Jude the Obscure

Thomas Hardy

JUDE THE OBSCURE

Christminster and education

Alessandro D'Ambrisi

JUDE THE OBSCURE

Hardy's critical vision

• In the novel, the author strongly criticizes and attacks the institution in some aspect such as higer education, social classes and marriage. in general, he also rejects the hypocrisy of the late Victorian age, as we can see in the way he talks about sex. For this reason, the novel was renamed by reviewers "Jude the Obscene".
• Society not only acts on adults, but has destructive consequences also on children: we can clearly see it when Hardy talk about the omicides make by Little Father time and his following suicide.

JUDE THE OBSCURE

The problem of higher learning and education

• In particular, the first part of the novel mainly concerns jude's strong will to go to university, but it is a specific one: Christminster university.
• The impossibility to reach his goal is a means for Hardy to criticize Victorian reality and the corrupted system by which only people that belongs to an high social class have the possibility to go to university.
• Furthermore, this system doesn't care about the talent and the attitude of students: therefore although you are brilliant, you will be rejected if you have a bad social status.
• In this way poor people are forced not to finish their cultural formation and destined to do humble works.

JUDE THE OBSCURE

Jude's aim

• Jude is an orphan, and his aunt, that belongs to the working class, wants him to become a stonemason. But he is a brilliant and wishful student, so that he would make every efforts to educate himself also to improve his poor origins.
• For Jude studying at Christminster university rapresent his biggest dream of adolescence, and all that is desiderable in life: so he work hard to try to join it.
• Jude, in his high aspirations, is largely inspired by Phillotson, his teacher, that tries to enter Christminster university when the protagonist is only eleven years old and becomes completely fascinated by it.

JUDE THE OBSCURE

Christminster: a fictional town

• But what actually Christminster represents in the novel?
• The fictional town of Christminster is directly based on Oxford, one of the most important city for what regards education and universities. But its name in the novel is meaningful: "Christ"-"minster", described as the "New Jeruslem", the "City of light", where "the tree of knowledge grows".
• Therefore the name recall religious elements that directly report, in Hardy's vision, to the "insensible chance", the "unconscious will of the Universe", that has a total control over human life, and so it is also the cause of Jude's defeat in the attempt to join the university and complete his education.
• Christminster embodies the perfect intellectual city, for a perfect intellectal life.

As the halo had been to his eyes when gazing at it a quarter of an hour earlier, so was the spot mentally to him as he pursued his dark way. “It is a city of light,” he said to himself. “The tree of knowledge grows there,” he added a few steps further on. “It is a place that teachers of men spring from, and go to.” “It is what you may call a castle, manned by scholarship and religion.” After this figure he was silent for a long while, till he added, “It would just suit me.”

Quotes

JUDE THE OBSCURE

Reality in Christminster

• Rejected by the the university, Jude understands that also the city of Christminster rejects him: in this way it is revealed the gloomy atmosphere of this city, in which there is no space for people like Jude, that feels deceived from a city that seemed to be his perfect place, and that have represented his biggest dream.
• Therefore in Christminster he is an outsider, he always remains lonely, he his no one for his social class: all these elements contribute to make him "obscure".

JUDE THE OBSCURE

Autobiographical references

• If we deeply analise the novel, it appears clear that Hardy's work is full of references to his own life, also for what concerns education and university.
• In fact, exactly as it happens to Jude in the novel, Hardy attends a school in his early years where he shows his great talent and intelligence, but due to his family's social conditions, since they belong to the working class: so he can't go on with his studies at university, ending in this way his formal education
• Furthermore, his father works as a stonemason: this is the same career that Jude's aunt wants for him, instead of going to Christminster university.

Quotes

Those buildings and their associations and privileges were not for him. From the looming roof of the great library, into which he hardly ever had time to enter, his gaze travelled on to the varied spires, halls, gables, streets, chapels, gardens, quadrangles, which composed the ensemble of this unrivalled panorama. He saw that his destiny lay not with these, but among the manual toilers in the shabby purlieu which he himself occupied, unrecognized as part of the city at all by its visitors and panegyrists, yet without whose denizens the hard readers could not read nor the high thinkers live.”

Quotes

Why should you care so much for Christminster? ... Christminster cares nothing for you, poor dear!