Out of the Darkness: Jude the Obscure

Out of the Darkness: Jude the Obscure

Hardy is famous for setting his novels in the fictional county of Wessex, and Jude the Obscure is another work in this ilk. Perhaps more than its predecessors, the novel depicts a negative vision of the country life that critics of earlier novels had suggested Hardy over-idealized.

Far from being a place of innocence and mellow fruitfulness, the Wessex countryside is instead seen as a world in which the innocent Jude is prey to the machinations of the local women. His intellectual pretensions are stifled in an oppressive atmosphere of ignorance. More than that, though, Jude is looked down upon for his profession and lack of learning. Jude is a misfit wherever he goes--unable to achieve his dream.
Jude the Obscure is a terribly dark work of art, perhaps even darker than the other tragic novels that Hardy wrote in his later years. The central tragic murderous act--committed by a child--is probably one of the most heart-breaking passages in literary history. Even at such an early age, the child realized how sad and empty the world is.

Hardy imbued Jude with hope for everything that the author considered dear: intellectual vigour, rationality, unconventionality. But, the author then allows all of Jude's hopes to be utterly destroyed. While writing Jude the Obscure, something of Hardy's own optimism in the power of his fiction was slowly draining away.