Learning Paths » 5A Interacting
EDreossi - Done because we are too menny, Thomas Hardy
Jude Fawley lived with Sue Bridehead, their two children and the one had from Arabella, his previous wife, who had abandoned him.
Jude and Sue had a lot of troubles. Tragedy came between the pressure of poverty and social disapproval.
As a matter of fact, one morning, while he was preparing the breakfast for him and his family, he heard a shriek. It was Sue's. He immediately started to look around. In a room he found Sue, on the floor. She had lost consciousness. The children were not in their beds. He looked around and saw that two of them were hanging from the hanging garments at the back of the door. More over, there was the body of Little Jude laying in a similar way, suspended over the floor.
Jude was horrified by the tragedy. He cut the cords and laid them in the bed. He carried Sue’s body and put her on the bed of the other room. He went looking for a doctor, but when he arrived he knew that his presence had no sense. The children were dead.
Sue thought that they had committed suicide, because of the information she had given Little Jude the evening before when she had told him she was pregnant again.
Upon the floor there was a piece of paper, on which was written “Done because we are too menny”.
Sue was carried on a room in the lower floor, trying to calm her. Then Jude came there saying there was no hope anymore. So she told him that she had caused everything. She thought that the problem was what she had said to the child. Jude soothed her.
When everybody was gone, she could go upstairs. She saw in the boy’s face their whole situation. In it all the inauspiciousness, shadows, accidents, mistakes, fears and errors were painted. He had died for all their misfortunes. They were the reason of it.
The children had hanged themselves, because of what Little Jude had written in the piece of paper found upon the floor. They had done it because there were too many (not “menny” as the little child wrote). Probably something was told to them referring to their situation and they could not accept it. As Sue said it was for the events and information of the evening before. So I may expect she had told something to them. I can suppose she had informed them about the situation they were living. Maybe she said they were poor because of it and they could no longer eat.
The children felt the guilt, they really do not have. I think Little Jude felt more it, because he was older than the other two children and he could understand a little bit better the situation he and his family were living.
Jude explained the situation differently. He said that it was in their nature to do it. The doctor said they are sons of the last generation and that was the problem. They lived terrors and horrors before they can fight against them. They were too little to understand and resist toward their problems.
Hardy seemed to have a different approach to life. It seemed as if it was natural. It can happen. Yes, it is obviously not a happy event. But it is normal referring to the life they were living.
In Jude’s attempt to comfort Sue I can view something of late Victorian society, in which the contradiction of the Victorian Age came to surface.
The scene is descripting as if it is filmed. There is an external narrator, who reports every detailed. This is the reason way the scene has got so many details that seems so real. You can imagine it as a drama, because it convey a dramatic effect, you can feel.
More over, it seems as if the narrator does not participate with what he described. So the scene adopts a more objective point of view, or better it seems so.
Last but not least, I can say what I think will happen to Jude and Sue. According to what Sue said and felt, I do not think she can continue the life with Jude. They will be too much to rebuilt, because Jude also had a different approach to it, and it is difficult to go on together. But this is only my idea.
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The precocious Little Father Time, observing the problems he and his siblings are causing their parents, murders Sue's two children by strangling them with box cord and then commits suicide by hanging himself. He leaves a note reading: Done because we are too menny [sic].
The shock of these events pushes Sue into a crisis of religious guilt. Although horrified at the thought of resuming her physical relationship with Phillotson, she nevertheless returns to him and becomes his wife again.