The Presentation of Gender and Marriage in 'Jude the Obscure'

 by Phoebe Clark

Oxford/Christminster in Hardy's time
(colourised photo - Wiki Commons)

I read Jude the Obscure on a recommendation after reading Tess of the D’Urbervilles and I can clearly see why as there are so many parallels within each book. There is a strong theme throughout the pair of marriage being a false and unnatural facet of society and its expectations. This view has striking similarities to Hardy’s own marriage with first wife Emma, in which they lived in separate parts of the house and as a result lived separate lives. Thomas didn’t visit Emma on her death bed and subsequently regretted it, being in love with Emma even into his second marriage. Hardy however objected attempts to trace the events of Jude to those of his own experiences. On his instruction, his second wife Florence wrote to an Oxford correspondent in 1919, ‘to your inquiry if Jude the Obscure is autobiographical. I have to answer that there is not a scrap of personal detail in it, it having the least to do with his own life and his books.’

I think Hardy uses Jude to make a clear statement about marriage. All true and legal marriages in the book have a lack of true love within them and are therefore false and simply used in order to maintain a societal reputation. However, the unity between Jude and Sue is never verified by the church or any legal documents and is filled with love, but is always shown to be doomed. There are so many battles they have to face and some of them are simply impossible to overcome, for example the fact that they are cousins and the way that wherever they move to they are faced but the same simple, traditional and judgemental views. Rosemarie Morgan contends that Hardy’s own views can be closely identified with those of Sue in ‘Woman and Sexuality: The Novels of Hardy’ by saying ‘Sue’s resistance to the notion that marriage should be the expressed goal of her sexuality is of central importance to the novel, and Hardy is now adopting an openly more heterodox stance that he had felt permissible in earlier works, stand openly and defiantly behind her’

A strong and undeniable theme through this work is the value that history should have, and how certain places, such as Marygreen where there is newly dug and built ground, that do not appreciate historical architecture, are shown to be of less importance to the story. Along that tack, Oxford (Christminster in the novel) is rich with historical architecture and figures and therefore a place to be worshipped. Jude idolises the statues in the square by reciting Latin to them unawares and constantly sees the place as holy, a modern day Jerusalem. This ecclesiastic pedestal that Jude puts his ambitions on means he is easily disappointed and I think is his hamartia. At the point where Jude and Sue are a happy couple they are described to have ‘returned to Greek joyousness’, showing that the pinnacle of joy nowadays is simply on a parallel with the Grecian times and their overarching expression.

At times, I felt as if Hardy was expressing a view that studying and learning was a harder task to fulfil than that of women and marriage, that women were something to distract men from the noble courses of academia. Proceeding Jude’s exposure to the world and interactions with Arabella firstly, it becomes increasingly harder for him to focus on his books and Latin studies, whereas speaking and walking with Arabella is easy and natural to him. However, the fact that marriage is never shown to be easy in the books prompted my realisation of the warped mirroring between Jude’s academic aspirations and his relationship with the two women in the book. Whenever Jude is succeeding in his relationship, he is neglecting his books, but Arabella despises the books so their relationship falls apart. There is a constant battle between romantic relations and academia, both of which Jude is ultimately failed by.