Hey, Jude

Don't make it bad. Take a sad song, and make it better. Yes, pretty much the whole time I read Jude the Obscure, I had that song in my head. Oh, well. I have very conflicted feelings about Thomas Hardy (though I did like Tess of the D’Urbervilles, though it was triggering).

I was actually grooving with this one for awhile. It was moving along, and it was pretty interesting. Sue started out as a really interesting character, but by the end I pretty much hated her. Still, at first I was really enjoying the complexity of her relationship with Jude, and enjoying that they both had passions and intellectual lives that were their own. While some of the issues it explores are timeless/still relevant, it is very much of a specific historical moment, in terms of gender roles and divorce. It addresses a time of immense, albeit subtle/suppressed upheaval; well, I guess verge of upheaval.

The novel explores a number of issues, but the main guiding issue is the idea that "the word kills," referring to societal norms, law, values, and roles, as well as religion and religious believes. Sue particularly chafes under these words, but Jude is the one who ultimately is crushed. That said, near the end I really just wanted to knock Sue over the head.

Arabella is a bit of an interesting character as well. She would be interesting for a re-write from her perspective. I didn't exactly like her, but she is fascinating, and I think we're likely more sympathetic to her than Hardy's contemporaries were.

Fortunately, I did not have Meg Manning's challenge when I read The Sun Also Rises. Mind you, I'm not a Hemingway fan (you can tell I grabbed both of these while wondering in the library and picking books that were close together alphabetically speaking), and this didn't change my mind. But I found it overall painless, despite my lack of interest in bull fights. I was struck by how much time the characters spent drunk, and how understanding and relating to being drunk likely would make the book make more sense. Oh, well.