sue's return to Phillotson brings her frivolous

wanderings between her two worlds to an end - the world of

loveless marriage and that of unmarried love, where love is

not love but adultery. That she rises out of her passion for

Jude and returns home brings her wheel of life full circle.

In her atonement there is more of expiation of sin than

escape. Sue's life's journey from marriage to love and back

to her husband is not merely a return to social conventions

401
from anarchy but it is coming to terms with the realities of

life. Here we have a woman wandering between the two worlds in

an age of transition from the traditional settled society to

the unsettled modern world in which women such as Sue are

prone to tensions and conflicts -the ache of modernism.

ARABELLA

In his portrait of Arabella Hardy testifies the

•Hit
unrestrained animalism of rustic life, She is^coarsest of all
his rustic characters. Through her Hardy presents moral

shabbiness.

Jude's seduction by Arabella, a temptress, reminds us

of the myth of Viswamitra and Menaka. She is responsible for

his frustrated academic and clerical ambitions. His academic

pursuit, his "tapasya' is interrupted by Arabella and later on

by Sue. Jude, in his frustration burns his books.

Indeed it is the Chance that threw Jude in the path

of Arabella. Destiny, in the form of Arabella changes his

course of life. The central tragedy of Jude is one of the

Unfulfilled aims. Jude's scholastic aims are thwarted by

Arabella. In contrast with Sita-Griselda myth, in Tess, in
Arabella we see the Mohini-Circe myth. During the days when
Jude lives with Arabella, he twice sees the vision of Samson

and Delialah. Like Delialah, Arabella represents the power of

sex-urge. She has nothing to offer Jude her sexuality.
Her repeated associations with the swine is quite symbolic.

It represents her earthiness. She attracts Jude by throwing

402
the flesh of a pig. She is shamelessly direct and determined

to get what she desires. Her true nature is exposed in the

following conversation she has with her friend Anny. Arabella

replied in a curiously low, hungry tone of latent

sensuousness,

"I've got him to care for mes Yes! But I want him to more
than care for me. I want him to have me - to marry me! I
must have him. I can't do without him. He's the sort of
man I long for. I shall go mad if I can't give myself to
him all together. I felt I should when I first saw him !
67

So she sets a strategy to capture Jude and pulls him

down to a level of animality. She is callous and deceitful

and an air of artificiality is about her. Her dimples are

artificially produced, she wears artificial switch of hair,

she pretends false pregnancy in order to force Jude to marry

her and even in her love towards Jude she is false and vulgar.

Her morality is different from Sue's. She uses her physical

charms without any qualms of conscience and moves from man to

man as if she were changing her dresses. Mrs. Qliphant thinks

that she is

-a woman so completely animal that it is at once

too little and too much to call her vicious. She is a
human pig, like the beast whom in a horrible scene she and
her husband kill...
68

In his letter to Mrs. Henniker Hardy wrote that he had

delineated the pig-killing scene to bring out Arabella's

character and to show the amount of cruelty human being^ can

show towards animals. He wrote-

403
 I suppose I have missed the mark in the pig-killing scene,
the papers are making such a fuss about: I fully expected
that though described in the particular place for the
purely artistic reason, bringing out Arabella's character,
it might serve a humane end in showing people the cruelty
that goes on unheeded under the barbarous regime we call
civilization.
69

Arabella's indifference to the killing of the pig shows

her in true light. This indifference is extended even to the

human beings. When Jude is on his death bed she ignores him

and goes away to meet her lover. Through her Hardy presents

the carnal side of love. Sexual passion is a temporary

feeling and its presence or absence is nothing compared to the

comradeship that alone ensures happiness, the happiness that

Gabriel and Bathsheba find in Far From the Madding Crowd.

Arabella is selfish and heartless and having no scruples she

lacks reverence for conformity and conventions, and behaves

according to her impulses and necessities, including that of

catching a husband. She uses her beauty and charm without any

qualms of conscience because she knows that 'Weak women must

provide for
a rainy day'. Elizabeth Hardwick thinks that
70
Arabella's deceit is the result of her necessity to survive.

In Arabella, sexual exploitation is combined with other

deceits. Indeed the deceits are inevitable, since she has
no plan, conviction or order that could give her relations
with men a genuineness. What is absent in Arabella is
love. Her compulsions arise from the survival struggle
and not from obsessional passion.
71

Even if we agree with Elizabeth Hardwick, we do not

appreciate or sympathize with Arabella's character. Lack of

love and compassion and loving-kindness towards a fellow being

404
turns a human being into a demon. Though her toughness and

hardness, self-centredness and acquisitiveness is the result

of her necessity to survive we cannot approve of her

shameless, direct and forceful ways in going for what she

desired. In his classification of Hardy's women, A.J. Guerard

puts her in the column of NThe Highly Sexed' and xThe

Resourceful 8. Enduring' women along with Tess. Arabella does

embody the sensuousness of Tess but without her innocence and

simplicity. Similar to the pig-killing scene in Jude the

Obscure there is a bird-killing scene in Tess of the

D'Urbervi1les. Tess kills the poor suffering birds with

loving-kindness, suffering all the time with the poor helpless

birds while relieving them of their pain. Arabella arouses

the feeling of repugnance'in the reader's mind as she is

presented as a passion-tormented she-pig. She never regrets

her actions. Unbridled passion is her life-force and she

happily indulges herself in it even when Jude is dying.

Anyhow she ignores him and goes about the business of

attracting a new lover.

After the death of her first husband she attends the

church but it is a temporary phase. She never appreciated the

Christian virtues like compassion and loving-kindness. Even

as a mother she is an utter failure. Father Time seems to be

a biological accident. She sends him away to Jude as he is an

obstacle in her animal pursuits. She is a foil to Sue. Sue

adopts Arabella's child; and loves him. For his sake she even
is ready to marry Jude. Arabella lacks motherly qualities and

405
denies Father Time^mother's love. In Hardy's novels there is

a lack of true mother-image. There is seldom a picture of a

Hardy woman guiding her child's growth. Hardy's world is

devoid of the laughter of children. Some of his heroines die

in childbirth. Sometimes the children also die with their

mothers and even if they are alive they suffer when they are

illegitimate. Arabella's son is born out of her wedlock but

unfortunately she is not capable of showering a mother's

affection on him, as a result her own son thinks that she is

not his mother. He says, "You be the woman I thought her my

mother for a bit, till I found you wasn't". When he meets Sue
72
first time he asks, "Is it you who's my real mother at last ?"
73
Arabella does not possess Tamsie's devotion or Tess's love for
her son. Father Time inherits his mother's destructiveness.

Arabella thinks that the presence of Father Time is

inconvenient to her in her pursuit of pleasures so she gets

rid of him.

In her letter to Jude she writes,"...I must ask you to

take him when he arrives for I don't know what to do with

him." We would not have blamed Tess if she had hated her baby
74
and abandoned it. Arabella lacks moral virtue. Richard

Carpenter thinks that Arabella is not-

-evil, scheming or vicious, but a careless, erring,

selfish woman who thinks of her own comfort and security
first and of ethical matters second, if at all.
75

This estimate is not tenable. Though she gives birth to a

406
 /

child we find that in her there is" a barrenness of true

maternal spirit.

Compared to Jude she is more passionate but she is not

the only woman in Hardy who is more so than his man. In his

novels he presents the woman as the image of Eve tempting and

luring Adam. L.S.J. Butler observes that the women of Hardy's

earlier novels have tended to be passionate. Sue is an

exception-

In every Hardy novel however, there is some evidence of

female passion. Thus Bathsheba (and Fanny Robin) in Far
From the Madding Crowd seem to be sexually aroused by
Troy... Bathsheba falls in love against her better
judgement and the abandon with which Fanny follows Troy
from barrack to barrack we surely find a sexual flavour
in it that is quite absent from Boldwood's se1f-obsessed
obsession or Oak's steady devotion: similarly Eustacia Vye
in The Return of the Native is presented as sexually
passionate, while even her lover, Damon Wildeve, is
presented as colder and more 'civilized'. We get the
impression that Lucetta in The Mayor of Casterbridge
actually desires Donald Farfraev while he seems more
concerned with her status and glamour. ...In Tess we find
passionate women in the Talbothay's milkmaids. In Jude -
the passionats woman is present in Arabella.
76

Out of all these women Arabella is the only woman

stamped as 'a human pig' By delineating Arabella's character

Hardy seems to show that this side of life is ugly and

detestable, and the price paid for it is destruction for every

fulfilment and often destruction without fulfilment. She
embodies the destructive power of sexuality.

The world of Jude the Obscure is the world of suffering

and failure. Jude and Sue suffer, the children suffer and die

and even Arabella is not exactly happy, but she survives

407
because she has that cheerful and vulgar insensitivity, that

inner numbness and a strong desire to live and enjoy life.

She is the only character who is truly living with her dynamic

nature and natural instincts.

Was Arabella based on Emma Hardy ? In describing Jude

being trapped by Arabella was Hardy describing the real

situation in which Hardy got married to Emma ? In Thomas

Hardy ; A Biography Michael Millgate writes,

There can be little doubt that Hardy's engagement and

eventual marriage to Emma Gifford were in some measure the
calculated outcome of a conspiracy - if only of discretion
involving the entire rectory household. But if he was
^caught' by Emma, it is no less true that he was in the
early stages of their courtship entirely captivated by
her.
Before Hardy's appearance upon the scene a local farmer
probably John Jose, son of the widowed Cordelia Jose of
Pennycrocker, - had been 'nearly secured' for Emma, but
his active pretensions to her hand were no doubt
exaggerated for Hardy's benefit,...
77

The reading of the novel shows that Hardy had heavily

borrowed from his own life experiences and from the lives of

people around. In his poem "The f:hosen’' he describes Rachel,

who was vain, frail, rich in colour and clever at artificial

sdimple making'. Some of her characteristics were given to

Arabella. Millgate observes that Arabella is the "tortured

vision of Tryphena in later years". Her husband kept a hotel
78
in Topsham and she sometimes helped him. In his poem "My
Cicely" Hardy describes the ex-fiancee whom he saw with
'1iquer-fired face'.

408
THE MINOR WOMEN CHARACTERS

AUNT DRUCILLE and WIDOW EDLINE do not contribute much

to the action of the plot. Jude's Aunt acts as an informer.

Through her we come to know about the parents of Jude and Sue

and also about the family curse. Even she is not capable of
providing proper parental guidance and maternal love to little
Jude. Her ruthless comments make Jude believe that he lives

in the world that did not want him. She does not understand
the small sensitive child and tells him about the sadness in
the family and advises him not to marry. Jude's insecurity is

the result of Aunt Drucille's negative guidance.

Widow Edline is the most practical woman in the novel.

She Rlays the part of a rustic chorus commentator; and the
useful confidante to Jude.

Somehow the minor women characters do not receive the

kind of the novelist's attention the way the principal female

characters do. They are at best the chorus revealing a

cross-section of humanity. In their lives hardly anything off

the beaten track happens. They are a part of the larger

humanity and the dull round of their daily routine only shows
how life goes on, no matter what happens to Sue or Jude.
Unlike Jane Austen, Hardy is not interested in these women in
any great depth. His interest is incidental rather than
intense; it is shallow not deep. It is on the main characters
that he bestows his care and concern. Most striking traits of
the novel are its intellectual element and the protagonists'

409
psyche reflecting typical modern temper and tensions, the

characteristics that make Jude the Obscure most modern of

Hardy's novels. Unlike Hardy's other novels that acquire the

structure of folk tales and ballads, unfolding largely the
tales of the children of the soil, Jude the Obscure has dense

intellectual climate and sharp conflicts.

410
 NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure(Dent : London and

Melbourne, Everglades" Library, 1985), p. XXVII.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Timothy 0"sullivan, Thomas Hardy : An Illustrated

Biography, CLondon, Macmillan Co. Ltd., 1975), p.143.

5. Evelyn Hardy and F.B. Pinion Ced.) One Rare fair Homan :
Thomas Hardy"s Letters to Florence Henniker, 1892 to
1922, (Macmillan, 1972) p. XXXVIII.
6. Thomas Hardy, op. cit., p. 381.

7. Ibid., p. XXX.
8. Ibid., p. 158.

9. Evelyn Hardy & F.B. Pinion (ed.) op. cit., p. 149.

10. Thomas Hardy, op. cit., p. 243.

11. Ibid.

12. Mary Jacobus, "Sue the Obscure", Essays In criticism,

Vol. 25. No. 4s p. 309.

13. Evelyn Hardy & F.B. Pinion (ed.) op. cit., p.182.
14. Thomas Hardy op. cit., p. 226.

15. Florence Emily hardy, The Life of Thomas Hardy - 1840 to

1928, (London Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 19600, p. 272.
16. F.B. Pinion, Thomas Hardy, Art and Thought, (London,
Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1977), p. 152.

17. Ibid., p. 153.

IB. Thomas Hardy op. cit., p. 201.

19. Ibid., p. 198.

20. R.B. Heilman, "Jude the Obscure" Hardy the Tragic Novels,
ed. R.p. Draper, Casebook series en. ed. A.C. Doyson,
(The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1975), p. 212.
21. Florence Emily Hardy, op. cit., p. 272.

22. Ibid.

411
23. V.E. Jesty, a review on "Women and Sexuality in the
Novels of Thomas Hardy by Rosemarie Morgan", The Thomas
Hardy Journal, (Dorchester Dorset, The Thomas Hardy
Society Ltd., January 1989, Vol. No. 1), p.89.

24. Thomas Hardy, op..cit., p.238.

25. Ibid., P- 100.

26. Ibid., p. 195.

27. Ibid., P. 163.

28. Ibid., P- 192.

29. Ibid., P. 227.

30. Ibid., P. 335.

31. Rosemary Sumner, Thomas Hardy : Psychological Novelist,

(The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1981), pp. 175 - 176.

32. Ibid., P. 166.

33. Florence Emily Hardy, op. cit., p. 272.

34. Eve 1yn Hardy & F.B. Pinion (ed.). op. cit., p. 43.

35. Thomas Hardy, op. cit., p. 375.

36. Ibid., P. P. 344, 345.

37. Ibid., P* 326.

38. Ibid., P. 327.

39. Ibid., P. 326.

40. Ibid., P. 324.

41. Ibid., P. 327.

42. Ibid., P. 375.

43. S. Radhakrishnan. Occasional Speeches and Writings.

(Delhi, The Publication Division, Ministry of Information
and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1960), p. 109.

44. Clifford T. Morgan, Introduction to Psychology, (U.S.A.

MacGraw-Hi11 Book Company, Inc. 1956). p. 388.

45. Thomas Hardy, op. cit., p.376.

412
46. Lance St. John Butler, Thomas Hardy. (London, New York,
Melbourne, Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, British
Authors Series, 1978), pp. 139 - 140.

47. Thomas Hardy, op. cit., p.332.

48. Ibid., p. 331.

49. Ibid., p. 332.

50. Ibid.

51. The Holy Bible. (Bombay Kalbadevi Road, B.X. Furtado and
Sons), Ep.h. 5-32 Gen. 2. 24.
52. Ibid., Gen. 2. 24.

53. Ibid., Matt 19-24-6.

54. Ibid., Mark 10, 11.

55. Ibid., Rom. 7. 2,3.

56. Thomas Hardy, op. cit. p. 375.

57. Ibid., p. 376.

58. Ibid., p.326.

59. R.B. Heilman, op. cit., p.226.

60. Ibid., p. 226.

61. Michael Millgate, Thomas Hardy : A Biography, Oxford,

Melbourne; Oxford University Press, 1982), P.p. 369-370.

62. Thomas Hardy, op. cit., p. 333.

63. Ibid.
♦

64. Thomas Hardy, op. cit., p. 199.

65. Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge : The Life and

Death of a Man of Character, (Great Britain : Penguin
Books, 1978), p. 410.

66. Vern B. Lentz, "Positive Moment's in hardy's Poetry", The

Thomas Hardy Journal, Vol III No. 3 (Dorchester, Dorset,
The Thomas Hardy - Society Ltd., October, 1987), p.32.

67. Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, (Dent s London and

Melbourne, Everyman's Library, 1985), p. 41.

413
68. Mrs. Oliphant, "The Anti-Marriage League", Blackwood's
magazine, January 1896, Clix, 135-49, Thomas Hardy : The
Critical Heritage, ed. R.G. Cox (London, Routlegde &
Kegari Paul, New York Barnes & Noble Inc. 1970), p.258.
69. Evelyn hardy and F.B. Pinion, op. cit., p. 47.

70. Thomas Hardy, op. cit., p. 382.

71. Elizabeth Hardwick, "Sue and Arabella", The Genius of

Thomas Hardy, ed. Margaret Drabble (London, Weidenfeld
and Nicoison, 1976),p.69.

72. Thomas Hardy, op.cit., p. 294.

73. Ibid., p. 263.

74. Ibid., p. 258.
75. Richard Carpenter, Thomas Hardy, The Griffin Authors
Series (London and Basingstoke, The Macmillan Press Ltd.,
1976), pp. 146-147.
76. Lance Dt. John Butler, op. cit. p.133.
77. F.R, Southerington, Hardy's Vision of man, (London,
Chatto and Hindus, 1971), p.139.
78. Michael Millgate, Thomas Hardy : A Biography, (Oxford,
Melborune, Oxford University Press, 1982), P.p. 122, 123.

414