Jude the Obscured.

A Consideration of Thomas Hardy’s ‘Jude the Obscure’ by a Minister of the Christian Religion.

I perhaps would have been better to read Jude the Obscure without expectations, but that is hardly possible. Without ever having sought any opinions about the book I seemed to have picked them up. Somehow I had formed the opinion that it was a tale of misery concerning ordinary country folk in Late Victorian Britain, and that it was a tale told against religion. This was confirmed in my mind by the person who gave me the book to read, he gave it to me because I am a Minister of Religion and he had found this book a profound challenge to his faith. With all this in my head I looked online before opening the book and had a read about what people made of it, and there I found it has become a point of reference for people wanting to criticise religion in general and Christianity in particular, and also it seemed that I was to expect Jude the Obscure to be a polemic against the institution of marriage.

I would much rather read books that that challenge my values and understanding, I know what I think so why would I read what I already know to be true? I find criticism is usually not made without reason and is always worth considering. Therefore I had high hopes for Jude the Obscure.

My copy of Jude the Obscure has an Editor’s Introduction by Professor Dennis Taylor, which I decided to read before proceeding to Hardy’s text. It is quite the best Editor’s Introduction to a book I have ever read and was the first indication that the wisdom I had haphazardly received concerning Jude the Obscure may be questionable. Having finally read the book, I decided to write a Reflection on Jude the Obscure because it raises significant questions about the practice of the Christian faith, especially in regards to some weighty matters such as suffering, judgement and the moral law. I also decided to make use of the structure and content Prof Taylor’s Introduction as I found his observations to be well founded and a corrective to some of popular assumptions about the book.

Spoiler alert, I will mention aspects of the plot in what I write.

Prof Dennis Taylor begins his Introduction by noting that at the time of publication Jude the Obscure was not well received by all who read it, or read of it. For some Jude the book seemed to be an attack on their most cherished values, and Thomas Hardy ruefully acknowledge this, blaming the furore for his turning to poetry and never writing a novel again.

Just what was Hardy’s attack aimed at? Prof Taylor suggests that a clue is given on the title page of the novel as Hardy has included a quote from the bible, "the letter killeth." The letter in question is the law. “In Jude the Obscure”, Prof Taylor asks, “what does the letter of the law mean and how does it kill?” He continues, “The most obvious candidate is the marriage law.”

Jude’s experience of marriage is not a happy one, and as the novel proceeds we find him bitterly complaining against the institution of marriage, as does his beloved cousin Sue, who is by turns his distant infatuation, his Platonic friend, his Platonic live in friend, his girlfriend cum pretend wife, the mother of his three of his children and finally his ex-partner[i].

It is perhaps surprising that someone so embittered about marriage should chose to marry twice, albeit to the same woman, the resourceful farm girl Arabella. It is perhaps even more surprising as Jude did not find being married to Arabella congenial the first time around and having parted from her he had subsequently questioned at a philosophical, religious and personal level the very idea of marriage itself.

Jude married Arabella, for the first time, because he thought she was pregnant. If at the time she believes she is pregnant is unclear. They are newly married when it becomes clear that she is not pregnant. Hardy observes that the reason for their marriage has gone but their marriage has not. As Prof Taylor writes, “Jude feels they are ruined by the ‘fundamental error of their matrimonial union: that of having based a permanent contract on a temporary feeling which had no necessary connection with affinities that alone render a lifelong comradeship tolerable.’”

I suspect a contemporary clergyman might have pointed out that had they observed the Church’s teaching on sex outside marriage they would not have found themselves in that predicament, and that the lifelong nature of marriage should prompt prudent and careful consideration of whether you and your intended actually have those ‘affinities that alone render a lifelong comradeship tolerable.’ Which while undoubtedly true is a little like telling someone asking for directions that they would be better to recommence their journey from elsewhere and directing them thus.

Prof Taylor notes that characters in the novel can actually get divorced, he cites the 1857 Divorce Act as evidence. So assuming the world of the novel coincides sufficiently with the historical world characters in the book can divorce. Which is surprising because both characters in the book and people who have read, or read about, the book seem to think they cannot. So much commentary about Jude the Obscure, and within Jude the Obscure, bemoans the apparent injustice of forcing people who are irrevocably incompatible to remain married to each other, yet it becomes clear in the novel when characters actually do get divorced that there was actually no law forcing people to remain together.

Equally, speaking to people who have read the book, or read about it, and reading commentary online it seems that people think Jude was prevented marrying his cousin Sue by the Law and the Church when there was no barrier in Law or in the Church to marriage between cousins. The reason Sue and Jude, after they have both been divorced, do not marry each other, after prolonged reader patience stretching vacillation by them both, is because they do not want to. The marriage law in Jude the Obscure is not the ‘letter that kills’.

Prof Taylor explains that “Hardy claimed that he had no opinion on the marriage laws”, in fact Hardy wrote of Jude the Obscure, “The only remarks which can be said to bear on the general marriage question occur in dialogue…And of these remarks I state…that my own views are not expressed therein.’ Indeed when it was put to Hardy that he was an advocate for ‘free love’ he replied, “I hold no theory whatever on the subject’, adding pessimistically, “I don’t see any possible scheme for the union of the sexes that wd be satisfactory.”[ii]

This leads Prof Taylor to suggest, “Perhaps the issue is not so much formal law so much as social conventions.” Both divorce and marriage of cousins would have met with strong social disapproval in Victorian England, and Sue and Jude do find themselves criticised and gossiped about. Sue in particular is afflicted by fears of disapproval, she feels ‘an awe, or terror, of conventions I don’t believe in.’ However, Prof Taylor adds that although they “have to move once or twice to avoid the neighbours’ whispers…they keep finding nooks where they are quite happy.” He concludes “they are not killed by the letter of social convention.” I would add that social convention is a part of any society, even in one that is not especially religious if you choose to live differently to the majority you will find people question your motives and disapprove[iii].

Next Prof Taylor wonders if the letter that kills might be the religious law, we have seen that the Civil Law did not proscribe either marriage of cousins or divorce, so perhaps is it the Church’s objections that were the problem? It is worth pointing out that Victorian Church Law did allow cousins to marry, I am not sure if it disapproved of remarriage after divorce but Sue and Jude do contemplate getting married in a church after they are both divorced so in the context of the novel Church law doesn’t seem to be a problem.

However, both Sue and Jude do struggle to reconcile their relationship with a religious understanding of marriage as lifelong and irrevocable, and when at length they both return to their first marriage partners Jude objects, “Sue! We are acting by the letter; and ‘the letter killeth’”. This is a direct link to the motto on the Title page of the book, so perhaps here we have here the letter that kills, not so much religious law but a rigid understanding of that law.

Prof Taylor thinks not, he argues that the changing attitudes of Sue and Jude to the idea of marriage as lifelong and morally binding, and the manipulative use of that idea by Arabella to “recapture” Jude, suggest that the “religious code seems to have as little necessary power as social convention and legality.” He quotes Hardy in support of this argument, who wrote, “The story of Jude …makes only an objective use of marriage & its superstitions as one, & only one, of the antagonistic forces in the tragedy.”

I do not quite agree with Prof Taylor on this point, while as Hardy writes the religious code of marriage is not the only factor in the plot, it is an essential one. The book is not about marriage, which many both then and now seem to think it is, it is the tragedy of a life in which both the experience of marriage and a particular understanding of marriage both play a key part. Without the understanding of marriage being lifelong and morally binding Jude’s tragedy would be a different story. The link to the motto of the book made by Hardy in the text when Jude accuses them both of acting according to the letter that kills makes that plain. As does the quote from that great Christian writer, Milton, at the beginning of Part Four of Jude the Obscure,

"Whoso prefers either Matrimony or other Ordinance before

the Good of Man and the plain Exigence of Charity, let

him profess Papist, or Protestant, or what he will, he

is no better than a Pharisee."

Milton is referring to the Christian understanding that love comes before law. The word ‘charity’ in his time meant the Christian form of love taught and embodied by Jesus, a love that is self-giving rather than self-seeking, a love that offers forgiveness rather than judgement. He is arguing that if you prefer law to love then whatever kind of Christian you are, Protestant or Catholic, you are in fact a Pharisee.

Jesus criticised the Pharisees who enforced the Religious Law without regard for compassion or the meaning of those Laws. According to Mark Chapter 2, on one occasion Jesus was walking through fields with his disciples and they began to pick some of the heads of grain to eat. The Pharisees saw and objected because it was a Sabbath and according to the Religious Law it was unlawful to work on the Sabbath. Picking the heads of grain counted as work. Jesus reminds them that King David, the great Old Testament hero of Israel, had entered the House of God with his men when they were hungry and needy and had eaten the consecrated bread which was only lawful for the Priests to eat. Jesus is using historical and scriptural precedent to show that the religious Law must be interpreted compassionately and, as Milton says, for “the good of man.”

Jesus concludes, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” So a religious law like marriage that is designed to enable loving human relationships and the flourishing of humanity must be interpreted in terms of love and human flourishing and not rigidly enforced for its own sake whatever the circumstances.

So in terms of the quote from Milton, to prefer the Law to the good of man and the principles of love is to be a Pharisee. The quote from Milton places marriage in the context of other Ordinances or religious laws and asks that love be the rule not legalism. One might say, to paraphrase both Milton and Jesus, marriage was made for man, not man for marriage.

This theme of love not legalism is picked up in that quote on the title page of Jude the Obscure, “the letter killeth.”

The quote is from 2 Corinthians 3:6 and written by the Apostle Paul. The context refers to Jesus, it reads in the language of the King James Version, " Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life."

Paul is contrasting the Old Testament Law of Moses written on stone with the teaching of Jesus written by the Spirit in the hearts of Christians, in verse 3 he explains, "ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ... written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart."

The stone carved letter of the law kills, the Spirit written Heart gives life.

Christianity is not a law based religion, it is a love based religion. Jesus was not a law giver he was a story teller. The story of his life embodied the love of God and neighbour that he taught. The books of the bible that follow the gospels are the story of how the early Church worked out how to live by the teachings of Jesus, we read in Acts 15 that at The Council of Jerusalem the Church gathered to consider if new converts should keep the religious law of the Old Testament? The Apostle Peter stood up and argued, “why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear?” The Council accepted his argument.

This does not make Christianity an ‘anything goes’ religion, the New Testament Church was very keen to correct that misapprehension, the rule of love is a higher moral standard and asks more of us than the rule of religious law. Neither is the writing of religious laws ruled out, so long as those laws are inspired by love and subject to interpretation by love - as the Milton quote makes clear. Clearly it would be better if Christians lived by love of God and neighbour without the need for the guidance of religious law, in a way law is the measure of our failure to love as Jesus taught.

To regard religious law as the means and end of Christianity is to directly contradict the teaching of Jesus and the practice of the Early Church, but disastrously this has and does happen in the life of the Church. Jesus criticised the Pharisees for legalism, the early Church rejected it, the Apostle Paul argued against it, Milton recognised and criticised it in his own day, and the tragedy of Jude the Obscure rightly condemns it. Jude is right, “Sue! We are acting by the letter; and ‘the letter killeth.’” A legalistic understanding of religious laws is the ‘letter that killeth’ in the Apostle Paul’s letter, and so it is in Jude the Obscure even if it is not the sole cause of Jude’s tragedy.

To be clear, a Christian understanding of marriage should not be legalistic and rigid, it should be compassionate and forgiving. In showing how a legalistic and rigid understanding of marriage can lead to tragedy Thomas Hardy is telling a Christian story. Hardy’s implied criticism that Christianity is not being practised and understood in the way Jesus and the Apostle Paul taught is a criticism that all Christians should affirm.

The numerous references to the bible and Book of Common Prayer in the text of Jude the Obscure are evidence that Hardy is writing from within the Christian tradition and with a Christian ethic even if he does not have a regulation issue faith, but clear evidence can also be found outside of the text, for example in a letter to a friend Hardy makes reference to a Bishop who condemned Jude the Obscure in the national Press, writing, "if the Bishop could have known him (Hardy) as he was, he would have found a man who's personal conduct, views of morality and of the vital facts of religion, hardly differed from his own."

Having rejected the idea that it is a religious understanding of marriage that is the ‘letter that killeth’ Prof Taylor goes on to consider if religious belief is itself perhaps that deadly letter. He writes, “There is a powerful religious critique in the novel, and the reviewers were not unreasonable in noticing it.”

Jude starts off religious but questions his faith until we are not quite sure what is left of it, if anything. Sue starts of a freethinker but ends up exceedingly religious. Sue’s belief that the murder of her children is punishment from God for divorcing her husband and living unmarried with Jude, and the extreme penitential lengths she resorts to in order to, in her mind, appease God’s anger, form a grotesque and horrific commentary on such self-destructive beliefs.

Sue’s language becomes riddled with guilt, self-loathing and a desire to harm herself, she exclaims to Jude,

“My babies have been taken from me to show me this! Arabella's child killing mine was a judgement—the right slaying the wrong. What, shall I do! I am such a vile creature—too worthless to mix with ordinary human beings!"

And,

“Self-renunciation—that's everything! I cannot humiliate myself too much. I should like to prick myself all over with pins and bleed out the badness that's in me!"

Jude responds “vehemently: "You make me hate Christianity, or mysticism, or Sacerdotalism, or whatever it may be called, if it's that which has caused this deterioration in you.”

As a Minister of the Christian Religion I would entirely agree with Jude, I would agree not despite the fact I am a Minister of the Christian Religion but because I am one. If people reading take Sue’s words and actions to be representative of the Christian faith then no wonder people think Jude the Obscure is written to encourage atheism. Surely it is apparent that quite the opposite is true, that her grief driven guilt is leading her into a hell on earth but that her love for Jude and her children gave her briefly a taste of heaven?

Heaven is a Kingdom that is anywhere in this world or the next where God’s will is done, and Christians believe that the will of God is that we live as Jesus lived and taught, that is to live a life characterised by love of God and of neighbour. 1 John 4 verse 16 actually gives the location of heaven, it says “…God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.” A marriage formed out of loving commitment to another person is holy, a marriage formed out of self-loathing and repugnance towards the other person, as Sue’s remarriage is, is unholy[iv].

The idea that Sue is driven by after the murder of her children, the idea that God requires self-sacrifice as an expiation of sin is a common understanding of religion and yet is literally the opposite of what Christianity teaches.

In Matthew 9 we may read of on one of the many occasions when Jesus was socialising with people the religious authorities disapproved of as sinners. He replies to their criticism by explaining that these people need compassion and healing, then he adds, “…go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’” He is quoting the Old Testament prophet Hosea, an authority his critics would respect. The quote from Hosea is from a passage where the prophet is criticising the authorities for thinking they can oppress the poor, and take part in abhorrent rituals, so long as they sacrifice to God.

Jesus makes clear that if we do wrong we should acknowledge it and receive God’s forgiveness, and that our attitude to others who do wrong should be mercy not condemnation, but here he is also making clear that God’s mercy is offered freely. God does not require a sacrifice so we should not demand others make one nor should we demand one of ourselves. God forgives because He is merciful, He does not require us to make a sacrifice.

This runs contrary to both much religious thought and to common understandings of how religion works, that being that there is a list of rules and if we break one we have to sacrifice something to gain God’s forgiveness. In Christianity love not law is the standard and God freely offers forgiveness to all.

One of the central doctrines of Christianity is that we do not need to make a sacrifice for sin because Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice, he accepted the punishment that judgement and condemnation demanded[v]. So for example,

Mark 10:45, "For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."

And

1 Peter 2:24, “…he Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.”

And

Romans 5:6 -8, “…when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

And

Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”

And finally but not exhaustively,

John 3:17, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

The Book of Common Prayer that Hardy quotes so often in Jude the Obscure states that Jesus suffered death for our redemption and made “by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world.”

Christianity does not require you to make any kind of sacrifice for the forgiveness of sin, the religion that Sue is believing and practicing in the latter part of Jude the Obscure is not Christian. So Sue need not have gone to bed with a man she found repugnant because she felt guilty about kissing a man she loved. If that kiss was wrong because it broke the promise of fidelity she had made to Phillotson her husband then she needed to receive God’s forgiveness and mercy, although the ‘wrongness’ of that kiss is deeply problematic as she had promised to love a man she knew she did not love instead of making those promises to the man she did love.

Sue assumes the murder of her children is a punishment from God, to be clear, mainstream Christianity has for two thousand years taught that Jesus died for our sins - all our sins, for all time.

Sin has bad consequences that is why it is to be avoided, God does not add further consequences to punish you. So for example, if you lie often enough people will increasingly not trust you and your probable subsequent social isolation will be a result of your being untrustworthy and not a punishment from God. The answer is not to rush into church and hit yourself on the head with a mallet but to apologise to God and to the people around you. God will forgive you, the people around you may.

Sue’s children were murdered because Thomas Hardy needed a plot device to make his point. In the end we don’t always know why bad things happen, sometimes it is clearly the consequence of sin, other times the reason is obscure, but because of Calvary we can know the bad thing didn’t happen because God is punishing us even if guilt tells us otherwise. I would have thought Jude with all his reading of theology would know this, it would appear Thomas Hardy knew it as he is asking us to feel compassion for Sue and to be appalled by her religious doctrine.

Prof Taylor concludes that in Jude the Obscure religion is not the ‘letter that killeth’, writing ‘It is possible to argue that that the novel does not attack religion so much as hypocrisy and religious literalism[vi].” Prof Taylor quotes Hardy writing only a year after the novel was published, deploring the effect on “true religion” of “dogmatic ecclesiasticism…with which the real teaching of Christ has hardly anything in common.” Prof Taylor notes that it is interesting that Hardy writes respectfully of “true religion” and “the real teaching of Christ.” Whether Mr Hardy and I would agree on what was true religion and the teaching of Christ I do not know but I can say I do agree with Mr Hardy that the grotesque version of religion and the teaching of Christ that causes so much tragedy in Jude the Obscure is deplorable.

Prof Taylor goes on to consider and reject other candidates for the letter that killeth, including Victorian University admissions policies, Jude’s economic and sexual exclusion, the law of the jungle and the conditions of life, genetic inheritance, the cruelty of life, and literalism, asking, “If Hardy does not take his formulas literally, how does he take them at all?”

In part there are so many candidates for the meaning of ‘the letter that killeth’ in Jude the Obscure because Hardy understands his formulas as metaphorical rather than literal, and because there is such a procession of possible candidates, all of which dissipate under closer inspection, this allows people coming to the text to read it to it their own concerns and opinions.

Which is, as Prof Taylor notes, curious for a text so grounded in the harsh every day realities of life. However, having somewhat parted company with Prof Taylor when he rejected religious legalism as being the ‘letter that killeth’ I do not intend to accompany him through the remaining candidates in detail. I think religious legalism is the letter that killeth in Jude the Obscure even if the causes of Jude’s tragedy are many and diverse and religious legalism is just one of them. I think in looking for an overarching cause of Jude’s tragedy, and assuming it is whatever Hardy meant by ‘The letter that killeth’, Prof Taylor has sent himself on a fool’s errand.

Whatever ails Jude is whatever ails all of us, the ultimate reason for Jude’s fictional tragedy is as inscrutable as the variety of possible explanations are diverse. In writing of this obscurity that befuddles us all I think Thomas Hardy has in Jude the Obscure done rather well.

There are a couple of contributory factors to Jude’s tragedy that I would give more prominence to than Prof Taylor, the first of these is being good. Many of Jude’s troubles spring from his good nature, he is inclined to be compassionate. So for example, both his first and second marriage to Arabella are in part motivated by sympathy for her, indeed Arabella is sufficiently cunning to make this work for her, although it has to be said he does seem quite keen on the sex too, but then the best of motives are often mixed with a lesser alloy, and why should not good deeds be rewarded with a little sugar?

Jude’s generosity of spirit is seen right at the start of the novel when as a lad set to scare birds in a field he allows them out of sympathy to scavenge for grain, for which he is rewarded not with sugar but with a beating from the farmer. We read of Jude’s sad retreat,

“Jude leaped out of arm's reach, and walked along the trackway weeping—not from the pain, though that was keen enough; not from the perception of the flaw in the terrestrial scheme, by which what was good for God's birds was bad for God's gardener; but with the awful sense that he had wholly disgraced himself before he had been a year in the parish, and hence might be a burden to his great-aunt for life.”

This “flaw in the terrestrial scheme”, which often causes goodness to extract a greater personal cost than badness, bedevils Jude through his life.

It is a key theme in the bible, the Psalmist[vii], writing centuries before Christ, laments that the wicked prosper,

“But as for me, my feet had almost slipped;

I had nearly lost my foothold.

For I envied the arrogant

when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.”

And he equally laments that his efforts to be good result in affliction,

“Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure

and have washed my hands in innocence.

All day long I have been afflicted,

and every morning brings new punishments.”

Writing in the years immediately after Christ the Apostle Peter takes up this theme, acknowledging that doing good may bring opposition, but advising, “it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.”[viii]He then goes on to say that Christians should not be surprised that following in the way of Jesus brings suffering, writing, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.”[ix] So we may suffer for doing right as Christ suffered, even if his sufferings mean that we are not punished for our sins. It is a curious understanding of suffering that Christianity presents to the world, you may well suffer for the good you do, while the bad you have done brings it's own consequences but Christ bears the ultimate cost. Curious because the world expects God to punish the wicked and reward the good. I think this is an aspect of the misrepresentation of Christianity in both popular belief and established religion that Hardy is seeking to expose. Jude is a flawed Christ-like figure, the inevitable fall of the hero is a part of tragedy, in a corrupt and cruel world the kind hearted inevitably suffer and fall. Jude even remarks “what a poor Christ he made.”

I think it a pity Hardy ends Jude the Obscure in tragedy, in Christ human suffering is redeemed, and at the resurrection transfigured. Jude the Obscure ends determinedly on Good Friday with Christ in the tomb. I don’t know if Hardy read Julian of Norwich, the 14th century Anchorite who wrote ‘Revelations of Divine Love’, but he may have benefited from her thoughts on love and suffering, she writes,

“If there is, anywhere on earth, a lover of God who is kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown to me: that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.”

The other contributory factor to Jude’s downfall that I would give more prominence to than Prof Taylor does is that of idealism. Jude is a dreamer, if he were less given to idealism he would be less disappointed by reality, or perhaps if he was more determined to follow his dreams he might have been successful, who knows? Only the author knows, and he seems dead set on pessimism.

A key passage for me is when Jude is walking home from a day’s work dreaming of where his educational ambitions might take him, “…he continued to dream, and thought he might become even a bishop by leading a pure, energetic, wise, Christian life.” At that point he his hit in the face by fleshy reality in the form of a butchered pig’s penis, “On a sudden something smacked him sharply in the ear, and he became aware that a soft cold substance had been flung at him, and had fallen at his feet.” In order to get his attention Arabella had thrown it at him, that is how they met[x]. One might say that Jude the dreamer is consistently hit by pig’s willies throughout the novel. Sue is correct in her characterisation of Jude and in her assessment of how that will work out for him,

“You are Joseph the dreamer of dreams, dear Jude. And a tragic Don Quixote. And sometimes you are St. Stephen, who, while they were stoning him, could see Heaven opened. Oh, my poor friend and comrade, you'll suffer yet!"’

Put bluntly Jude’s dreams are stifled by his two marriages to Arabella, his relationship with Sue and by the rigid class system of Victorian Britain. Sue says as much about the consequences of Jude’s relationships with women, and Jude remarks on his hope that there will be in future educational establishments that allow greater social mobility for academic working class men like him.

If the reader is determined to take the novel literally as being against religion then surely the reader must also take the novel literally to be against having dreams as they contribute as much, if not more, to Jude’s tragedy.

It seem to me the idealism of Jude and his inclination to be compassionate are commendable despite the tragic consequences these characteristics bring. I don’t think Hardy is wanting to create more compassionless cynics by the writing of his novel, on the contrary, I think he is hoping despite his pessimism to encourage the reader to value idealism and compassion.

In concluding his Introduction Prof Taylor reveals that in preparation for writing Jude the Obscure Hardy reread his bible, making particular study of the books of Job, Ecclesiastes and 1 Corinthians. Job is an exceedingly ancient book about a good man who suffers terribly and without apparent cause, Ecclesiastes reflects on how troubles can render life seemingly meaninglessness, and 1 Corinthians 13 contains a passage on love that is referred to in the novel.

One can see how these books of the bible would help shape Hardy’s thoughts in writing Jude the Obscure.

Jude is a well-intentioned and religious character like Job who suffers to the extent that, like Job, he wishes he hadn’t been born, and it is Job that Jude quotes on his death bed.

Ecclesiastes offers no definitive explanation of suffering, instead repeatedly concludes ‘all is meaningless’ – or ‘all is vanity’ as Hardy’s King James Version of the bible translates the Hebrew word ‘hebel’ meaning ‘hot air’. I think in the same spirit Jude the Obscure does not offer a definitive explanation of suffering, as witnessed by Prof Taylor’s attempts to track down the ‘letter that killeth’, but rather tells the story of how troubles strip the meaning from Jude’s life. Christminster, the longed for city of academic aspiration, turns out to be particularly full of ‘hot air’. Prof Taylor recognises in Hardy’s use of Job that Jude the Obscure is not seeking to blame anyone one cause for all Jude and humanity’s ills but is saying there is no sufficient explanation.

The reference to 1 Corinthians 13 comes when Jude is trying to persuade Sue that their love for each other means they should be together, and Sue is explaining to Jude that she must remarry Phillotson and Jude ought to remarry Arabella. Love is contesting with legalism, and because of Sue’s sense of guilt legalism wins. Sue however acknowledges Jude’s tragedy, that his downfall has been because of his kindly nature, saying,

“"Don't think me hard because I have acted on conviction. Your generous devotion to me is unparalleled, Jude! Your worldly failure, if you have failed, is to your credit rather than to your blame. Remember that the best and greatest among mankind are those who do themselves no worldly good. Every successful man is more or less a selfish man. The devoted fail... 'Charity seeketh not her own.'"

That last phrase is from 1 Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul’s reflection on the pre-eminence of love in the Christian life, the King James version of the bible rather misleadingly translates the Greek word ‘agape’, meaning self-giving love, as ‘charity’.

Jude takes up the reference,

“"In that chapter we are at one, ever beloved darling, and on it we'll part friends. Its verses will stand fast when all the rest that you call religion has passed away!"’

Jude is referring to the conclusion of the 1 Corinthians 13, Paul having asserted the pre-eminence of love over and through all other Christian virtues concludes that love will endure with faith and hope beyond all other aspects of religion,

“…now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

Paul can make this assertion because Christians believe ‘God is love’[xi], and because the resurrection shows that self-giving love ultimately endures beyond all things, even death.

In reference to this passage from Jude the Obscure Prof Taylor concludes, “Hardy attacked the ways that religion, and any other system, can become a letter of the law that kills: and yet he repeatedly returns to the Pauline formula which makes Charity supreme as the norm by which all else is measured.” Then, after recalling the ways that charity is violated in the book, Prof Taylor writes, “And we fail in charity in not reaching out to the Judes of this world.” I don’t know if Prof Taylor is a Christian or if he is just gets Jude the Obscure, but this is an exceedingly Christian sentiment; Jesus sat and ate with people like Jude, and with people like Sue and Arabella, and he accused those who condemned people like Jude, Sue and Arabella of being hypocrites[xii].

If Jude the Obscure is irreligious then so is Jesus, and if Jesus is irreligious then so should Christians be.

Prof Taylor explains that in Hardy’s understanding suffering is persistent and inexplicable whatever system of thought you follow, and that mercy is the only loving response whatever the system of thought you follow. He writes, “Suffering and mercy are Hardy’s two great principles, and they stand as his great Late Victorian alternatives to the Letters that kill.”

I would add, the only authentic Christian response to a suffering sinner is mercy.

It seems to me that when Jude the Obscure was published it was read in a largely religious society as being critical of religion and marriage and that was generally considered as a bad thing, now in a largely secular society it is still read as being critical of religion and marriage but that is seen as a good thing. Both readings obscure the Christian ethics of the text. I can’t think of another book, aside from the bible, that is so obscured by expectations.

As religious literacy recedes in our society I do wonder how people will successfully read and understand books like Jude the Obscure that are so soaked in Christian meaning.

Jude the Obscure illustrates how the practice of the Christian religion can be so inauthentic it is hard to recognise as the Way taught by Jesus and the Apostles, and as such it is a Christian book. I don’t know if the practice of Christianity in late Victorian England was as corrupt as Hardy suggests[xiii], I wasn’t there and I don’t have the historical evidence, and I am not inclined to accept the conclusions of one man as definitive, but I do come across a lot of people in both the Church and wider society that think Christianity is a law based religion and that the job of the Church is to pronounce judgement on behalf of a permanently angry god who hands out punishment for sin.

That Hardy gives no definition of what religion is, and what ‘true religion’ is can be excused as he is writing a novel not an academic paper, and this ambiguity is one of the tensions that drive the plot, however such a definition would be helpful in making clear his point.

In the absence of a definition of ‘true religion’ from Hardy here’s one from the bible, one that I think he might find acceptable,

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being corrupted by the world.” James 1:27

PostScript.

There were a number of thoughts that I was not entirely clever enough to work into this reflection but that I am rather too pleased with to let go, so here they are.

Despite being written at the back end of the nineteenth century when realism was the predominant literary style there are moments of Gothic horror in Jude the Obscure reminiscent of literature from the start of that century. Examples would be the double murder and suicide, the scene with Sue at the graveside and Jude’s death bed scene.

I also found for a novel that aspires to realism, and does so very successfully in its portrayal of everyday life in rural Victorian England, it disappointingly had many moments when I found maintaining belief in the text a bit of a stretch. Arabella, for instance, despite being sent off by the author to Australia and London still manages to meet up by chance with key characters in the novel and have plot changing conversations. In a more fantastical novel, or one that does not care to hide that it is fiction, I can tolerate such coincidences, but in a book that aims for gritty realism they stand out as distinctly authorial – Mr Hardy your underwear is showing.

The double suicide and murder by a child, while no doubt such things do happen, is so unlikely as to seem to me contrived to make a point. Reality is on the whole much more boring than reading Jude the Obscure would suggest. And would Jude really be so soft-headed to remarry Arabella after their disastrous first marriage and his subsequent doubts about the wisdom of marriage?! And if yes, why would we be expected to have any sympathy for him?

I liked the idea of Jude the Obscure as a lament for the lost world Hardy grew up in, Prof Taylor observes that “Hardy could not go home again to the world he once knew” because both he and the rural society he knew as a youth had changed. In the countryside mechanisation and commerce were replacing old production methods with new and bringing into question the social relationships and values that went with them. However, as Prof Taylor points out, economic change left people trying to navigate a changed industrial landscape still with the values of the past as a guide, even if those values had been called into question. He writes of the, “decline of a cohesive rural culture into a modern dehumanized transient society, of which Jude is a double victim, without community yet also burdened by laws and customs retained from a world no longer in existence.[xiv]” The novel questions the old values and social structures, such as marriage, but worries about what will replace them, for instance Jude’s comment on his sibling killing suicidal child,

"It was in his nature to do it. The Doctor says there are such boys springing up amongst us—boys of a sort unknown in the last generation—the outcome of new views of life. They seem to see all its terrors before they are old enough to have staying power to resist them. He says it is the beginning of the coming universal wish not to live.”

I don’t think Jude the Obscure is a book that wants to see the old values and customs swept away until all that is left is nihilism, I think it is a book that seeks to revaluate the old in the context of the new.

Did I enjoy the novel? I found considering Mr Hardy’s meaning in Jude the Obscure to be much more appealing than the actual story. I found the misery to be a bit relentless and to be comically overstated by the end of the novel. I know people make appalling errors of judgement about their lives, I have made a few myself, but the thing began to feel a little bit like a costume drama version of the Jeremy Kyle show. I couldn’t really recommend reading it to anyone unless perhaps if I knew they enjoyed the melodrama and pain filled plots of soap operas.

My final observation is that Jude should have listened to his Aunt Drusilla, she warned against marrying anyone, and warned him about Sue. If he had listened and stuck to his books he may have become a Christminister scholar or a clergyman and avoided all his woes – or at least had different ones. I grew up in a village and knew old women like Drusilla who gossiped about the place, and held what seemed like randomly absurd opinions to my youthful mind, but who frustratingly turned out to have a valid point even if they came by it via exceedingly rustic means.

Listen to your aunties.

[i] Perhaps the best, if inevitably inadequate, description of their relationship is the one offered by modern social media, “It’s Complicated”.

[ii] I would tend to agree, any social system dreamt up has to cope with our human frailties and imperfections and thus in the end is going to prove unsatisfactory. What is needed is a system that can accommodate and encourage mutual forgiveness and compassion in community, and that’s the system advocated by Jesus.

[iii] As Jesus and his disciples found.

[iv] As an aside, Hardy is quite hard on the Ministers who conduct the ill-conceived marriages in the novel. I have to take issue with him on this, it is right for a Minister to explain the meaning of marriage to a couple and to help them understand the consequences of the promises they are to make, but it is not right for a Minister to try and see into people’s hearts and make up their minds for them. Only God can understand fully what is in our hearts and even He lets us make up our own minds.

[v] I am aware that Christians have and do understand and describe atonement in a variety of different ways, however, as far as I am aware none of them conclude we have to make personal sacrifices for our corporate or individual sin.

[vi] Aside from those who take pride in self-proclaimed ‘biblical literalism’, and who thereby have the advantage of being consistent in their own terms, the only consistent definition of ‘religious literalism’ I have ever come across is that it is the erroneous cause of what other people mistakenly believe to be true about religion.

[vii] Psalm 73

[viii] 1 Peter 3:17

[ix] 1 Peter 3:18

[x] If only they had stayed together they would have had the perfect dinner party story with which to respond to the inevitable question, ‘how did you two meet?’

[xi] 1 John 4 verse 8

[xii] “Be like Jesus: Spend enough time with sinners to ruin your reputation with religious people.” Joshua Harris

[xiii] It would seem a pity if the great Victorian Religious revival misunderstood the nature of the religion it was reviving

[xiv] I recognised in this something of the dilemma facing the Church of England, and so produced this perhaps ironic paraphrase… ‘the decline of a cohesive Anglican culture in a modern dehumanized transient society, of which the Anglican Church is a double victim, without a place in the community yet also burdened by laws and customs retained from a world no longer in existence.’