Jude the Obscure: Week 5 - Part Fifth

[Captain Sir Roddy, R.N. (Ret.), Founder]

This is the folder for our continuing group read and discussion of Thomas Hardy's last novel, Jude the Obscure. This folder is for discussion and comments on the "Part Fifth" beginning on Monday, April 18th. I have to tell all of you that I am very impressed with the depth of conversation and quality of the discussions that have occurred to date. Keep up the great work, folks! Enjoy!

[Jan]

Fifty minutes to midnight, Monday is almost here!

[MadgeUK]

Chris and Jan commented at the end of Part Fourth on how much of a social radical Hardy was but in this part the novel gets 'radicaler'!! In Chapter 1 Sue asserts that fewer women than is supposed actually like marriage; they enter into the contract for the social advantage it can bestow. She touches on the feminist awareness of oppression or exclusion which women then experienced and which functioned according to an 'iron contract' or a 'Government stamp'. The same system can also be seen to exclude and oppress Jude as a working class man now reduced to carving lettering on headstones because of social mores.

In Chapter 3 the pair are even more radical when they declare 'All the little ones of our times are collectively the children of us adults, and entitled to our general care'. This was a view of the early communists and one touched on by Tolstoy in War and Peace and practised in his commune. It was also the idea which later led to the formation of kibbutz in Israel, where children were brought up communally.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz#...

There is a tendency expressed by both Jude and Sue in these chapters to see life in abstract generalities rather than concrete physical details and this too was a defining feature of communism as a utopian ideal, an ideal which, by and large (with a few exceptions), did not live up to expectations.

These were very radical ideas being put forth by Hardy in 1895 - they are still very radical today! I expect to find folks here very opposed to them but in my youf I was quite sympathetic to the idea of living on a kibbutz and when I was divorced I applied for my four children and myself to live on one in Israel. Unfortunately, they did not accept divorcees:(. I know a number of kibbutzniks who have led very happy and successful lives and I still regret that I was unable to fulfil that dream.

(A novelist who followed on from Hardy with radical ideas about marriage was H G Wells, writing at the end of the 19C, whose work Hardy may well have known. He was a prophet of the sexual revolution of our own era who believed in free love and practised it tirelessly! He was married twice to women he loved, but neither of whom satisfied him sexually, and had several long-term relationships, as well as innumerable briefer affairs, mostly condoned by his second wife, Jane. He wrote extensively about sex and marriage and contributed to the feminist journal The Freewoman. One of his many ideas was that people should be licensed before being allowed to marry or to have children.)

[Jan]

You were quite sympathetic to the idea of living on a kibbutz, but the kibbutz was not sympathetic to you...reminiscent of Jude being told by the University to stick to his trade.

[MadgeUK]

True Jan:). I was editing as you posted to add the bit about H G Wells.

[MadgeUK]

In the UK we say about children like Old Father Time that they 'have been here before'. Is this an expression used in the US for 'old fashioned' children?

[Deborah, Moderator]

Yes Madge, we do say they may have been here before. I know I had a friend who was older than he was young. There's a photo of him at 2 or 3 where he looks like a little old man (and always was in spirit). Or we say they have an old soul.

This part really hit me because here the old soul is the child who should be the one the adults care for. Yet the child is the one who says I wouldn't marry if I were you. The adults seem more childlike in that they can't make up their minds and their seemed spooked by just watching marriage ceremonies.

It's hard being that child.

[Lily]

I am having trouble holding on to empathy for the characters Hardy is creating in these chapters. That is not usually a problem for me. Maybe it is just that certain things seem to be recurring such that my proclivity for fiction that doesn't get bogged down wants the plot to move more rapidly. This seems to move at the pace of life itself, rather than at the tempo of a story. (And, yes, I know that pace is part of the strength of Hardy's writing; that just doesn't mean but what I am discontent at the moment.)

[MadgeUK]

Which characters Lily? I was struck by the fact that the Cartletts have come by train from Lambeth in London for a shilling! It felt very modern and reminded me of the day excursions I used to make with my grandparents:

'It is the popular day, the shilling day, and of the fast arriving excursion trains two from different directions enter the two contiguous railway stations at almost the same minute. One, like several which have preceded it, comes from London: the other by a cross-line from Aldbrickham; and from the London train alights a couple:'

I was also taken by the description of the military band playing on the bandstand too because this was a familiar scene in English towns and villages until the 1960s. This is a painting of the ld bandstand at Weymouth which Hardy would have known as nmany of them were erected in the 1800s, when this kind of entertainment first became popular:-

http://www.satiche.org.uk/bandstands/...

[Silver]

Though I understand the message that Hardy is trying to convey about the state of marriage at this time period. The problems with it, and how it is so often set up in such away that it is bond to lead to unhappiness for those involved. As well considering the past experiences that both Sue and Jude have had I can understand why they may feel certain reluctance on the subject of marriage, and I know that Sue is philosophically against the idea of marriage, or at least how the contract of marriage was designed and the social expectations and rigid morality.

But with that said within these chapters I could not help but feel there was something of a self-fullfilling prophecy in it all. Sue has predetermined that if she and Jude were to be married than they would have no choice but to miserable.

Yes marriage or no marriage, it is within thier own power how they choose to live together, treat each other, how they feel about each other. A contract of marriage does not have this supernatural power Sue seems to think it has to force them to be turned against each other as soon as it is signed. But Sue has created this idea within her own mind, that her and Jude would be incapable of caring for each other, or living any sort of happy life if they were married. She is determined to see the so called curse against thier family realized, by choosing to beleive that they do not in fact have any real choice or control but that it has been fated against them.

[Deborah, Moderator]

I guess I took this in a little different way. I didn't see Sue as viewing marriage to have a supernatural power. I thought Sue was afraid that if they were legally joined, somehow the legality/contract quality of the relationship would diminish what they feel for each other. Sort of familiarity breeding contempt.

In some ways Hardy sets the stage as Arabella seeing them together is jealous because of the feeling the two share. Also, I believe in the beginning of this segment it states that marriage is a trap (back to that rabbit again).

What bothered me most was the contempt the people showed for them because of their supposed marital status. I could feel how hard the gossip and looks would be for them through the descriptions. I hurt for them at that point.

[Silver]

Deborah wrote: "I guess I took this in a little different way. I didn't see Sue as viewing marriage to have a supernatural power. I thought Sue was afraid that if they were legally joined, somehow the legality/c..."

I did not mean it in a literal sense, only the way in which Sue did act as if the marriage contract would have some power over how they felt for each other.

Even though it is fully within thier own control to determine who they will act towards each other married or not.

And she did have this sense of foreboding and doom over them it seems becasue of what thier aunt had said about the history of the family.

The way I see it, they do have a choice here to rather than falling into the trap so to speak, but make thier own marriage a positive experince. Instead of deciding they are doomed to misery and that marriage has to be this negative thing between them, they could instead view it as the opportunity to turn thier marriage into what they think a marriage should be.

[Lily]

I think we know that part of what Hardy writes is based on his own experiences. However, I don't see any necessity of familiarity breeding contempt. I would say as Silver, perhaps dropping "supernatural": "Yes, marriage or no marriage, it is within their own power how they choose to live together, treat each other, how they feel about each other. A contract of marriage does not have this power Sue seems to think it has to force them to be turned against each other as soon as it is signed."

I do think Sue is afraid of commitment -- which is a legitimate fear. But, it is one mature adults face again and again. (She does also have a number of other fears that interplay, including her sexual reticence. It is interesting that Hardy does still give Sue maternal "instincts"; he could have been even more radical-- it would not have served his story, does he do that in another novel, I think perhaps he does, but I'd have to check.)

[MadgeUK]

A contract of marriage does not have this power

Nor does it have the 'Government stamp':-

'I think I should begin to be afraid of you, Jude, the moment you had contracted to cherish me under a Government stamp, and I was licensed to be loved on the premises by you--Ugh, how horrible and sordid! '

I have some sympathy for Sue's p.o.v. here - being 'licensed' to love is not a very romantic idea.

I am assuming that Sue's reference to a 'Government stamp' is to the marriage license obtained if you married at a Registrar's office, which had only just become legal. As divorcees they could not be remarried in church - although the wording of that ceremony with its 'love honour and obey...till death do us part' etc might not have been any more acceptable to Sue, who seems to be worried that because they falsely declared their circumstances (as not living together) in their divorce petition. 'Are we--you and I--just as free now as if we had never married at all?'....'But I wonder--do you think it is really so with us? I know it is generally. But I have an uncomfortable feeling that my freedom has been obtained under false pretences!'

So to add to her conflicting views about marriage in general she is now conflicted by the legal ramifications! Poor Sue!

This conversation (Chapter 1) also shows us just how difficult for the Victorians these divorce 'ramifications' were. I suppose too that if people had been used for several centuries to only being able to be married in church by a clergyman, that having the ceremony being performed by a mere Registrar, a civil servant, not a religious man, would seem strange - perhaps the equivalent of the old idea of jumping over a broomstick!

[Lily]

MadgeUK wrote: "because they falsely declared their circumstances (as not living together) in their divorce petition. ..."

I was confused on this one -- I wondered if the meaning was that Phillotson's divorce petition claimed "adultery", whereas in reality Sue and Jude were at that point only "living together" without sexual intimacy. To me, the wording was "typical" Hardy ambiguity on these matters. Is there text that anyone considers to clarify?

[Lily]

Deborah's comments about social censure have been trailing my background thoughts. When IS it appropriate for social censure to occur? How do we decide? What do we do about it? Can we really change it in the present time (certainly over time we can) or is it simply a reality with which we must learn to cope and make our choices? For Jude and Sue?

[MadgeUK]

Lily: No 15: I think the fact of them sharing the same house would have merited sufficient social censure and that folks would have assumed the sexual intimacy if they had declared that. It would probably be the same today, for that matter, because you still have to declare adultery if you are petitioning for divorce on those grounds and the adulterer has to be named. It has been convention, I think, to avoid mentioning the woman's name and for the man to admit the guilt because more approbation was heaped on the woman. Everyman can probably explain the technicalities.

No 16: That's a whole can of worms! My own views on such matters (as you probably know!) are that as long as no-one is being harmed by any of these things, then it is no-one's business but our own. If I wish to 'live in sin' or do anything 'sinful' (which doesn't harm others) then in a free society I should have the right to do so. In the UK there is no social censure about such things nowadays, unless you happen to live closely within a religious community, which is relatively rare. Most of the time no one knows or cares if people living together are married or unmarried.

But this is really a Cafe topic (unless we relate to Sue/Jude), not one for the Jude thread, and we did touch on it there last month.

[Deborah, Moderator]

Why has this section been so hard for us to really get a good discussion going? For me it was an easy read. One of the things that really struck me was a child being called Father Time and never named until after he joined Jude and Sue. Yet even then, they tended to think of him as Father Time. Old soul if you believe in that. Some people are born older than others. I have had friends like this who are the same age or younger than I am and act as if they are 10 years older.

[Lily]

Even though this section was an easy read, it seemed more a transitory set-up for what was to come rather than one with a lot of content in and of itself. Below are the Cliff Notes analyses of chapters 7-8 --they do a better job of summarizing than I could without more effort than I am willing to do.


"Jude and Sue are reduced to living off the sale of the cakes and gingerbreads Jude bakes. The fact that they are made in the shapes of buildings at Christminster not only reveals that it is a 'fixed vision' with him, as Sue says, but foreshadows his return there. Having aimlessly gone from one town to another for several years in pursuit of work, Jude will finally return to the place of his youthful dream as if to die there.

"Arabella's meeting with Phillotson, coincidental though it may be, makes the final connection among the main characters, since they are the only two who have never met in recent years. Here and later, she reports to Phillotson on the state of the relationship between Sue and Jude; her motives are, of course, selfish."

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guid...

[Lily]

Below is the Cliff Notes analysis of chapter 6 -- perhaps there is a comment or two here to generate some conversation (I am not certain I agree with all of the analysis, e.g., the sentence bolded.)


"Jude and Sue are shown to suffer one setback after another: people are uncivil to them; Little Father Time is harassed at school; Jude's work diminishes; he loses a job at a church when Sue is recognized; he resigns from the committee of a workmen's educational society he belongs to under unspoken pressure from other members. They decide to move to where they are not known, and since they must take lodgings instead of a house they auction their household goods. The implication is that all this is happening to them because of that malign power that operates to frustrate man's hopes. Or it may be that society retaliates against those who violate the rules it sets down. But the former is more strongly suggested.

"As Sue says, it is 'droll' and ironical that she and Jude should be working to restore the Ten Commandments in the church. Neither in belief nor in action do they subscribe to the meaning of these rules."

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guid...

[Captain Sir Roddy, R.N. (Ret.), Founder]

You know that you have all made some truly wonderful observations so far! I am very proud of you all.

I had wanted to really focus on Sue's reluctance to marry Jude. Madge laid out the quotes above (Posting No. 14), and I think it really illustrates the crux of the matter from her perspective. In my opinion, Sue believes that entering into a marriage contract is akin to having been "purchased".

Sue says--

"Fewer women like marriage than you suppose, only they enter into it for the dignity it is assumed to confer, and the social advantages it gains them sometimes--a dignity and an advantage that I am quite willing to do without."

and I think this is a very important notion that she puts forth.

Arabella is back! And Sue is most certainly jealous! ["You mustn't go out to find her! It isn't right! You can't join her, now she's a stranger to you How can you forget such a thing, my dear, dear one!"] Poor Jude, he's receiving all of these weirdly mixed messages (from both women!).

It intrigues me that all through the novel Sue is quite adept at playing the 'helpless and bereft naif' at times; and at other times she can be intellectually very strong and philosophically powerful in countering Jude's best arguments or efforts at persuasion; but when she thinks that she might lose him, she is quick to appeal to his heart and emotional side. Am I right?

And it is because Arabella is back in town that Sue finally agrees to marry Jude, and she says--

"'The little bird is caught at last!' she said, a sadness showing in her smile."

This one tugged at my heart-strings, I must admit.

And does Arabella have Jude pegged--lock-stock-and-barrel--

"Never such a tender fool as Jude is if a woman seems in trouble, and coaxes him a bit! Just as he used to be about birds and things."

I thought this was absolutely spot-on!

And leading off Chapter Three, what does Sue say?

"What Arabella has been saying to me has made me feel more than ever how hopelessly vulgar an institution legal marriage is--a sort of trap to catch a man--I can't bear to think of it."

A sort of trap! This is a huge bone caught in Sue's throat, isn't it?

Finally, also in Chapter Three, as Jude and Sue are walking home, what does she do? She quotes a bit of Shelley again to Jude--

"Can you keep the bee from ranging,
Or the ring-dove's neck from changing?
No! Nor fetter'd love..."

This is the very radical Shelleyan notion of 'Free Love'. Now, I am not advocating that Sue is advocating sexual promiscuity, as I believe that Sue has adapted Shelley from the erotic to the emotional. I still don't see Sue sending out the physically erotic signals like Arabella--it seems, to me, that Sue is sending out signals seeking the emotional and intellectual bonds.

And now Little "Father Time" appears--

Probably enough for tonight. I'll see all of you in the a.m. Cheers!

[Captain Sir Roddy, R.N. (Ret.), Founder]

Lily wrote-- Your picking up on ""As Sue says, it is 'droll' and ironical that she and Jude should be working to restore the Ten Commandments in the church. Neither in belief nor in action do they subscribe to the meaning of these rules." is quite good, Lily.

This really hit home with me too! While maybe Sue (and even Jude) may have some issues with some of the Commandments, clearly the 'Society" around them is willing to condemn them based upon these same Commandments. In my opinion, hypocrisy oozes from the pages.

[MadgeUK]

Thanks for those thought Lily and Christopher - so much to think about in these chapters. I too liked Lily's reminder about them working to restore the Ten Commandments. Real Hardy irony there.

This anticipation of people living together in 'Free Love' and holding things in common, including children (kibbutz style), is very striking, considering it was written in 1895. Hardy was well ahead of his time here. It is all the more striking because he is writing much of the dialogue about it from a woman's p.o.v. He must have picked the brains of his radical women friends:).

As for the 'malign power' which is mentioned in the Cliff's Notes quoted by Lily, Hardy's novels always have an element of The Fates about them. It was something which seemed to fascinate him. He uses phrases like 'guardian angels' or the 'President of the Immortals' or just refers to 'Fate'. His novels frequently carry the theme that individuals are powerless to affect their own lives in their attempts to achieve happiness. Jude's unrealized dream to enter the university and his powerlessness to remain happily with the woman he loves, outside of the socially accepted institution of marriage, is a powerful fatalistic theme here.

As well as the 'malign force' of Victorian society there is the force of the teachings of the church and both Jude and Sue struggle against both. The fact that Christminster looms large in their struggles seems to indicate to me that Hardy was inferring that it was the church which exercised the most malign influence and it is true that the church at this time did have a powerful hold on society's mores.

[Lily]

I find Hardy's concept of "fate" rather hard to understand. Maybe it relates to some perhaps American attitudes of responsibility for creating one's own fate -- an optimism about ability to act with freedom and impact into the world that Hardy seems to downplay. (Even if that world sometimes overwhelms, like the photographers in Libya. Is that fate or the consequence/risk of choices?)

[Everyman]

Lily wrote: "I find Hardy's concept of "fate" rather hard to understand. Maybe it relates to some perhaps American attitudes of responsibility for creating one's own fate -- an optimism about ability to act wi..."

Hard to understand intellectually? Hard to understand from a personal philosophy? Or something else?

It seems to me pretty straightforward fatalism in a line starting with the Greeks, and even before. It's very Biblical -- Job's fate was decreed by God and Satan, and he had nothing to do but to decide how to respond to it. For Homer, the gods had decided how long one would live and when one would die, and the only choice man had was whether to die nobly or ignobly. For Christians, there is a clear intellectual conflict between fatalism and free will -- if God knows everything that's going to happen, how is free will possible? Even today, many people believe that God directly intervenes in at least some parts of their lives.

I agree that most of modern Western society has a hard time with the concept of fatalism; we, particularly in the United States, are wedded to the self-made-man concept,to the concept that we are in control of our lives and that while we can't always control all aspects of life --hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, and the like happen without any control from human activity (at least for the time being -- give science and technology another hundred years and at least some people believe we'll have them licked, too), but that in general, anybody (at least anybody born in the US) can become President, that we can use our will and our ability and our initiative to shape our own destiny, not that fate has decreed what we will be and it is not true that

"As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods, — They kill us for their sport."

[Everyman]

Lily wrote: "I find Hardy's concept of "fate" rather hard to understand. Maybe it relates to some perhaps American attitudes of responsibility for creating one's own fate -- an optimism about ability to act wi..."

One thing I should add to my previous response: it is also the case that in Hardy's day England was still gradually coming out of a period when class was very much a controlling force one's life, when there was no concept of bettering oneself, that as Jude found out the idea of a tradesperson aspiring to university was not to be though of. This is part, I believe, of the fatalism concept, that you are born into the working class and will die in the working class and that's the way God has ordained the world and who are you to argue with God?

[MadgeUK]

Yes, Hardy was working within the traditional Greek/Roman concept of The Fates and Jude should perhaps be seen in that light:-

We might see feel that we are in charge of our own destiny but if you believe that a God or gods are in charge of it then your way of looking at what is happening in your life is different, fatalistic. For instance, there are Muslims who strongly believe that earthquakes and tsunamis are sent by Allah to punish believers for being sinful and that there is nothing they can do to protect themselves against such 'fates'. All is 'willed' - it is a Calvinist viewpoint too, linked to the idea of predestination. Hardy is probably drawing upon both traditions.

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/m/mo...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatalism

There is quite a lot of 'doom' in these chapters, which I find fatalistic/Calvinistic. Chapter 4 begins with a description of Little Father Time as Melpomene, who is the Greek muse of Tragedy. Widow Edlin tells a sad tale about a male relative of Jude and Sue's who was wrongly found guilty of burglary and was sent to the gibbet, whereupon his wife went mad. Little Father Time says 'If I was you mother, I wouldn't marry father!' and later Sue senses that a 'a tragic doom' overhangs their family' and links their house to that of Atreus, father of the fated Agamemmon and Menelaus. At the registry office they are preceded by a soldier and a young pregnant woman with a black eye and a man just released from goal! This chapter is full of good old Victorian melodrama!

[Jan]

Hardy uses a lot of symbolism in foreshadowing this sense of tragic doom. There are many examples, here are just a few that struck me:
Part One...feeding the rooks. Rooks belong to the same family as crows and ravens, which are symbols of an uncertain future, birds of ill omen, sometimes associated with lost souls.
On the other hand, he has a glorious vision of Christminster as the new Jerusalem...a place of knowledge and religion. But before he ever gets there, of course he has met Arabella, it's very symbolic that he is just about to commence reading the New Testament in Greek, when he gets up and walks out of the room to go and see her...walking out on learning and religion.
Also in book one we have the killing of the pig. Now I'm not quite sure whether the pig is a symbol of Jude himself(and his fleshly ways), or of Arabella, or of their relationship. But I'm sure it represents something like that...the man doesn't turn up, so Jude has to kill the pig...symbolic of the end of his marriage...symbolic of killing himself? ...which he attempts shortly thereafter...certainly it foreshadows the end of his life with Arabella.
Book Two. Christminster...his dream of the place as a place of scholarship and religion is immediately overtaken by the ghosts of the past. The imagery of the crumbling masonry and spirits of former poets suggests that the age of religion is crumbling. Later in a dream he hears one of the spectres mourning Christminster as 'the home of lost causes.'...another warning of doom?

By part three, Jude has a new idea, rather than high religious aims(a position of authority in the church), he now sees himself in more of a servant role(still hoping for something religious). But the imagery of his arrival in Melchester warns us otherwise, "...he walked out into the dull winter light over the town bridge, and turned the corner towards the Close. The day was foggy,and standing under the walls of the most graceful architectural pile in England he paused and looked up. The lofty building was visible as far as the roof-ridge;above, the dwindling spire rose more and more remotely, till its apex was quite lost in the mist drifting across it."
To me, this again foreshadowed an uncertain future, 'lost in the mist'.
Hardy uses this kind of symbolism and imagery all the time, but you don't always realise it straight away. When I read the part about the rabbit caught in a trap, I wondered why he had put that bit in the book, then of course Madge and others talked about the symbolism of it in terms of Sue being frightened of being caught in the marriage trap and I realised I had missed that one, as I'm sure I've missed many more. This brings us to our current discussion, part five, where I particularly noted the imagery of the registry office, in chapter four. "The room was a dreary place to two of their temperament, ...Law books in musty calf covered one wall, and elsewhere were Post-Office Directories, and other books of reference. Papers in packets tied with red tape were pigeon-holed around, and some iron safes filled a recess; while the bare wood floor was, like the doorstep, stained by previous visitors."
It sounds rather like a prison..dreary, ...red tape, pigeon-holed, iron, stained...all words suggesting being tied up, locked away. Hardy constantly uses symbolism and imagery in a way that connects powerfully with our emotions, he uses all his poetic powers of influence in ways that make it impossible to remain a casual observer, we begin to sense the apprehension felt by his characters.

[MadgeUK]

Great post Jan as usual! I hadn't noted the symbolism of the registry office but you are right! Even when I was young registry offices were very dull and dingy places - I was married in one in the 50s but they have improved enormously over the years.

The day they went to the registry office was dull too: 'The day was chilly and dull, and a clammy fog blew through the town from "Royal-tower'd Thame." On the steps of the office there were the muddy foot-marks of people who had entered, and in the entry were damp umbrellas.'

'Royal-tower'd Thame' is from a John Milton poem about England in his Poetical Works. It is in the final verse about its rivers:-

Rivers arise; whether thou be the Son,
Of utmost Tweed, or Oose, or gulphie Dun,
Or Trent, who like some earth-born Giant spreads
His thirty Armes along the indented Meads,
Or sullen Mole that runneth underneath,
Or Severn swift, guilty of Maidens death,
Or Rockie Avon, or of Sedgie Lee,
Or Coaly Tine, or antient hallowed Dee,
Or Humber loud that keeps the Scythians Name,
Or Medway smooth, or Royal Tower'd Thame.

Towers are often interpreted as phallic symbols representing male domination so Hardy may be making this connection too.

[Lily]

Eman and Madge -- thank you for the comments on fate. I had usually considered the Book of Job from the viewpoint of refuting the position that what happens to one in life is necessarily what one "deserves" or "earns", but I hadn't really considered that as "fate", which has overtones to me of something supernatural or some inevitability existing. In other words, "fate" had more connotations of "cause" than of simply "that's the way the cookie crumbles."

I encountered some interesting tidbits about the work of David Foster Wallace and his book Fate Time and Language: An Essay on Free Will while following some of your links today, Madge. Here are a couple of reviews, the first from a Notre Dame connected publication:

http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=23349

http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/dfw/...

A bit on Wallace:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Fo...

[Lily]

Let's see if this Cliff notes analysis of Chapter 4 can elicit some reactions:

"These scenes make clear that Jude and Sue will never submit their relationship to the forms of society. In the registry office and in a church they watch others marry, just as before Sue's marriage to Phillotson they walk down the aisle of the church in a pretense of marriage. More important is the reason for their not going through with marriage. Sue says it is as if 'a tragic doom' guided the destiny of their family in this respect. The idea that something outside their lives frustrates everything they do will come into their thoughts more and more, and of course is symbolized in the figure of Little Father Time. It has been in the background from the beginning of the novel but comes to the fore in this living symbol.

"This idea is echoed in the tale Mrs. Edlin tells of the man hanged near the Brown House. Mrs. Edlin, who in her person and in her sense of family history is very much a part of the Wessex landscape, is used here to illustrate the idea of the doomed family."

"The idea that something outside their lives frustrates everything they do will come into their thoughts more and more, and of course is symbolized in the figure of Little Father Time." -- This is very much the fate theme. I hadn't thought of Little Father Time symbolizing external interference in the lives of Sue and Jude; in fact, I hadn't given words to the idea/theme that someone or something was always stepping in and warping their lives.

[MadgeUK]

Thanks for the book rec Lily. My post No 37 says much of what is mentioned in Cliff's Notes and refers to the same incidents. However, I do not think we are meant to 'refute' the idea of predestination etc but are meant to go with it because Hardy is suggesting that this is what his characters believe, or that he as narrator believes they are under some 'fated' star.

As to the travails of Job, it would seem that, unlike Job, Jude did not 'abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes' so the Lord did not 'forgive him and give him twice as much as he had before.'?

Little Father Time seems to me to be just one 'travail' which comes along - sent by Fate - to disrupt their lives, not the thing as Cliff's Notes suggest. In each section of the book there has been such an event.

You may be interested in the early reviews of Jude. One, published in The Athenaeum which argued that Hardy was 'tempted to envisage fate not as a blind force but as a spiteful one...The way it is done is extremely simple: you take a man with good aspirations - a weak man he must be, of course - and put down to his credit all his aspirations and the feeble attempts he makes to realise them, while all the mistakes he makes, which render his life a failure, you put down to the savage deity who lies in wait to trip him up.'

Howell of Harpers Weekly wrote: 'In the world where his hapless people have their being, there is not only no Providence, but there is Fate alone; and the environment is such that character itself cannot avail against it. We have back the old conception of an absolutely subject humanity, unguided and unfriended. The gods, careless of mankind, are again over all; only, now, they call themselves conditions.'

I think the latter piece, very Nietzchean, hits the Hardy nail on the head. A number of contemporaries of Hardy called him 'pessimistic', not only in his novels but in person. I will post one of his poems in Poem for the Day as an example of his extreme fatalism and which seems applicable here.

[MadgeUK]

There are several pieces of animal imagery in Chapter 6 wich indicate entrapment and betryal of trust. Sue's pet pigeons are sold to a poulterer. Sue enables them to fly away declaring 'O why should Nature's law be mutual butchery!' 'Is it so, Mother?" asked the boy intently the use of the word intently here seems ominous.

Also in chapter 6 there is a reference to Pugin:

'You ought to have learnt classic. Gothic is barbaric art, after all. Pugin was wrong, and Wren was right.'

Again we see Jude changing his mind about a form of architecture he previously admired, such as the 'gleaming spires' of Christminster.

TRivia: Pugin, incidentally, was a leading authority on the redesign of the Houses od Parliament after the fire of 1834. The familiar facade seen from the River Thames was designed by Pugin and Barry and much of the ornate interior woodwork and decoration was his design.

http://www.west-end-bb.co.uk/test/ima...

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl...

[Lily]

MadgeUK wrote: "http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=ht... "

It fascinated me when I realized this room had benches rather than the desks that are common to U.S. Congress and State legislatures. (As I did some time ago when Tony Blair was televised from here.)

[Lily]

MadgeUK wrote: "http://www.west-end-bb.co.uk/test/images... "

Is this "perpendicular" architecture that followed "gothic" in popularity for cathedrals in England? I once perused a wonderful book on cathedral building in the United Kingdom, but I only remember the importance of such shifts, not the timing.

"The Perpendicular style, which relies on a network of intersecting mullions and transoms rather than on a diversity of richly carved forms for effect, gives an overall impression of great unity, in which the structure of the vast windows of both clerestory and east end are integrated with the arcades below and the vault above. The style proved very adaptable and continued with variations in the naves of Canterbury and Winchester, and the choir of York."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architec...

This was long before the late 1800's. I don't readily find what was the change Hardy refers to that Jude experienced. (The article I reference, while rich with information, seems quite different from the book I read awhile back.)

[Lily]

MadgeUK wrote: "My post No 27 says much of what is mentioned in Cliff's Notes and refers to the same incidents...."

It sure does! I missed that. :( Thx for the heads up. I think both you and the notes say these "fate" things, that sometimes come out of left field and sometimes are just the way life is, have been happening again and again over time in Jude, and with that I quite agree.

I don't have trouble with the idea that the world is what it is, including the world of communities and social pressures et al, and human lives brush up against those realities. I do have trouble with the idea that those are "out to get" someone like some malignant force, which is the "feeling" I have from Hardy's use of "fate."

The Book of Job has incredible exegesis associated with it, including the likelihood that its "happy ending" was a redaction. For me, one of its messages has been, "we can't always know why bad things happen to good people. it is one of the mysteries of living and justice."

[MadgeUK]

I do have trouble with the idea that those are "out to get" someone like some malignant force, which is the "feeling" I have from Hardy's use of "fate."

The Greek 'Moirae' were usually described as cold, remorseless and unfeeling, and depicted as old crones or hags. Hardy seems to see the Fates in terms of 'cruel fate'. The standard Christian interpretation isn't applicable in Jude.

Perpendicular gothic is a period of architecture between 1380-1520 and there are a number of cathedrals of that period and other periods in the UK and Europe. Salisbury cathedral (Melchester) is Early English Gothic (1180-1275). York Minster is Decorated Gothic (1275-1380). Hardy is referring to Gothic Revival architecture, which is what was in vogue when he was an architect:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_R...

Jude, like Hardy, experienced the change from neo-classical to pseudo medieval. If you remember the description of Marygreen church in the first chapter where a gothic revivalist structure had been placed upon a classical Norman one. The earlier St Paul's was a gothic church of the Early English period but after the Great Fire of London in 1666 was rebuilt by Wren and modelled, in late Renaissance style, after St Peter's Basilica in Rome, although it has early English gothic features.

Some of the references in Jude are comparing architecture with religion - the old religion with the new, Catholic with Protestant and so on.

[Lily]

Lots of interesting stuff in that Wiki article, Madge. A couple of tidbits that I pulled to consider relative to Jude;

"In England, the Church of England was undergoing a revival of Anglo-Catholic and ritualist ideology in the form of the Oxford Movement and it became desirable to build large numbers of new churches to cater for the growing population, and cemeteries for their hygienic burials. This found ready exponents in the universities, where the ecclesiological movement was forming. Its proponents believed that Gothic was the only style appropriate for a parish church, and favoured a particular era of Gothic architecture—the 'decorated'. The Ecclesiologist, the publication of the Cambridge Camden Society, was so savagely critical of new church buildings that were below its exacting standards that a style called the 'archaeological Gothic' emerged, producing some of the most convincingly mediæval buildings of the Gothic revival."

"The development of the private major metropolitan cemeteries was occurring at the same time as the movement; Sir William Tite pioneered the first cemetery in the Gothic style at West Norwood in 1837, with chapels, gates, and decorative features in the Gothic manner, attracting the interest of contemporary architects such as Street, Barry, and Burges. The style was immediately hailed a success and universally replaced the previous preference for classical design."

This placed a little different twist on Jude's work with cemetery memorials than I was aware existed.

"Similarly, Gothic architecture survived in an urban setting during the later 17th century, as shown in Oxford and Cambridge, where some additions and repairs to Gothic buildings were apparently considered to be more in keeping with the style of the original structures than contemporary Baroque. Sir Christopher Wren's Tom Tower for Christ Church, Oxford University, and, later, Nicholas Hawksmoor's west towers of Westminster Abbey, blur the boundaries between what is called 'Gothic survival' and the Gothic revival."

[Lily]

MadgeUK wrote: "I was struck by the fact that the Cartletts have come by train from Lambeth in London for a shilling! It felt very modern and reminded me of the day excursions I used to mak..."

Thx! I had taken the passage to mean that was the day that entrance to the fair was a shilling.

[MadgeUK]

Re your post 38: I think perhaps we should take this discussion of architecture to the Background thread Lily so I am going to post something there for you which includes this comment of relevance to Jude:-

'It is really only after 1840 the the Gothic Revival began to gather steam, and when it did the prime movers were not architects at all, but philosophers and social critics. This is the really curious aspect of the Victorian Gothic revival; it intertwined with deep moral and philosophical ideals in a way that may seem hard to comprehend in today's world.'

[MadgeUK]

From the beginning of the novel Hardy seems to be indicting Nature. The Darwinian view is expressed as Nature appearing to be a defective parent by allowing one species to survive at the expense of another. Young Jude's identification with a flock of rooks early in the novel, (mentioned above by Jan and in my Background stuff) evokes Hardy's pessimistic naturalism: 'They seems, like himself, to be living in a world which did not want them'. Instead of scaring away the birds to prevent them from devouring the produce destined for human consumption, as Father Troutham has paid him to do, the compassionate youth allowed them to feed off the land. He is swiftly punished for the act. The narrator then remarks upon the 'flaw in the terrestrial scheme, by which what was good for God's birds was bad for God's gardener'. Throughout, the novel suggests that to be alive is to be victimised and Tennyson's belief in nature 'red in tooth and claw pervades Wessex. Later we see Father Time obsessed with death and indignant over the inevitable termination of life. His response to flowers, for instance, seems almost pathological, especially coming from a child 'I should lke the flowers very very much, if I didn't keep on thinking they's all be withered in a few days.' !

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Memor...

The novel appears to be getting more and more pessimistic and I wonder if this was because Hardy was depressed at the time he was writing, following his long struggles over Tess and the constant edits required by his editor for Jude?

[MadgeUK]

Another possible talking point: Earlier in the novel we mentioned the portrait of Samson & Delilah and thought that Jude was a Samson and Arabella a Delilah. Do we see this symbolism occurring again? And how does Jude's story fit with the Bible story:-

http://christianity.about.com/od/bibl...

[Deborah, Moderator]

Father Time seems as if he represents death and is hovering around both Jude and Sue. Since death was really considered part of life at this time because it was natural to lose people due to lack of health care. Instead of a child bringing youth, growth, and happiness - he brings depression, negativity.

[MadgeUK]

Yes, he seems more like the Grim Reaper than Father Time!

[Jan]

He certainly seems depressed and casts gloom over everything...I think you're right, Deborah! How ironic that Hardy should use a child (who would normally represent youth) to symbolise death.

[MadgeUK]

He may have chosen a child because the high rate of infant mortality was of great concern to the Victorians (and there is another social reason, which comes out later). The death-rate of infants (under 1 year of age) in England and Wales, in 1875, was 158 per 1,000, or 4 per 1,000 above the average rate in the 10 years 1861-70. Infant mortality was worse in the towns than in rural areas and worse amongst the working class.

[Lily]

MadgeUK wrote: "His response to flowers, for instance, seems almost pathological, especially coming from a child 'I should lke the flowers very very much, if I didn't keep on thinking they's all be withered in a few days.'"

Glad you repeated that line here, Madge! When I read it, it reminded me of a poem from my grade school days, but I didn't go looking for it. It took me a few minutes to find it just now, but here it is, if any one else is interested:

http://www.stonepylon.com/garden/rose...

(I think I knew it by another name, perhaps "The Rose and the Gardener".)

The Rose in the garden slipped her bud,
And she laughed in the pride of her youthful blood,
As she thought of the Gardener standing by --
"He is old, -- so old! And he soon must die!"

The full Rose waxed in the warm June air,
And she spread and spread till her heart lay bare;
And she laughed once more as she heard his tread --
"He is older now! He will soon be dead!"

But the breeze of the morning blew, and found
That the leaves of the blown Rose strewed the ground;
And he came at noon, that Gardener old,
And he raked them gently under the mould.

And I wove the thing to a random ryme,
For the Rose is Beauty, and the Gardener, Time.

-- "A Fancy" from "Fontenelle" by Austin Dobson, London, 1885

[Lily]

I think I sort of aligned poor little Father Time with the young beautiful rose that failed to recognize her own vulnerability.

[Lily]

MadgeUK wrote: "And how does Jude's story fit with the Bible story"

It has passed through my thought processes that Arabella is the Delilah that "cuts Jude's hair" not once, but time and time again, i.e., comes along and saps his strength. Yet, he continues to have a certain amount of caring for her. Haven't yet taken any parallel with Samson further.

[Lily]

Hardy certainly brings into the story passages of jealousy and the calls of blood -- Sue and Arabella; Sue seeing Jude AND Arabella in Father Time, Jude's "acceptance" of responsibility, Arabella's second thoughts.... The complexity of what Hardy spells out, not leaving the ideas to the reader's cognition, as some modern authors selectively do, keeps intriguing me about his writing and what is he saying that "I should get."