Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, Productively

Abstract

Critics often read Thomas Hardy’s novel Jude the Obscure as the individualist tragedy of Jude Fawley, whose hard work and sympathetic heart are not enough to earn him respect, success, happiness, love, or much of anything else. As illuminating as such individualist approaches are, they also take Hardy’s narrative and thematic intentions to a dead end.

I would like the read Jude against the grain of Hardy-ism by rethinking traditional assumptions that the novel is premised on a dialectic between natural and social forces of change and the will of the individual. Such readings perpetuate a humanist focus on the value and importance of individual subjects to at least attempt to shape and mold their own identities. The novel reads much more clearly as a purely productive assemblage of bodies that, in line with Hardy’s vision of Jude’s world, does not actually privilege human subjectivity over other life forms and expressions. In my reading, Jude characterizes itself not by the breakdown of its characters beneath “malignant stars,” but by its exaltation of the environment, of nonhuman subjectivity.

Discipline: English (Honours)

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Daniel Martin