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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.
A Brief history of Cinema and Impact of Cinema on society
Name - Vyas Foram Y
Roll no: - 21
M.A.Part-2 - Sem-4
Paper - 02, Ec-404
Paper - Mass communication and Media studies
Topic for Assignment -A Brief history of Cinema and Impact of Cinema on society
Submitted To: Dr.Dilipsir Barad
Department of English,
Bhavnagar university,
Bhavnagar.
Topic for Assignment -A Brief history of Cinema and Impact of Cinema on society
Introduction The years proceeding the dawn of cinema in India were witness to the growth of musical dramas, the Paris theatre, the drama companies of Madras, and the Jatra in Bengal. Music, dance, song were an integral part of these performing tradition; this was the heritage of Sanskrit drama and later popular Folk performing traditions; such as the Ram lila, The Ras Lila, The Nautanki and The Thirukoothu.In painting the calendar art of Raja Ravi Varma and others was well-known and stage sets incorporated some of the design and color of this new art form.
Cinema has become the most influential art. Form of 20th century, from its marginal beginnings. India holds emient position in Film making in the world. Cinema was three simple means of mechanical recording preserving and reproducing moving visual images with the development of film technology, the art of cinema developed a language of its own. ‘Cinema’ and ‘Films’ are used inter changeably but there is a difference between these two terms. Cinema has specific means to create imaginary time and space, and utilization of these means defines how cinematic a Film is. Imaginary time can be created through movement by means of montage. Films are made of stories dance, music, drama, photography, painting, architecture and many other things that we call cinema.
Among the numbers crowd that watched the first screening at Bombay’s Watson Hotel with almost Fascination was a photographer named Harishchandra’s Bhatwadekar .He ordered for a moving picture camera from London, and when it arrived took it along to a Gardens, and shot the match live. It is significant that the cinema had its beginnings in India almost at the same time as in the other major films producing countries. Indeed, barely six months after the first Lumiere Brothers cinematograph projected moving picture on to a screen in a perish basement, and two years after Edison’s unvention of the kinetoscope in New York. Just as Indian photographers and studies proliferated soon the introduction of the camera in 1840, so arrival of the motion picture attracted a large number of business people, artists and craftspeople into Films production and Exhibition. Photographers in particular took to the new enterprise with enthusiasm.
The pioneers: The Lumiere Brothers ‘The Cinema’ is an invention without a Future’ declared Louis Lumiere who together with his brother, Auguste, pioneered what was to develop into an international culture industry. The Lumiere brothers were the inventors of the ‘Cinematographe’, a compact and portable machine that with a few adjustments could be used as a camera or projector or printing machine. As professional photographers themselves, Cinema of photography; hence they sought to capture from a single a train to, in brief ‘actualities’ such as: the arrival of a train, ladies and soldiers on wheels. Like still photographs, these ‘living photographic pictures’ were no more than attems to reproduce reality.
Realism and soviet cinema The cinema of realism climaxed in the work of the early Russian films-markers, especially that of V.I.Pudovkin and Sergei Eisenstein. Eisenstein was not only a prostatic films marker of the revolution but also a film theorist. His ‘materialist’ masterpieces, battleship. Potemkin, Ivan the terrible and others Pudovkin identified five basic types of montage: contrast parallelism, symbolosma, simultaneity and liet-motif .He developed theory of the interaction between shots variously called’ relational editing’ markers and theorists include Lev kuleshob, Vertov, and Devzhenko: a major concern of the Films makers of the early soviet cinema was ideology and the socialist state. Their films had the appearance of a documentary style.
Pioneers of Indian cinema Dadassaheb Phalke
One of the pioneers of the silent feature films in India was Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, a Bombay printer photographer, painter, and magician. It is reported that he was converted to cinematography when he saw the films, like of Christ, at a Christmas cinema show.
Only a few Scatterd fragment of Phalke’s silent films are extant .The overall structure of each films is forever lost, but the fragments show a fine pictorial sense and also remarkable a vast range of techniques including animation. He experimented with color, via tinting and toning for some of the other films markers of the ‘twenties and thirties’.
In south India as in most other parts of the country, the mythological genre held sway. The foundation for a flourishing film industry in south India was laid by R.Nataraja Mudaliar, a businessman trained in cinematography in poone. During the silent Era over a thousand films of various genres were made in India; however, only ten of them survive.
Types of films 1. Commercial cinema
It primarily aims at providing entertainment to the people .It includes the ingredients of popular cinema. For example, films like Sholay.
2. Art cinema
It is more realistic and relevant to the need of the people and society. National films Development Corporation provided institutional aid for the production of these films.
3. Documentary films
Documentary dramatizes an idea or therne.It uses the factual material in order to dramatize its idea tells its simple story in terms of human interests. Something also can be exhibited in schools, villages and labor areas through mobile vans so that a large number of children can take advantages of these films.
As Expressed by Goswami,
“Making films children is a harder task than making films for adults. The producer has to take great care at every step only the best should be shown to children.”
Impact of cinema on society The Three terms ‘Impact’, ‘cinema’ and ‘society’ are extremely complex and much too comprehensive to take at surface-value. The term ‘impact’ is frequently used synonymously connotative meaning point to an long-lasting .A further complication arises when one realizes that an ‘impact’ can be weak, moderate or strong, that it can relate to the psychological and even physical.
The term ‘cinema’ is equally complex today, with television, video, cable and satellite TV vying with each other to screen films on the small screen. Moreover, there are so many genres of cinema, each genera perhaps having an ‘impact’ of its own ‘Horror Films’ for instance, might have the impact of frightening viewers, and slapstick comedies of entertaining and relaxing them. The third term ‘society’ is an infinitely more complex phenomenon. The term takes within its compass all social institutions. How does one asses the ‘Impact’ of ‘cinema’ on such an all-encompassing phenomenon? For several decades now, ‘Impact’ or ‘effect’ studies have been narrow psychological studies on the ‘effect’ of violence and sex in specific groups such as school children, college and university youth. Most such studies have been carried out in the United States. In Indian Institute of Mass communication New Delhi, conducted a ‘sociological’ study on the ‘cinema’.
Ethics of Cinema While censorship is imposed by the authorities and the law, the matter of ‘ethics’ is imposed by individuals on their own professionals like advertisers and public relations practitioners have drawn up ‘codes of ethics’ for themselves but journalists, film producers, radio and television broadcaster in India have yet to agree on a common set of ethical practices in their respective media professions.
The need for ethics in cinema and the other mass media arises from the fear that children and sensitive adults might be harmfully influenced by certain portrayals and action. Film makers must be concerned about the possible influence on individuals and groups of their artistic efforts. For instance the stereotypical portrayal of women and minorities in Indian Films could help to reinforce cultural stereotypes rather than roles in society. This is where ‘ethics’ comes in: a concern for sensitive’s in films mentis for family viewing; the insertion of pornographic sequences in Films have been already censored; the portrayal of excessive violence for is irrelevant and unnecessary; there is a long tradition of Indian films markers of plagiarizing Hollywood Films, something shot by shot. These Cloned versions are palmed off as original Indian language films.
The central Board of films certification The central board of films cancers is set up by the central Government under the powers granted it by the cinematography rules 1958. The board is headed by a chairman, appointed by the central more than nine members. Presently, there are offices at Bombay, Madras Calcutta and Trivandrum, with Bombay as the head quarters.
A Films producer has, in the first place, to submit an application for a certificate to the per reel. The examining committed consists of a member from the advisory panel and an examining officer in the case of short film, while in the case of a feature films four members from the advisory panel and an examined must be complete in every sense, with the background music and sound effect duly recorded on the films itself.
Conclusion The popular attitude to cinema as a means of mass-entertainment has its origin in the type of films made up to the ‘fifties’ in India. As right from the beginning cinema in India was aimed at the lowest common denominator and became primarily concerned with providing entertainment. Even when well-known writers became involved with camera, they deliberately changed the quality of their writing .It is only in the last decades or so that intellectuals have begun and associating actively with the making of films and thereby raised the status of cinema to an art form.
As Roberge remarks,
“While cinema is acknowledged as a disseminator of popular culture, the contributory role of the cinema in cultivating and also shaping culture is not acknowledged and is perceived as a mere instrument or channel”
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