Compromised Romanticism in Jude the Obscure

Abstract

A FEW YEARS BEFORE HE WROTE Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy remarked a woeful fact-that the human race is too extremely developed for its corporeal conditions, the nerves being evolved to an activity abnormal in such an environment.... This planet does not supply the materials for happiness to higher existences. 1 Like much of Hardy's fiction and verse, Jude focuses on the dilemma of a perceptive man in an uncongenial world, and on particular kinds of response to this situation. Immediately apparent to someone coming to this book from readings in the earlier nineteenth century is the way this emphasis on man's refusal to be held in the process of mere general being, and his inability to make his refusal prevail 2 seems to deny the Romantics' faith in the power of a transcending or transforming imagination. Indeed, Jude Fawley's failures illustrate problems inherent in a approach to actual life. He and Sue Bridehead repeatedly create imaginative substitutes for reality, but their Romanticism is compromised in practical application. A consistent Romantic response to everyday experience simply cannot be maintained.