MB UNIUD

The extract we have read is taken from Hardy's novel Jude The Obscure.

It tells that a morning Jude was cooking the breakfast but he could hear and see neither Sue nor their children. Suddenly he heard a shriek from Sue and he immediately went to the rooms and saw that Sue was passed out on the floor and the children were dead, hanged on two hooks and a nail. When he was able to understand something he threw the children on the bed, made Sue come round and called for a doctor, who later said that nobody could save them.

Jude and Sue also found a piece of paper where Little Jude, the eldest son, had written a message that read  "Done because we are to menny".

Sue was taken away against her will: she wanted to see the children again and she was sure that Little Jude had committed suicide because of their conversation of the previous night during which she had told him that she as pregnant again. Jude didn't agree with her. He said the it was in his son's nature to do it: he and the doctor thought that some people of the new generation seemed to feel all the problems and terrors of life when they were to young and they couldn't resist them. That's why he says that it was the beginning of the coming universal wish not to live. At the end they were allowed to see their children' corpses again. They noticed their expressions: they seemed to express the tragedy of their situation: they showed all problems, fears and errors of Jude's unions.

The episode is told by a third person external narrator, who focuses the reader's attention more on details and objects  than on emotions. The reader can notice description: objects and actions are described in details and this cold description of all minute actions conveys the characters' feelings even if they are not directly expressed (since the narrator is external and so he doesn't now them).

Narration and dialogues are limited to the minimum. As a matter of fact Hardy chooses not to describe the scene when the action (the three children's death) takes place, but to describe its consequences and the situation after that everything has happened.

The death of the three children and especially of Little Jude represents people's reaction to the conventions of the Victorian Age.

I think that the episode can be interpreted in two ways:

•     Jude and Sue have decided not to follow the conventions of the age: they are both married with other people, but they decide to live together and to have children without getting married. They are not accepted and recognised by the society where they live and so they are condemened to live a terrible and unconventional life not because of their choice. Their children' s death represents the punishment for their choice: even if they can live out of he society and they can be happy, their children cannot accept the situation in which they have to live. So at the end even if they have thought to be stronger than society and conventions, the two aspects of Victorian life has reached their aim anyway.

•    The two unions of Jude (and Sue) can also represent the contradictions of the Victorian Age (those about marriage and family, for example). The children could stand for Victorian people, who see all the terrors of life without being prepared of them.