[Hardy-l] Re: Hardy-l Digest, Vol 23, Issue 2

[ANN WHITLOCK]

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2007 11:33:49 +0100
From: " Jackie Wilkinson" 
Subject: [Hardy-l] Father Time
To: 
Message-ID: <000001c7d74c$1c8a9900$0200a8c0 at MAXDATA52DBD74>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I would appreciate the forum's views on Father Time in 'Jude the Obscure'.
He is unlike anything else in Hardy's fiction being symbol rather than human
being, mask rather than reality, metaphor rather than character. I just
wondered how you all see him/
All the best,
Jacky Wilkinson 
  
-----Original Message-----
From: hardy-l-bounces at coyote.csusm.edu
[mailto:hardy-l-bounces at coyote.csusm.edu] On Behalf Of Will Stevens
Sent: 05 August 2007 15:01
To: hardy-l at coyote.csusm.edu
Subject: RE: [Hardy-l] Father Time

It would be interesting to know why you see him as a symbol/metaphor, rather
than as a character. Or, rather, why he's _more_ a symbol/metaphor than many
other characters in Hardy, for like many novelists of his time, Hardy quite
often makes his characters, to some extent at least, personify abstract
qualities. (Think of Gabriel Oak, whose very name is a give-away - or,
indeed, Jude or Sue themselves.)

Will


He seems to me to act as a kind of conscience and asks very difficult moral questions. 
  When Sue and he are looking for lodgings, (Part Sixth Chapter 1) he makes a chilling remark which foreshadows the tragedy of the killing of himself and the other children: 
  "I ought not to be born, said the boy with misgiving"
   
  He receives no answer.
   
  Father Time and Sue have an exchange ( Part Sixth Chapter 2) which reminds me of the conversation between Tess and  Abraham about the inievitable consequences of being born on a blighted star,  just before the death of Prince. 
  The difference between him and Father Time is that Abraham does not blame human actions, but the inevitability of pre ordained fate.
   
  Father Time seems to combine the insight of adult life and the painful clarity of childish candour.
   
  “’Tis because of us children, too, isn’t it, that you can’t get a good lodging?”
  “Well—people do object to children sometimes.”
  “Then if children make so much trouble, why do people have ’em?”
  “Oh—because it is a law of nature.”
  “But we don’t ask to be born?”
  “No indeed.”
   
  After the conversationbetween FT and Sue his assesment of their situation is simple, stark and realistic,
   
  "He got up, and went away into the closet adjoining her room, in which a bed had been spread on the floor. There she heard him say: “If we children was gone there’d be no trouble at all!”
   
  Mybe he is called Father Time in the same way as in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night when the Clown says, And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges?
   
  I think if he were a metaphorical character the terrible message he leaves behind would be easier to bear.  I remember that the first time I read Jude many years ago I threw the book down at that point and did not pick it up again for a week.
   
  Ann Whitlock
  

 


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://coyote.csusm.edu/pipermail/hardy-l/attachments/20070806/b4243d7e/attachment-0001.html