On Modernity In Hardy's Jude The Obscure

Thomas Hardy is a literary giant whose writing career spanned two centuries. He published nearly all his fiction in the 19th century, and then turned away from fiction to poetry in the 20th century mainly due to the fierce attack that befell him for the untraditional themes he daringly revealed in his last novel—Jude the Obscure.Hardy's fiction has had a strong appeal for readers for more than one century, and it is still eagerly read today. Readers are attracted by his unique descriptions of the scenery in the Wessex countryside, and the detailed accounts of the daily goings-on in that region. At the same time, his works draw increasing attention from critics, and provoke among them much passionate advocacy and opposition. Most critics classify Hardy as a Victorian writer, a realist, and they have paid much attention to his"pessimism"and"fatalism". However, Hardy transcends narrow literary or historical definitions of the era he lived through. Somewhere on the shadow-line between nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, he is a writer who describes an old-fashioned world with a modern sensibility. The modernity reflected in Hardy's works, in his last novel—Jude especially, is something that deserves more discussion.In this thesis the author makes a thorough analysis of the subject matter of Jude, writing techniques that Hardy adopts and the historical factors that account for modernity. Through this analysis the author points out that by writing Jude, a book with characteristics of modern novels, Hardy serves as a bridge to the twentieth-century literature.This thesis embraces three chapters, dealing respectively with different aspects of modernity in Jude, and it also explains the historical factors that lead to Hardy's affinity with modern writers.The first chapter presents a detailed study of the subject matter of the novel and illustrate how modernity is reflected in the way the main characters are created. All through the novel Jude roams restlessly in different places in order to achieve his dreamlike goals, but he fails to find either a community or a place that he belongs to.