Romanticism in Jude the Obscur

A detailed Summary of Romanticism in Jude the Obscur

In the novel Jude the Obscure, Hardy shows the reader that the Romantic characteristics and ideals of the characters (Jude and Sue) are detrimental to them in their anti-Romantic world. Their romantic ideals are so inherent in their personality, and so antithetical to their society, that they are better off dead than living in their world. In his novel, Hardy shows the opposition between Romanticism, associated with tradition and a "golden age," and Darwinism, representative of modernization and progress. (Davis) Hardy's characters repeatedly feel the "ache of modernism." (Rogers)

Jude's character is Romantic rather than Darwinian, which is why he cannot survive in this age. He is sensitive to nature, which is not acceptable in Darwinian society. "...he was a boy who could not himself bear to hurt anything. He could scarcely bare to see trees cut down or lopped, from a fancy that it hurt them; and late pruning, when the sap was up, and the tree bled profusely, had been a positive grief to him in his infancy." (Hardy 17)

As a boy, Jude is very aware of life's inequities. (Hassett 432) From the very beginning of the novel, Hardy shows us not only that Jude has a strong imagination

Sue is continually seen as a spiritual rather than physical woman. Here one can see the influence of Shelley in Hardy's novel. In a way, Sue is strongly connected to the heroine of Shelley's Epipsychidion. Sue even asks Jude to quote a passage from Epipsychidion:

alternation between dream and reality become the "pendulum on which his nature swings." (Draper 243)

a student at Christminster are hopeless, he decides to take up priesthood until Sue comes along and he once again changes his mind and he decides to be with her.

On Sue's urging, Jude agrees that the description is exactly like her. Shelleyan parallels continue throughout the novel. Jude addresses Sue: "- you spirit, you disembodied creature, you dear, sweet, tantalizing phantom - hardly no flesh at all; so that when I put my arms

After the first meeting with her, Jude is obsessed with her. "From this moment the emotion which had been accumulating in his breast as the bottled-up effect of solitude and the poetized locality he dwelt in, insensibly began to precipitate itself in this half-visionary from." (Hardy 90) Sue remains "an ideal character, about whose form he began to weave curious and fantastic daydreams." (Hardy 89)

'There was a being whom my spirit oft

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Approximate Word count = 2367
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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