this book is an incredibly hard read, i find that it lacks any interesting strong points that the reader can truly appreciate and then become increasingly interested. While reading the first few chapters of the Obscure there is a desperate and intense need to throw the book across the room or send out fliers warning people of this old fashioned literature. The story and baseline is seen as descent but the unfolding and order of events is unstimulating and boring.
It's not as entertaining as Hardy's other novels but it has a lot of events. Some of them are of course horrific, not that that's unprecedented in Hardy but not to the degree we see in Jude. It comes across as a hard read because it is heavy with doom. Tess at least has the inevitability of the tragedy and a juicy romantic plot but Jude simply suffers. We can see some parallels with Christ as well; Jude dies at the age of 30 and undergoes consistent suffering on his way to Calvary.
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