Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section. For a Hardy novel, that is an unusually happy ending, and it is one without judgment on her as a woman or as a lowly-born illegitimate child – unusual for Victorian Britain. She retains a sense of wonder that, for one whose broken childhood had taught her “happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain”, her adult life has become one of “unbroken tranquillity”. Elizabeth-Jane, now happily married and comfortable, is “forced to class herself among the fortunate”. Henchard’s journey from disreputable drunk to “man of character” is inextricably linked to his growing appreciation/love of Elizabeth-Jane.īy the end, Henchard is dead. Throughout the novel, we are reminded of her thoughtfulness and intelligence. We see Casterbridge through Elizabeth-Jane’s eyes. Through her and the other women in the novel, Hardy critiques the male worldview. The experience so exhausted Hardy that he. He was a native of Dorset, England, and the author of fourteen novels, eight volumes of poetry, and three volumes of short stories. Upon its first appearance in 1895, Thomas Hardy' s Jude the Obscure shocked Victorian critics and readers with a frank depiction of sexuality and an unbridled indictment of the institutions of marriage, education, and religion, reportedly causing one Angli-can bishop to order the book publicly burned. In The Mayor of Casterbridge, he created a strong woman in Henchard’s illegitimate stepdaughter, Elizabeth-Jane, who I believe is the real protagonist. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy was published in 1895. Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was an English writer in the Victorian Realist tradition. The meaning of 'obscure' in the title of Thomas Hardys Jude the Oscure has been discussed previously on this site, but what about the name Jude Earlier versions of the manuscript had the main characters name as Jack, a much more common English name.

Jude thomas hardy