So Does Obscure Mean Wretched?

I had read that Jude the Obscure was the most shocking and controversial of Hardy’s novels. Then I found in the last couple of weeks that it wasn’t at all what I was expecting. (Dreading?) I guess I forgot all these years that the people shocked by it were Victorians, who were, as we know, somewhat easily shocked. Yes, Jude slowly rejects the Christianity of his youth. Yes, he gets divorced, falls in love with another woman and entices her away from her marriage, has sex once with his ex for old times’ sake, has a little trouble understanding why his fiancé is upset about that, and . . . OK, you get the idea. Yes, clearly Silas and Eulalia were scandalized. And I would have hated it forty years ago, too. But at this point it seems to me that the story is the kind of story that happens in real life and that Jude is just a person that I might know. 

I noted in a post back in May that I’ve learned to be less judgmental even about fictional characters. And I find myself less judgmental about authors. Hardy had an admirable talent for writing compelling fiction, and in Jude it seems to me he finally became completely honest with the public about his doubts – doubts about the Church, doubts about the Bible, doubts about society’s judgment on people who didn’t fit the mold (Jude loses his job as a manual laborer because of his marriage to a divorced woman, and Sue’s first husband loses his teaching position because he lets his adulterous wife have a divorce instead of teaching her a lesson and making her stay). And it’s not like he can’t see anything right about the Church or faith or social norms, either. So since he was so forthright and so able to outline his characters’ positions sympathetically and so willingly to look at both sides of all issues, I was able to go along with him, agreeing sometimes, disagreeing at other times (probably more often), but respecting him always. I will warn you, though, any of you who think you might read Jude the Obscure based on this short review, that it is probably the saddest book I’ve ever read, with one unforgettably, gut-wrenchingly tragic scene.

By the way, I don’t think even Hardy had sympathy for his character Arabella, so is it all right if I’m a little judgmental about her?