Jude the Obscure.

Perhaps I was in the wrong frame of mind when I read “Jude the Obscure.” My initial foray into Thomas Hardy was “The Return of the Native,” which I enjoyed so much. Even more so with “Tess of the D’Urbervilles.”
I was waning a bit by “The Mayor of Casterbridge,” but quite honestly did not enjoy Jude. I know it was Hardy’s last novel before retreating into poetry, and could almost sense the torpor and disillusionment regards the subject that I presume he felt. Whereas the earlier mentioned pieces were alive, with passion / emotion and a minimum number of major characters, “Jude the Obscure” seemed the opposite.

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Originally Posted by MANICHAEAN

Perhaps I was in the wrong frame of mind when I read “Jude the Obscure.” My initial foray into Thomas Hardy was “The Return of the Native,” which I enjoyed so much. Even more so with “Tess of the D’Urbervilles.”
I was waning a bit by “The Mayor of Casterbridge,” but quite honestly did not enjoy Jude. I know it was Hardy’s last novel before retreating into poetry, and could almost sense the torpor and disillusionment regards the subject that I presume he felt. Whereas the earlier mentioned pieces were alive, with passion / emotion and a minimum number of major characters, “Jude the Obscure” seemed the opposite.

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I think the primary question in that work was: what is one to believe and why?
Hardy knows where he stands as a definite Anglican. But he decides that's it for 32 years of just poetry.

I had a hard time with it too, a bit disappointed, but I think in hindsight, it becomes better. The problem (in hindsight again) with Jude the Obscure is that it is so damning of life and ambition. It's different to The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess. I can't comment on The Return of the Native, because I haven't read it, but The Mayor was still pretty positive at times. I always tend to leave Hardy's very first novel (Far from the Madding Crowd) out of it, because it's still very romantic

Tess, then, as the last before Jude is very raw, but the thing is that it doesn't eat away at you when you're reading it. Jude is about hope, ambitions and aspirations and although Jude tries, he doesn't achieve what he is entitled to and what he can do, in spite of himself. Indeed, not even happiness is given to him. We all have these things in our lives. And I think that's what got me as a reader: it makes you aware that you've got these hopes too, which will never be realised, but you keep hoping. Maybe you will not even want to realise them if you are given the chance and walk away. At the end of your life, you may end up with nothing.

Jude is not a mere tale of woe and I think that's what leaves you slightly disgusted with that novel.

As to Jude being his last novel: Hardy was disillusioned with the critics who criticised his work. I don't think Jude was meant to be his last novel per se, but he vowed never to write novels again when the critics slammed it even worse than Tess (who was his favourite heroine, he even said he loved her at one stage). He felt he was misunderstood and unfairly treated.

I think Jude is rather uncomfortable than disappointing. It leaves a feeling of disappointment in you as a reader, but in itself it's not disappointing per se. It's you who make it that way. That's what the Greeks used to call 'catharsis', isn't it?

Or that's my view.

Yes, I think Jude is Hardy's best novel and my personal favourite, with Tess a bit behind that. It sometimes gets that sort of reaction because it is bleak at times, at lots of times, even punishing, but even so I enjoyed it the best. I enjoyed the frustration of Jude being an outsider always looking in but never being allowed in, which for me is just the reality. He's an outsider from birth, despite his constant struggle to belong. It's very bleak and the nature of it reminds me very much of Shakespeare's Lear.