Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (snow like ashes .txt) 📕
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Jude the Obscure was first published in its complete form in 1895, just after finishing its serial run in Harper’s Magazine. At the time, its unconventional and somewhat scandalous themes earned it widespread criticism and condemnation. In the 1912 “Wessex Edition,” Hardy appended a postscript to the book’s preface in which he stated that the outrage ultimately abated with no lingering effect other than “completely curing me of further interest in novel-writing.” Indeed, Jude was to be Hardy’s last novel.
The story chronicles the life of Jude Fawley, an orphan boy of unremarkable birth or means, growing up in the small farming village of Marygreen in Hardy’s fictional version of Wessex, England. From an early age, Jude determines to chart the course of his life by the stars of learning and scholarship, but he very quickly discovers just how little interest the society of his time would take in the grand ambitions of a young man of so humble an origin. Without proper guidance and limited resources, his progress is slow and arduous. And when he discovers the existence of his cousin, the charming Sue Bridehead, it is nearly abandoned altogether in favor of an almost obsessive pursuit.
The novel proceeds to trace the lives of Jude and Sue as they become locked in a struggle both against themselves and the conventions of their times. Lofty ideals clash with harsh realities; grand pursuits fall prey to darker aspects of human nature. Characters are complex: at times spiteful, selfish, or self-destructive. Hardy, however, remains very subtle in his portrayal of these tragic figures and their flaws. The effect is to render them convincingly human. Ultimately, Jude is an unhappy tale of unfulfilled promise that is rarely told, and rarely told so well.
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- Author: Thomas Hardy
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“What’s that?” murmured the old woman.
“Oh, that’s the doctors in the Theatre, conferring Honorary degrees on the Duke of Hamptonshire and a lot more illustrious gents of that sort. It’s Remembrance Week, you know. The cheers come from the young men.”
“Ay; young and strong-lunged! Not like our poor boy here.”
An occasional word, as from someone making a speech, floated from the open windows of the Theatre across to this quiet corner, at which there seemed to be a smile of some sort upon the marble features of Jude; while the old, superseded, Delphin editions of Virgil and Horace, and the dog-eared Greek Testament on the neighbouring shelf, and the few other volumes of the sort that he had not parted with, roughened with stone-dust where he had been in the habit of catching them up for a few minutes between his labours, seemed to pale to a sickly cast at the sounds. The bells struck out joyously; and their reverberations travelled round the bedroom.
Arabella’s eyes removed from Jude to Mrs. Edlin. “D’ye think she will come?” she asked.
“I could not say. She swore not to see him again.”
“How is she looking?”
“Tired and miserable, poor heart. Years and years older than when you saw her last. Quite a staid, worn woman now. ’Tis the man;—she can’t stomach un, even now!”
“If Jude had been alive to see her, he would hardly have cared for her any more, perhaps.”
“That’s what we don’t know. … Didn’t he ever ask you to send for her, since he came to see her in that strange way?”
“No. Quite the contrary. I offered to send, and he said I was not to let her know how ill he was.”
“Did he forgive her?”
“Not as I know.”
“Well—poor little thing, ’tis to be believed she’s found forgiveness somewhere! She said she had found peace!”
“She may swear that on her knees to the holy cross upon her necklace till she’s hoarse, but it won’t be true!” said Arabella. “She’s never found peace since she left his arms, and never will again till she’s as he is now!”
List of IllustrationsThe words “Thither J. F.” followed by a line drawing of a hand in profile with its index finger extended to point to the right.
The word “Alleluja” rendered in stylized Gothic letters.
EndnotesWilliam Barnes. ↩
Drayton. ↩
ColophonJude the Obscure
was published in 1895 by
Thomas Hardy.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Jason Bell,
and is based on a transcription produced in 1994 by
John Hamm and Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
High Street, Oxford,
a painting completed in 1810 by
J. M. W. Turner.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
July 22, 2020, 3:18 a.m.
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