The Conflict between Idealism and Society in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the obscure

Name -            Vyas Foram Y

Roll no:  -        21

M.A.Part-2 -   Sem-4

Paper -           E-E-405

Paper -  A study of special Author-Thomas Hardy

Topic for Assignment      - The Conflict between Idealism and Society in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the obscure

Submitted To: Dr.Dilip Barad

  Department of English,

  Bhavnagar university,

  Bhavnagar.                 

Topic for Assignment      - The Conflict between Idealism and Society in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the obscure

The Conflict between Idealism and Society in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the obscure

Introduction

Thomas Hardy is one of the greatest writers of the Victorian era, in his novels he seeks

to diagnose human ills and then endeavors to find a remedy to them. The majority of his

novels were set in rural England where the Industrial Revolution had already brought changes

to the lifestyle of the countryside. As a result, the pastoral values had been swallowed by the

new urban lifestyle, and people of the countryside began to shift to the cities seeking for jobs,

education and means to share with the urban dwellers the progress and the optimism of the

Victorian age.

A Idealism versus Social Reality

1 New Woman’s Ideals versus Conventional Marriage

The breakthrough of the feminist movement toward the end of Queen Victorian’s reign

paved the way to the Victorian women to gain not only a respectable position in society, but

also to aspire to a higher ambitions such as the questioning of the compatibility of the

conventional marriage with women’s ideal of self-improvement. However, the desire of

Victorian women to materialize their ideals provoked the wrath of society and led to a sharp

conflict between the two antagonistic sides.

Sue protests against the church morality which reduces the relationship between a man and a woman to a matter a of “Property transaction” (Jacobs 202). In this sense, the British novelist D.H. Lawrence argues that Sue considers marriage as “a submission, a service [and] slavery” (qtd. in Guerard71). After her marriage with Phillotson, Sue discovers that it is her ignorance and confusion which lead here to accept the compromise, she also realizes how disgusting is marriage and how incompatible it is the relationship between being bond and wanting to materialize one’s dreams. When Sue goes to attend the funeral of Jude’s aunt Drusilla, she confesses to Jude that she is miserable in her marriage. After sacrificing herself to the morality marriage, Sue has a new perception of herself:

... Before I married him I had never thought out fully what a marriage meant, even though I

knew. It was idiotic of me-there is no excuse. I was old enough, and I thought I was very

experienced. I rushed on ... with all the cock-sureness of the fool that I was!.... I am certain

one ought to be allowed to undo what one has done so ignorantly! I daresay it happens to

lots of women; only they submit.... (256)

2. Romanticism versus Darwinism

The spread of Darwinism in the second half of Queen Victorian’s reign had swallowed

the idealism and the optimism of the Romantics claiming that “the instinctive, joyful response

to the world… is not enough, because pain and death are realities which cannot be

overlooked” (Williams58). Darwinism had swept away the feeling of optimism and brought a

new mood of pessimism by maintaining that „life is no pleasure, but meanness‟. Darwinism

had also changed the views of nature and Darwin’s portrayal of life as a ceaseless and

„competitive struggle‟ between species brought about the end the Romantic’s depiction of

nature as a compassionate, „nurturing force‟ and spread an awareness of nature’s cruelty.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s famous poetic description, “Nature, red in tooth and claw”

demonstrates the Darwinian perception of nature (kepos 110). In Hardy’s Jude the obscure,

the character Jude sticks to the „romantic sensibility‟ of the early nineteenth century, but the

incompatibility of romanticism to the requirements of the new and passionless Darwinian

society makes the conflict between him and his fellow humans sharp and enduring.

3. Academic Aspirations versus Social Obstacles

Jude manages to endure his own life in creating ideals by which to live. From the

opening pages of the novel, Hardy shows to us Jude as a child of eleven different from his

fellow children. Jude starts to dream of an intellectual life in Chris minster (Oxford),

regardless of his age and his humble origins; Jude wants to invent his own path before

becoming older. His determination as child is well expressed in his conversation with the

schoolmaster Phillotson who quits the village Mary green for the university city of

Christ minster to be a scholar and a clergyman there. When Jude asks the schoolmaster for the

reasons behind his departure, the latter replies that he is not mature enough to inquire about

such things, Jude responds by “I think I should now, sir” .

B. Defeat of Idealism and Daybreak of Pessimism

1. Sue’s resignation

After the death of her children, Sue relinquished her own ideals and realizes that the

struggle of the new woman to make her own way in society is futile. Thus, she is driven

toward espousing resignation as psychological response to failure. She urges Jude to give up

the struggle and conform to societies rules. Sue loses faith in the optimism New Woman’s

creed and embraces submission and acceptance of her role as an Angel in the House. Sue says

to Jude after the disaster of the death of their children:

We must conform!.... [She continues] All the ancient wrath of the Power above us has been

vented upon us, his poor creatures, and must submit.... It is no use fighting against God!.... I

have no more strength left; no more enterprise I am beaten, beaten!....

2. Jude’s Failure and Death

Despite his perseverance and his herculean efforts to go beyond his origins and his

class, Jude childhood’s optimism and dream of an academic life in Christ minster is turned on

it head by the tyrannical and apocalyptical pessimism of social reality. No matter how hard he

tries to reach his noble goals; however, he receives a bunch of thorns rather than that of

flowers as reward of his honesty and his long-suffering. The outcome is so, because Jude

finds himself in society where “the wicked [like Arabella] prosper and the good [like him] are

cursed” (Whitfield 20).

3. Little Father Time and Pessimism

The emergence of the precocious Little Father Time changes the course of the novel

and deepens Sue and Jude belief in the futility of their struggle. Little Father Time perception

of existence is concerned only with its generalities rather than on its particularities:

It could have been seen that boy’s ideas of life were different from those of the local boys.

Children begin with the detail, and learn up the general; they begin with the contiguous, and

gradually comprehend the universal. They seemed to have begun with the generals of life,

and never to have concerned himself with the particulars. To him the houses, the willows,

the obscure fields beyond, were apparently regarded not as a brick residence, pollards, and

meadows; but as human dwellings in the abstract, vegetation and the wide dark world.

(Hardy 330)

Father Time seems to scorn life and because he does not disturb himself going into

details while contemplating things around him, life for him is uninspiring and

meaningless .

Conclusion

The growth of the feminist movement in the later years of Queen Victorian’s reign and women’s desire to expand the horizon of their demands is one of the attitudes that make the behavior of Sue. Some feminists and Sue want to gobeyond their gender in order to surpass prejudices and limits imposed by society to them. The spread of Darwinism in the second half of the Victorian age is one of the chief reasons behind undermining the romantic Jude and leading him to live inharmoniously with the rest of society.