THE THOMAS HARDY
ASSOCIATION
LINKS
| A 84 |
DIRECTOR: ROBERT SCHWEIK
© 1999-2004
ROMANTICISM IN JUDE THE OBSCURE
DESCRIPTION:
Address: http://www.otago.ac.nz/DeepSouth/0498/0498jude.htm
Contact: Unidentified
Date: 07/01/04
An interpretative commentary on Jude the Obscure, originally published by Holly Davis, Department of English, University of Otago, New Zealand, in Volume 4, Number 1 (Autumn, 2000) of Deep South. Derived from a more extensive chapter of Davis's MA thesis on the Romantic influence on selected novels by Hardy, this article focuses on Jude's "Romanticism" and Shelleyan influences on Jude's and Sue's characters. Its documentation consists of citations to three Oxford UP editions of Hardy novels and to a 1971 Nineteenth Century Fiction article by Michael E. Hassett titled "Compromised Romanticism in Jude the Obscure." Drawing in part upon the Hassett article, Davis equates "Romanticism" with what she considers Shelley's unrealistic idealism and discusses the influence of Shelley on Hardy's characterization of Jude and Sue. Her conclusion: "In Jude, unlike in Hardy's earlier novels, Darwnism is the dominant mode, with Romanticism seen by Hardy as untenable in the modernising world in which Hardy (and Jude) lived."
COMMENT:
Davis sometimes tends to speak of Hardy's novel as if it were an argument--e.g., "Hardy unequivocally shows that Jude's Romanticism is destructive." Her conclusion--that Jude "is not a Romantic novel" but one that "shows in quite a brutal way how Victorian society cannot tolerate Romanticism"--exhibits something of the way Davis's tendency to see Jude as an argument can lead her to fail to take into account the greater complexity and ambiguity of the novel.
SUMMARY:
A study of "Romantic" influences on Jude that points to a variety of Shelleyan elements in the novel but is weakened by a narrow focus and simplistic generalizations.