Jude the Obscure
Jude the Obscure (translated into German as Juda the Unfamous , Hearts in Riot and In the Dark ) is a novel by the English author Thomas Hardy, first published from 1894 to 1895 . The text describes the life of the Jew Fawley, an English provincial boy who strives for education and higher tasks and hopes to find them in the university town of Christminster, but ultimately fails completely. Topics such as social modernization, religion and gender roles play an important role at the end of the 19th century. Jude the Obscuresparked heated controversy after its publication, which eventually led Hardy to stop writing any further novels and to concentrate entirely on poetry . Today it is considered to be one of Hardy's most important texts and an important work of late Victorian literature at the transition to modernity .
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Jude Fawley grew up as an orphan boy in a rural setting in Marygreen, Wessex, a fictional area that is the setting for many of Hardy's novels. He developed a strong affection for his teacher Phillotson, who eventually moved to Christminster, not far away - a university town that is usually read as Oxford . Jude, for his part, plans to move to Christminster, which is developing into a place of longing for him, a “heavenly Jerusalem” that embodies education and higher values. Early in life he taught himself Latin and Greek and reads numerous specialist books.
As a young man he married Arabella Donn, a simple woman from his own homeland. However, the marriage quickly fails, whereupon Arabella emigrates to Australia and Jude moves to Christminster in the hope of being able to fulfill his dream of an education. However, he was not accepted at the university and ended up working as a stone mason. His cousin Sue Bridehead also lives in Christminster, whom he does not know personally, but watches from a distance for a while. He builds up a growing reverence for women. When they finally meet in person, an intense relationship develops between the two, but one that is purely platonic .
Together with Sue he visits his former teacher Phillotson, whom he has idealized since the days of his childhood. Phillotson no longer lives in Christminster himself, but instead works as a teacher in the nearby small town of Melchester. He can't remember Jude.
After rumors spread about Sue's relationship with Jude, she loses her job at a teacher training college. She separates from Jude and accepts a marriage proposal from Phillotson, which she is not happy with. Against the advice of his friends, Phillotson finally agrees to separate from his wife and allows her to move back to Jude. This unconventional move also costs him his own social status.
Despite her love for Jude, Sue is very reluctant to enter into a sexual relationship with him, and she completely refuses to marry. The couple ultimately lived in a wild marriage with two of their own children, who were joined by a third: the boy called Little Father Time comes from Jude's first marriage to Arabella, who placed him in the couple's care. The small family lives in great poverty and, not least because of the unclear marital relationships, also socially excluded. In a central scene, Little Father Time finally kills himself and the other two children.
Jude and Sue become increasingly estranged until she eventually returns to Phillotson under the influence of religious ideas to enter into a second marriage to him and atone for her guilt. Jude, for his part, continues to add to alcohol and is getting closer to his first wife, Arabella, who has returned from Australia and finally gets him to remarry. However, this marriage is not happy either. At the end of the novel, Jude dies alone and as a broken person, while Arabella is looking for lovers at a festival.
Form and narrative
The novel has an authoritative narrator . It is formally divided into six different parts, which are named after the respective locations : At Marygreen , At Christminster , At Melchester , At Shaston , At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere , At Christminster Again . Each is preceded by a motto . The six parts are each divided into shorter, untitled chapters.
Atypical for Hardy is the extraordinarily large role played by the perspective of his main character Jude in the story. The world is described almost exclusively through Jude's eyes. For Penelope Vigar, the way in which events are perceived is more important than the way in which they actually take place. By merging reality and perception, the contrast between these two is emphasized and the complexity of the (illusory) human perception of the world is worked out.
The narrative style of the novel is influenced by Henrik Ibsen and 19th century French realism . What is remarkable about the figure of the Jew Fawley is, among other things, that she is one of the first intellectuals with a rural and proletarian background in English literature.
In the original publication in Harper's Magazine , each of the twelve episodes was accompanied by an illustration by artist W. Hatherell. Hardy held these illustrations in high esteem and praised them in a personal letter to the author.
background
Jude the Obscure was first published from December 1894 to November 1895 in Harper's Magazine and consisted of eleven episodes of a total of 53 chapters. An American and a European edition appeared at the same time. The text was initially titled The Simpletons , but was later changed to Hearts Insurgent - allegedly to avoid a name similar to another novel of the era. Hardy himself stated that he made the first sketches for the novel in 1887. He started the concrete work in 1890. It is believed that Jude the Obscure was completed in March 1895.
The novel was first published in book form in November 1895. There are significant differences between this text version and the one from Harper's Magazine . The book release contained numerous scenes that were drastic from the late 19th century perspective, which Hardy had deleted in the first publication. This concerned issues such as sexuality and marriage morality, but also violence against animals (which is a recurring motif in Jude the Obscure ). Since Harper's Magazine saw itself as a family-friendly magazine, Hardy had probably offered the publishers on his own initiative to remove problematic scenes from the series version. Dale Kramer suspects that different audiences also played a role in this: magazine readers were seen as more conservative and morally strict, while book readers came from higher social classes with better education and the prevailing idea was that they could be expected to have a better judgment on problematic topics.
Motifs
Religion and Social Restrictions
Religion and the institution of the church play an important, but ambivalent role in Jude the Obscure . On the one hand, the ideals they embody are an important anchor point for Jude, who deals with them from an early age. On the other hand, they also form the basis of the social exclusion that he and Sue experience.
Their open relationship outside of marriage is the most obvious sign of nonconformity with the expectations of the society in which they live. From the church records Jew the Obscure a problematic image - it is presented as old-fashioned and unenlightened and prevents by its insistence on old teachings ultimately the main characters in mind to pursue a happier life.
The social restrictions to which Jude and Sue are subjected are not of a purely religious nature either. You belong to a proletariat that had only limited opportunities for advancement at the end of the 19th century. Although their own weaknesses ultimately contribute to the failure of their ambitions, the framework of their age is a key factor. A large part of the exclusion comes from other members of the working class, only in part instances with higher authority are involved.
Modern and new zeitgeist
The conflict between old and new values is a recurring motif that runs through the entire novel. On the one hand, characters like Jude, Sue and Phillotson are in stark contrast to the conservative values of their time - especially when it comes to their relationship to marriage. This contradiction has negative consequences for their own lives. On the other hand, Jude himself is also caught up in traditional ideas, which is particularly evident in his idealization of the university town of Christminster. Jude never realizes that his own educational ideals themselves come from another time and that the modern world is shaped by other factors - a world in which medieval beliefs and Gothic architecture are relics.
A problem with the historical classification of the text is that the period of action cannot be clearly identified. There are indications that either the sixties or the nineties of the 19th century (that is, the decade of origin) as the setting. This ambiguity is probably deliberately created in the text. It creates difficulties in properly assessing the context in front of which the characters move. Towards the end of the century, the New Woman already existed as an ideal type who could be a point of reference especially for the figure of Sue. If one assumes a point in time for action thirty years earlier, however, this reference would have to be seen as anachronism - the contrast between Jude and Sue and the (conservative) outside world would then be much stronger in terms of the evaluation and acceptance of divorces .
Gender roles
Gender roles, especially the role of women, are an important topic in Jude the Obscure and also partly reproduce the changing spirit of the times. The focal point here is Sue Bridehead, a figure who initially takes a radical stand against the Victorian husband model, which she perceives as anachronistic, and does not consider any institutionalization of a (including sexual) relationship necessary. In doing so, she implicitly ties in with the socialist standpoints of her time.
In an afterword to Jude the Obscure , which Hardy wrote in 1912, he stated that the character of Sue Bridehead could be read as a type of woman, such as feminism brought forth. Whether Sue can really be read as a feminist is controversial, however.
Setting and autobiography
Jude the Obscure is often rated as one of the most autobiographical novels in Hardy's work. It's not so much about the story itself, but rather about the motifs that were processed. Jude Fawley's academic ambitions, his failure, and what he saw as an inopportune relapse into a trade show parallels to Hardy's own life, which for a while, contrary to his real talents, forced him into a career as an architect. The problem of marriage, which runs through the entire novel, also occupies Hardy intensively at this time - his own connection with his wife Emma was in the process of dissolving. In addition to their own failed relationships, Jude and Sue also come from broken marriages in the novel. Sue Bridehead is probably designed in part after Hardy's own cousin Tryphena Sparks, for whom he harbored a great admiration in his childhood. In part, Florence Henniker also seems to be a role model, a married woman whom he met in 1893 and who ultimately evaded his advances.
As in many of Hardy's works, the “Wessex” region is the setting for Jude the Obscure . The fictionalized area in the south and southwest of England is named after the historic Kingdom of Wessex . Like the region itself, the individual places at Hardy have fictional names, but most of them can easily be assigned to real locations. While Wessex on the one hand has realistic features and is easily comprehensible on a map of the “real” England, it also represents a fictional world, a “dreamland” that transforms reality into something else.
In contrast to many other Hardy novels, however, the novel does not take place in a landscape that has an autobiographical background for him. Hardy had traveled to the area between Berkshire and Oxfordshire , in which the text can be located, but unlike many of his novel settings, it was not a place of his own childhood. Despite his typical falsification of place names, many passages in the novel are described very precisely.
reception
Contemporary criticism
Jude the Obscure (like the previous novel Tess von den d'Urbervilles ) sparked a violent controversy after its publication, which Hardy claims to have finally caused him to stop writing novels and instead devote himself to the rest of his life To turn to poetry. Many attacks came from representatives of the churches. The Bishop of Wakefield announced in an open letter that he had thrown the novel into the fire. In the secondary literature, however, the view is sometimes held that Hardy conceived Jude the Obscure as his last novel from the start.
The original critical reception was quite ambivalent. While some reviewers praised the novel and emphasized, for example, its classic tragedy nature, in other places violent negative criticism developed, which was particularly directed against the shifts in value that were perceived in Jude the Obscure . Sexual morals in particular and the new relationship to the Christian institution of marriage, which were expressed in the text, were the target of violent attacks. Reviews carried titles like Jude the Obscene (Jude of the Obscene) or Hardy the Degenerate (Hardy the Degenerate). Hardy took these attacks very seriously and plunged into a crisis that spanned novel writing.
Later reviews
An influential admirer of Jude the Obscure was DH Lawrence . In his Study of Thomas Hardy , written in 1914 but not published until 1930, he commented on the novel in detail. He particularly emphasized the role of Sue, a figure he called "[o] ne of the supremest products of our civilization" ("one of the highest products of our civilization").
Today the novel is often given a special place in Hardy's work from an aesthetic point of view; it is seen in part as an anomaly and as a departure from Hardy's original narrative forms, which are still controversially judged by critics. While Jude the Obscure is perceived as one of the most complex and thematically interesting works by its author, the assessment of the artistic elaboration varies.
Overall, a critical consensus has developed to rate Jude the Obscure as the most hopeless and pessimistic of Hardy's novels. David Lodge reads the novel as a classic product of the fin de siècle , which generally does not contain the possibility of an escape from pessimism and a world of suffering - neither for the reader nor for the main characters.
In the third edition of Kindler's Literature Lexicon , Jörg Drews and Stefan Horlacher emphasize that Jude the Obscure is largely perceived as one of Hardy's best novels today. It is an important link between Victorian literature and modernity, but with its media-theoretical aspects it extends beyond this status.
In 2015, the BBC conducted a survey of critics to find the hundred best British novels. Jude the Obscure landed as the highest-ranked Hardy novel in 23rd place.
Adaptations
Jude the Obscure has been filmed several times and converted into other formats. In the 1970s there was initially an English television series under the original title, directed by Hugh David . Michael Winterbottom filmed the novel in 1996 as a Jew (German hearts in turmoil ). There is also a two-part musical version by the Burning Coal Theater Company in Raleigh (North Carolina) , which premiered in 2012.
Web links
- Free audio book version on librivox.org (English)
- Notes on cliffsnotes.com (English)
- Notes on sparknotes.com (English)
literature
expenditure
- Thomas Hardy: Jude Fawley, the unknown , Hanser Verlag Munich (2018), German by Alexander Pechmann , ISBN 978-3-446-25828-0
- Thomas Hardy, Norman Page (Eds.): Jude the Obscure - A Norton Critical Edition , Norton: New York / London (1999)
- Thomas Hardy: Herzen in Aufruhr , Anaconda: Köln (2012), German by Eva Schumann ISBN 978-3-86647-768-1
- Thomas Hardy: In the dark , Rowohlt: Reinbek bei Hamburg (1990), German by Eva Schumann ISBN 978-3-499-40076-6
Secondary literature
- JB Bullen: Thomas Hardy. The World of his Novels , Frances Lincoln Limited (2013)
- Dale Kramer: A Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy , Cambridge University Press: Cambridge (1999)
- Maureen E. Mahon: Thomas Hardy's Novels. A Study Guide , Heinemann: London (1976)
supporting documents
- ↑ Jörg Drews , Stefan Horlacher: Entry Jude the Obscure , in: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): Kindlers Literaturlexikon , Stuttgart (2009), Vol. 7, p. 88
- ↑ Penelope Vigar: The Novels of Thomas Hardy: Illusion and Reality , The Athlone Press: London (1974), p 199
- ↑ Penelope Vigar: The Novels of Thomas Hardy: Illusion and Reality , The Athlone Press: London (1974), p 212
- ^ Jörg Drews: Entry Jude the Obscure , in: Kindlers Literatur Lexikon (vol. 12), DTV: München (1974), p. 5050
- ^ Richard Little Purdy: Composition and Serialization of the Novel , in: Thomas Hardy: Jude the Obscure - A Norton Critical Edition (ed.Norman Page), Norton: New York / London (1999), p. 326
- ^ Richard Little Purdy: Composition and Serialization of the Novel , in: Thomas Hardy: Jude the Obscure - A Norton Critical Edition (ed. Norman Page), Norton: New York / London (1999), p. 325 f.
- ↑ Dale Kramer: Hardy and readers: Jude the Obscure , in: ders. (Ed.): A Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy , Cambridge University Press: Cambridge (1999), p. 166 f.
- ^ A b Maureen E. Mahon: Thomas Hardy's Novels. A Study Guide , Heinemann: London (1976), p. 76
- ^ Maureen E. Mahon: Thomas Hardy's Novels. A Study Guide , Heinemann: London (1976), p. 75 f.
- ↑ David Lodge: Jude the Obsure: Pessimism and Fictional Form , in: Dale Kramer (ed.): Critical Approaches to the Fiction of Thomas Hardy , Macmillan Press: London / Basingstoke (1979), p. 193
- ^ JB Bullen: Thomas Hardy. The World of his Novels , Frances Lincoln Limited (2013), 189
- ^ Dale Kramer: Hardy and readers: Jude the Obscure , in: ders. (Ed.), A Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy , Cambridge University Press: Cambridge (1999), p. 170 f.
- ^ Rosemarie Morgan: Women and Sexuality in the Novels of Thomas Hardy , Routledge: London (1988), p. 111 f.
- ^ Richard Dellamora: Sexuality and Scandal , in: Norman Page (Ed.) Jude the Obscure - A Norton Critical Edition , Norton: New York / London (1999), p. 455
- ↑ Penelope Vigar: The Novels of Thomas Hardy: Illusion and Reality , The Athlone Press: London (1974), p 190
- ^ JB Bullen: Thomas Hardy. The World of his Novels , Frances Lincoln Limited (2013), p. 180
- ^ JB Bullen: Thomas Hardy. The World of his Novels , Frances Lincoln Limited (2013), p. 180 f.
- ↑ Ralph Pite: Hardy's Geography. Wessex and the Regional Novel , Palgrave Macmillan: Houndmills / New York (2002), p. 3
- ^ JB Bullen: Thomas Hardy. The World of his Novels , Frances Lincoln Limited (2013), p. 181 ff.
- ↑ Denis Taylor: Jude the Obscure and English National Identity , in: Keith Wilson (Ed.): A Companion to Thomas Hardy , Wiley-Blackwell (2009), p. 362
- ^ Dale Kramer: Hardy and readers: Jude the Obscure , in: ders. (Ed.), A Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy , Cambridge University Press: Cambridge (1999), p. 165
- ^ JB Bullen: Thomas Hardy. The World of his Novels , Frances Lincoln Limited (2013), p. 181 ff.
- ^ DH Lawrence: Male and Female , in: Norman Page (Ed.) Jude the Obscure - A Norton Critical Edition , Norton: New York / London (1999), p. 412
- ↑ Penelope Vigar: The Novels of Thomas Hardy: Illusion and Reality , The Athlone Press: London (1974), p 190
- ↑ a b David Lodge: Jude the Obsure: Pessimism and Fictional Form , in: Dale Kramer (Ed.): Critical Approaches to the Fiction of Thomas Hardy , Macmillan Press: London / Basingstoke (1979), p. 195
- ↑ Jörg Drews, Stefan Horlacher: Entry Jude the Obscure , in: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): Kindlers Literaturlexikon , Stuttgart (2009), Vol. 7, p. 88
- ↑ Jane Ciabattari: The 25 greatest British novels , BBC Culture, December 7, 2015, viewed November 9, 2017
- ↑ burningcoal.com , viewed November 20, 2017