Hardy mentions in the personal critique of his work that Jude the Obscure was intended to be full of contrasts. He says, "Sue and her heathen gods set against Jude's reading Greek testement; Christminster academical, Christminster in the slums; Jude the saint, Jude the sinner...etc." The presentation of contrasting symbolic natures within Hardy's characters and various settings in antithesis results in an irony of counterpoint.
Review our definition for irony and post on the following question : In what way are these contrasts ironic?
Also, are there any more contrasts you can find in the text?
Review our definition for irony and post on the following question : In what way are these contrasts ironic?
Also, are there any more contrasts you can find in the text?
3 comments:
Thus far I have found one sriking contrast. In the pub scene in the second part, Jude recites latin for a group of scholars and underclassmen, which unearths the juxtaposition between Jude's appearance and his actual intellect. How his self-taught intelligence is not accepted as university, yet those of less intelligence who were formally taught have a shot. He also feels he is condemned to a life of entertaining the crowds in pubs. His hopes rest in becoming a clergyman through apprenticeship. It is also ironic because how the places and people are portrayed are not how they actually are and it seems nobody can tell the difference.
Hardy's plots usually talk about a woman who embodies nature and the true rural lifestyle choosing between two men of polar and set characteristics, making the wrong choice, thus resulting in a bad relationship.
However in Jude the Obscure, Jude is a strong male who represents rural lifestyle (though he tries to escape to the more modernized world).
He is forced to choose between his cousin Sue, a woman married to a schoolmaster, with some unconventional ideas and beliefs about education, and Arabella, his first wife, born and raised as a pig wench, who represents the sort of artificial ideas Hardy usually has about men. You see the artificial representation clearly in the scene played out after Jude and her wed, when she takes out her fake tail of hair, claiming merely that "every lady of position wears false hair."
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