Learning Paths » 5C Interacting
Analysis of Chapter 2 Part VI - Thomas Hardy's Jude The Obscure
by - (2012-06-05)
Up to 5 C. From The Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood to The Anti-victorian reaction: Walter Pater - Oscar Wilde - Thomas Hardy
I am going to analize the extract taken from the second chapter (part VI) of Thomas Hardy's novel Jude The Obscure. The text is a Victorian novel published in 1895.
The layout of the extract consist of a couple of three paragraphs divided from a quotation out of the body of the text. This piece of text has got two main characters: Jude and his lover Sue.
The extract begins with a detailed description of the foregroud: Jude is doing some activities like timing the eggs. Just three lines after the situation is broken by Sue's shriek which attracts the reader attention. The shriek is due to the discovery of three corpses, Jude and Sue's sons (one of born from Jude and Arabella's mariage). Sue looses her consciousness in front of the horrible vision of three bodies hanged on two hooks and a cord. Little Jude is the oldest son and the killer of the other two sons. The scene is rendered by the use of grotesque narrative technique which provides a realistic descriptioin of the scene. The description of corpse's room is detailed and it informs the reader of the object into the room (a piece of paper with six words “done because we are too menny” written by Little Jude seems to be the justification of the killing).
The discovery of sons invites the reader to follow the narrator through a flashback which explains the possible causes of the tragedy. During this flashback the narration uses a third person omniscient intrusive narrator. Probably Little Jude has killed his two brothers due to poor family conditions. Indeed the day before Little Jude and Jude has talken about their poverty. The family poverty is due to Jude's inability to control his passions and instincts: he married two ladies and made unsafe sex with them. So Jude becomes dad even if he was not economically and psychologically ready for that role.
Jude is presented as the man who fails in Victorian society: Jude can't find balance between his rationality and his instincts. Accordingly to Darwinism principales Jude is someone who is not able to adopt himself to the society. So Jude is doomed to be out of society. On the other hand Sue is presented as the rational woman: she questioned the doctor about the possible reasons why Little Jude (only a child) would have killed his brothers. The doctor is considered by Thomas Hardy an advanced man, according to Modernist mentality and vision of science. The doctor assures a concept which is the logical connection around the whole extract: people don't want to live because they can't cope with their existence.
The layout of the extract consist of a couple of three paragraphs divided from a quotation out of the body of the text. This piece of text has got two main characters: Jude and his lover Sue.
The extract begins with a detailed description of the foregroud: Jude is doing some activities like timing the eggs. Just three lines after the situation is broken by Sue's shriek which attracts the reader attention. The shriek is due to the discovery of three corpses, Jude and Sue's sons (one of born from Jude and Arabella's mariage). Sue looses her consciousness in front of the horrible vision of three bodies hanged on two hooks and a cord. Little Jude is the oldest son and the killer of the other two sons. The scene is rendered by the use of grotesque narrative technique which provides a realistic descriptioin of the scene. The description of corpse's room is detailed and it informs the reader of the object into the room (a piece of paper with six words “done because we are too menny” written by Little Jude seems to be the justification of the killing).
The discovery of sons invites the reader to follow the narrator through a flashback which explains the possible causes of the tragedy. During this flashback the narration uses a third person omniscient intrusive narrator. Probably Little Jude has killed his two brothers due to poor family conditions. Indeed the day before Little Jude and Jude has talken about their poverty. The family poverty is due to Jude's inability to control his passions and instincts: he married two ladies and made unsafe sex with them. So Jude becomes dad even if he was not economically and psychologically ready for that role.
Jude is presented as the man who fails in Victorian society: Jude can't find balance between his rationality and his instincts. Accordingly to Darwinism principales Jude is someone who is not able to adopt himself to the society. So Jude is doomed to be out of society. On the other hand Sue is presented as the rational woman: she questioned the doctor about the possible reasons why Little Jude (only a child) would have killed his brothers. The doctor is considered by Thomas Hardy an advanced man, according to Modernist mentality and vision of science. The doctor assures a concept which is the logical connection around the whole extract: people don't want to live because they can't cope with their existence.