Jude The Obscure Book Review - Lunchtime Lit With Mel Carriere

Although a mailman and not a stone cutter, reviewer Mel Carriere's profession echoes the latter in its drudgery, but not creativity.

Real Books By Real Humans

The magnificent thing about books is that they are still being written by people, not machines. The day that machines start to lay out plot lines, develop characters, and invent dialogue, all via some complicated algorithm programmed by imported techies speaking marginal English, is the day I get a new hobby.

But as of today, novels are still being written by people, and these people often, but not always, draw from their own human experience to create stories that other humans can sometimes relate to.

It is obvious that Thomas Hardy, author of Jude The Obscure, was a real human being, not an algorithm, and that he experienced a specific set of frustrations and disappointments. These setbacks inspired the themes he explored therein. Jude The Obscure was certainly very relevant for its time, being set in Victorian England, a period when people were still being segregated by their status at birth and not by what they were able to make, or not make of themselves, after birth. Whether things have improved since then, or not, is a subject for debate beyond the scope of a mere book review.

Despite the historical circumstances in which it is set, Jude The Obscure still speaks to people today. It most definitely spoke to me, in a way that few other books have. I could identify with the protagonist Jude - struggling to rise above insurmountable obstacles to fulfill his dreams. I could also identify with how his reproductive hormones derailed him from his chosen path. I could feel Jude's pain very acutely, 125 years after it was set down in writing. This, to me, is a sign of a very remarkable book, one for the ages. It also shows that gadgets may change people superficially, but at the core Victorian age hominids are no different than the hominids now - whatever historians and anthropologists are going to label us, 125 years in the future, as they sift through the detritus of our civilization.

So whether you are a lowly mailman like me, or a stonecutter like Jude, there is something in this book for you that speaks of derailed dreams and halted hopes. On the other hand, if you are one of those go-getting, never take no for an answer types who have achieved everything you wanted to regardless of the obstacles, you have my sincere congratulations but maybe this ain't the book for you.

Lunchtime Lit Year To Date Recap * ** ***

*Seventeen other titles, with a total estimated word count of 3,649,830 and 502 lunchtimes consumed, have been reviewed under the guidelines of this series.

**Word counts are estimated by hand-counting a statistically significant 23 pages, then extrapolating this average page count across the entire book. When the book is available on a word count website, I rely on that total, for better or for worse.

***I am slogging along as slowly but as powerfully as the San Andreas Fault, trying to catch up. After this there are only three reviews to bring me to date.

Lunchtime Lit Rules and Selection Criteria

Lunchtime Lit reads are chosen via a sophisticated, careful selection process, call it an algorithm if you dare, that sometimes includes begging and outright theft. Jude the Obscure fell into my literary lap more or less along these guidelines. Remember the Simpsons episode where Homer gives Marge a bowling ball for her birthday, intending to take it from her when she doesn't use it? Jude the Obscure came my way in a similar fashion. I bought the novel as a present for my son, but when he wasn't quick enough to read it, I confiscated the book under imminent domain.

In said Simpsons episode Marge uses the ball anyway, just to spite Homer, and winds up falling for her suave French bowling instructor, Jacques. That has nothing to do with Jude the Obscure, it's just an amusing aside.

But now that I think about it, Lunchtime Lit books are a little like bowling, because they can only be read on the liquor-less lanes of my half hour Postal lunch break, never taken home. You can't really bowl at home anyway, without breaking some furniture and upsetting the cat. In the same respect, Lunchtime Lit requires a dedicated locale where the literary pins can be knocked about with abandon. No special reading shoes are required on these lanes, just my shady spot in the lee of a church building in fall and winter, then a geographical shift in spring and summer, when the shadows grow short and I cross the parking lot to the cooling trees on the other side.

Man That Was All She Wrote

When I expropriated Jude the Obscure from my son, I expected it to be just another Victorian Era yawn fest, like Wuthering Heights. If nothing else, Lunchtime Lit is a great venue to evaluate those ponderous classics my limited attention span could not otherwise handle. I had no idea I would end up liking the book, or that I would identify with the tragic stonecutter Jude like few other characters have caused me to.

You don't have to be a stonecutter or mailman to get it. The tragic consequences of human hormones, and the cruel way they can derail dreams, is something a lot of us can relate to. As Spruce Bringsteen sings in The River:

Then I got Mary pregnant

And man that was all she wrote

And for my nineteenth birthday

I got a union card and a wedding coat

Been there done that? Well, perhaps not as extreme or as dead end sounding as the Boss's lament, but no doubt many of us have taken the plunge for a pretty face, only to snap out of our hypnosis 30 years later and wonder where the hell all the time went.

A similar fate awaits our Obscure protagonist Jude Fawley. Cursed by a blighted background, Jude is inspired by a local schoolmaster to escape from his dreary village and shoot for the steeples of Christminster, a fictional university town just beyond the horizon that was modeled after Oxford, England.

Jude begins a self-taught process of intense study to school himself in Latin and Greek, pouring over dead language classics into the wee hours after a grueling day's toil of cutting stone. But then Jude tragically catches the whiff of woman, which lures him out of his cloistered cell of intellectual pursuits, pretty much to his doom. This tempting vixen is Arabella, a buxom butcher's daughter barmaid. Arabella tricks Jude into believing she is pregnant so that he will marry her, And man that was all she wrote.

Times change, technology changes, human nature does not change. Jude teaches us that despite all the bells and whistles, we remain hopelessly biological beings. A hundred years after Jude's demise, Springsteen was singing the same sad song.

Can Jude Take A Sad Song And Make It Better?

Arabella, whose name sounds somewhat like that of a cow - a creature whose dull personality she somewhat mimics, eventually tires of Jude and deserts him, fleeing to Australia. The reader happily assumes that Jude can now get on with his intellectual endeavors, but instead our protagonist just exchanges one set of girl problems for another. Our tragic hero next falls in love with his cousin, Sue Bridehead. Further complicating matters, lovely Sue also happens to be married.

Nonetheless, Jude and Sue defy Victorian expectations and link up, eventually bearing children. No spoilers here, but not surprisingly the affair ends tragically, more accurately horribly, for everybody.

Throughout the turbulence of his domestic life, Jude maintains his vision of mastering the ancient languages, attending college in Christminster, and being ordained as an Anglican minister. In the late 19th century, there seem to have been no other outlets for the University educated. Still, the few student positions available were reserved for the children of the elite, a fact that is curtly communicated to Jude in a letter rejecting his application:

"Sir,-I have read your letter with interest; and, judging from you description of yourself as a working-man, I venture to think that you will have a much better chance of success in life by remaining in your own sphere and sticking to your trade than by" adopting any other course. That, therefore, is what I advise you to do. Yours, faithfully,

"T. TETUPHENANY

"To Mr. J. Fawley, Stone-mason."

In other words, mind your place.

I transcribed this rejection letter exactly as it appears in the book. In doing so, I took note of the strange, incorrect placement of dead-end quotation marks. As such, it doesn't seem like a polished literary creation to me. Instead, it appears to be either an editor's oversight, or an actual rejection letter that author Thomas Hardy received during his own struggle to ascend from obscurity, which he copied and pasted into the novel.

A Deadly War Between Flesh and Spirit

Being the son of a humble stone mason himself, author Thomas Hardy struggled to break out of his own obscurity. Like his fictional hewer of stone, Hardy diligently learned the classics, but lacked the means for a university education. Eventually he was apprenticed to an architect and practiced that trade for a time, until discovering a passion for writing that finally brought him success. Before his swan song Jude The Obscure, Hardy had several what we would today call best-sellers, among them the notable Tess of the d'Urbervilles, another book now considered a classic.

As they led up to Jude, Hardy's novels became more cutting edge and controversial, increasingly putting Victorian morals to the test, which caused the eventual derailment of his prose career. Even by today's standards Jude The Obscure is somewhat shocking - including carnal relations with a cousin and a bizarrely tragic ending for Jude's little family. If some of its plot particulars make me cringe, it is not surprising that proper Victorian readers were completely appalled.

In his preface to Jude, Hardy describes the outrage as a "shrill crescendo" coming from both sides of the Atlantic. One critic said it was the most indecent book ever written. Its detractors called it Jude The Obscene. In his own words, Hardy responded:

"After these verdicts from the press its next misfortune was to be burnt by a bishop - probably in his despair at not being able to burn me."

The backlash from this critical fallout, in fact, drove Hardy to abandon novel writing and turn to poetry for the rest of his writing career.

Still, it is Hardy's novels that have become his legacy, and continue to live on and apply to the lives of humans, a century and a quarter after he stopped writing them. As long as people populate the planet Jude's words and themes will ring true, however biting they might be. Hardy himself referred to the principal theme of Jude as "a deadly war between flesh and spirit." A not much improved century later, The Poetry foundation says that the novel is "characterized by a pervasive fatalism." The Encyclopedia Britannica elaborates this point by adding "Hardy traces these characters' initially hopeful, momentarily ecstatic, but persistently troubled journeys toward eventual deprivation and death." Bummer, huh?

This literary analysis means that, try as they might to jump over the hurdles that beset them, Jude and probably 99 percent of humanity currently living on Earth are going to realize it is not worth the effort, then settle into a life of soul numbing obscurity. In that regard, nothing has really changed between Hardy and now.

How Many Minds Wither On The Vine?

The seemingly pointless striving of Jude Fawley causes me to contemplate certain philosophical and mathematical abstractions. Namely, how can we quantify the loss to humanity's legacy when great thinkers are allowed to lie fallow in the field?

How many minds have withered on the vine without ever being recognized for their abilities, either because they were born into circumstances beyond their control, became trapped in toxic relationships, or were held back by a fatal flaw in character that prohibited them from matching blows with the rats that invariably gnaw their way to the top of the heap? Does one in ten extraordinary minds ever get acknowledged for its brilliance? One in a hundred - a thousand even? Is the next earth shattering theory in physics trapped out there in a timid brain, never to see daylight? Is a Nobel Prize in literature locked in some meek wordsmith's night stand? Is a shrewish, disillusioned wife somewhere, despondent over her poverty, ridiculing her would-be inventor husband's brilliant creation, beating down his confidence to launch a gadget that might ease and simplify all of our lives?

Jude's was a mind that never took flight. Jude The Obscure continues to poignantly point out that a lot of mankind's greatest efforts have been permanently grounded, fictional and otherwise. Old Queens die, new Kings and Queens arise, but the repercussions of the somber story line remain the same.

Lunchtime Lit Musical Guest - Bruce Springsteen The River

Comments

Mel Carriere (author) from Snowbound and down in Northern Colorado on November 19, 2019:

Mills, I guess the phrase "kissing cousins" only appalls when we plebians indulge in it. European royalty had a storied history of inbreeding and all the birth defects it caused. I am glad you enjoyed the "Bringsteen."

Pat Mills from East Chicago, Indiana on November 17, 2019:

Isn't it something that Victorian era readers would be shocked about content involving cousins in carnal relationships when their queen married a cousin? Thanks for this piece about this work - as well as the little bit of Springsteen, which comes from my favorite album of his.

Mel Carriere (author) from Snowbound and down in Northern Colorado on November 13, 2019:

I'm sure you noticed Dreamer Meg that one of my capsule captions was taken from the Hey Jude song. I actually looked up the origin of the song, and apparently McCartney was going to originally call it Hey Jules, to console Julian Lennon after John Lennon dumped his mother for Yoko. I guess John didn't like the working title, so they changed it to Jude. I was thinking exactly the same thing as you though. Thanks for dropping in, I will definitely try Tess one of these days.

DreamerMeg from Northern Ireland on November 13, 2019:

I love reading Hardy and have read most of his books, apart from the Mayor Of Casterbridge, which I just could not get into. Jude the Obscure is very sad and it was a harder read than some of his others. Try Tess of the Durbervilles, I think it is better than Jude. Of course, his "Far From The Madding Crowd" was made into a film but as usual, I still think the book was better. I always feel that the Beatles song "Hey Jude" was named after this book, but probably not.

Mel Carriere (author) from Snowbound and down in Northern Colorado on November 13, 2019:

Thank you Devika. Your positive comments are always very uplifting to me. Have a lovely day in beautiful Croatia.

Mel Carriere (author) from Snowbound and down in Northern Colorado on November 13, 2019:

Thank you Linda. It is great to share reviews with someone who has read the author of the book. I won't promise you a happy ending with this one, but you probably know by now that happy endings are not Hardy's specialty. I intend to give Tess a try myself one of these days. Thanks for dropping in.

Devika Primić from Dubrovnik, Croatia on November 13, 2019:

interesting and a new review that got me interested in this book. It shows me your great work of a book review well done!

Linda Crampton from British Columbia, Canada on November 12, 2019:

Thank you very much for this review, Mel. I've read "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" and found it very powerful. Having read your interesting article, I've downloaded a public domain version of "Jude the Obscure". I'm looking forward to reading the novel, even though the plot sounds tragic.

Mel Carriere (author) from Snowbound and down in Northern Colorado on November 12, 2019:

Eric I have been looking for a good old farts barber shop to mold my new image as a grumpy old man. I am trying to achieve the Clint Eastwood Gran Torino look. Thanks for the tip.

Mel Carriere (author) from Snowbound and down in Northern Colorado on November 12, 2019:

Too many books, never enough time Bill. The good thing is that I won't ever run out of book reviewing material. Thanks for dropping in.

Eric Dierker from Spring Valley, CA. U.S.A. on November 12, 2019:

Mel, FOUR DAY WEEKS that way we get two Sundays But at least 3 where the barber shop is open. (Just for Yesterday - 3 Barbers at Joes and Joes, all Korean Veterans -- that is what I am talking about. We go early and let others go ahead, to enjoy the banter)

Bill Holland from Olympia, WA on November 12, 2019:

I'm mildly embarrassed to admit I have not heard of this book. Thanks for the education. I do feel I should read this while there is still time.

Mel Carriere (author) from Snowbound and down in Northern Colorado on November 12, 2019:

Thank you Pamela for coming by to cheer me up, on my way to the quarry to break some more rock. You have a lovely Tuesday.

Pamela Oglesby from Sunny Florida on November 12, 2019:

Mel, if you are a lowly mailman I am a lowly nurse. I enjoyed reading your well-written, very good article about this book. I think I would relate to Jude as well.

This is obviously a book you thoroughly, and I think I would really enjoy it as well. I will put it on my list of books I plan to read as this book sounds very good/.

Mel Carriere (author) from Snowbound and down in Northern Colorado on November 12, 2019:

Looks like that is another book to put into my Lunchtime Lit rotation John. Thank you for suggesting that, I am going to look it up. Thanks for dropping in.

John Hansen from Queensland Australia on November 11, 2019:

Mel, it is obvious that this book had quite an impact on you. For some reason I had Thomas Hardy confused with famous Australian writer Frank Hardy, author of “Power Without Glory“ but who was born in 1917 when Thomas Hardy would have been 77. Anyway, this was, as always, a very readable and interesting review. Thanks for sharing.

Mel Carriere (author) from Snowbound and down in Northern Colorado on November 11, 2019:

Holy guacamole preach you made me realize that Thomas Hardy maybe pulled that name Jude from the Bible to emphasize his character's insignificance in the scheme of things. One chapter, 25 verses. I could thumb such an epistle on my phone while driving and still be at work on time.

Mel Carriere (author) from Snowbound and down in Northern Colorado on November 11, 2019:

Now there is a really really obscure Jude, an epistle so small everybody forgets it is there. Just now I had to double check to make sure you weren't going all apocryphal on me. But you should know, you're the preacher, though you preach the wonderful gospel of silence, which is apocryphal indeed but satisfying.

Thanks for checking in on this Monday evening that feels a heluva lot like Sunday.

Eric Dierker from Spring Valley, CA. U.S.A. on November 11, 2019:

Another great one friend. I think there is a Bible around here with the Book of Jude.