Learning Paths » 5A Interacting
JUDE THE OBSCURE
Chapter 2
Thomas Hardy's novel Jude The Obscure talks about Jude Fawley that lives with Sue Bridehead after he has been abandoned by his wife Arabella.
Sue and Jude live with their two children and the son Jude had from Arabella: they are an illegal couple and have troubles to find a place where stay. The live in a condition of poverty and social disapproval till their relationship deteriorates and tragedy overtakes them.
The extract we have read (chapter 2) starts with Jude was cooking the breakfast when he heard a shriek from Sue and immediately went towards the shriek came from: he saw Sue was passed out on the floor and the two youngest children were hanging dead on two hooks. When Shocked, he threw the children on the bed and called a doctor, but nobody could ever save them.
After, Jude and Sue would find a piece of paper left by Little Jude (the eldest son) where he had written: "Done because we are to menny".
Sue was sure that Little Jude had committed suicide after she had told him that she as pregnant again but they were too poor to sustain this situation.
Jude didn't share Sue's opinion: he sustained (even the doctor) that people of the new generation felt so much the problems and the fears of life and they couldn't exceed them.
As a matter of fact when Sue and Jude saw again the corpses of their children, their expressions seemed to express the tragedy of their situation.
The narrator is a third person external one: the reader's attention is focuses on details and objects : the description is a minute one because all the objects and actions are described in details in cold and mechanic way.
This technique conveys the characters' feelings and mood of behavior even if they are not directly expressed by the narrator because he is external and so doesn't now them.
The ghostly description of the children' scene created a grotesque effect and the detail created dramatic scene that allowed the reader to analyze what it is happened and why it is happened: this scene is a symbol of people's reaction to the conventions of the Victorian Age and to the terrify aspect of uncertainty that characterizing life.