Book description
'As you got older, ... you were seized with a sort of shuddering,
he perceived. All around you there seemed to be something glaring,
garish, rattling, and the noises and glares hit upon the little cell
called your life, and shook it, and scorched it.
If he could only prevent himself growing up! He did not want to
be a man'
Jude Fawley, the stonemason excluded not by his wits but by poverty
from the world of Christminster privilege, finds fulfilment in his
relationship with Sue Bridehead. Both have left earlier marriages.
Ironically, when tragedy tests their union it is Sue, the modern
emancipated woman, who proves unequal to the challenge. Hardy's
fearless exploration of sexual and social relationships and his
prophetic critique of marriage scandalised the late Victorian
establishment and marked the end of his career as a novelist.
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in
English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the
beginning of the First World War.
Formerly a prize-winning architectural student, Thomas Hardy
(1840-1928) went on to become a prolific novelist and poet. Jude
the Obscure caused outrage upon publication in 1895 - dubbed
'Jude the Obscene' by some, it was publicly burnt by the Bishop of
Wakefield - and its negative reception induced Hardy to turn his
efforts exclusively to poetry, making Jude the last novel he
wrote. It is now recognised as a work of astounding literary and
emotional power, a huge part of its strength lying in the
uncomfortable explorations of sex, class and education that caused
such outrage upon publication.
Hardy's novels Under the Greenwood Tree, Far From the
Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, Two on a
Tower, The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess of the
D'Urbervilles are also published in the Penguin English Library.
