[hardy-l] RE: Hardy-l Digest, Vol 42, Issue 3

[Pauline Guerin]

 Arvind

 

Yes Jude the Obscure is a great book, and is full of issues and questions
about where Hardy may have been coming from.  It's a very complicated story
in a lot of ways, and the debates on this forum have been full and many.  

The world was a greatly changing place at the time the book was written, and
no more so than England and English life.  It is argued that Sue Bridehead
was struggling to be a 'New Woman', a woman who was breaking free of
domestic ties, and finding a life for herself, but the fact that Sue is
struggling suggests that life for  a New Woman was difficult indeed.   

There is also the argument that to live a life as man and wife without
proper marriage would eventually destroy society as we know it, this may or
may not be the case, and there are many scholars on this forum who would
disagree,(which is what makes it so rich) but ultimately you can only take
the text and decide for yourself what you think.    One of the biggest
debates held on the forum (to my knowledge anyway) has been the one about
Father Time and what he represents.  For example, does he literally
represent time, or sign of the times, or even future time?   Could it be
that he represents what may happen given time?  Or is time not relevant at
all?

 

Good luck with Far From the Madding Crowd, it's a great book

 

Pauline


 
I can understand the story but then there are many things that I simply fail
to understand because of the cultural, historical and geographical
background.a
 
 




















le stuck on an idea then they can be useful, as
 can the character analyses, which takes some of the hard work out of
reading
 these novels.
 
 
 
My personal advise is to use them, read and digest them, and then make up
 your own mind. You can never beat reading and analysing the actual text,
 after all that is what it's all about.
 
 
 
Kind regards





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