Jude the Obscure and Social Darwinism Essay -- Jude Obscure

Jude the unobtrusive and Social Darwinism Jude the Obscure is indeed a lesson in criminalty and hopelessness the inevitable by-products of Social Darwinism. The main characters of the book are controlled by fates make arm of extraordinary muscular power(1), weakly resisting the influence of their avow sexuality, and of society and nature around them. Judes world is one in which single the fittest survive, and he is clearly not equipped to number amongst the fittest. In memory with the strong Darwinian undercurrents that run through the book, a kind of instinctive selection ensures that Judes offspring do not survive to procreate either. Their ending by murder and suicide is but one of many relentless instances of cruelty in the novel, and there are numerous others (such as the cruel revelation that Latin is not merely decodable into English, which shatters Judes naive pretensions about instruction that language and Judes rejected application for university entrance, without even having the opportunity to be tried and true and Sues reversal of each her ideals and decisions upon the death of her children, which she sees as some sort of comprehend warning, and her subsequent return to Phillotson, to name but a few). Hardys view of all this cruelty is related with a grim irony that is evident in Judes death scene. While the festival celebrations of the world outside continue in oblivious gaiety, Jude himself quotes morbid poetry Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived. ( squall)(2) This ironic comment on lifes cruelty continues at Judes funeral Judes aspirations to university education were never realised, yet as ... ...s they are at the mercy of the indifferent forces that check their behaviour and their relations with others(5). This manipulation by fate, and the resulting disparity between forgiving goals and what is actually achieved, mean that the lesson taught in J ude the Obscure is very much one of the cruelty of nature and society. End Notes (1) Hardy, Thomas, Jude the Obscure, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985, p. 41 (I.-vii). (2) Ibid., p. 426 (VI.-xi). (3) Ibid., p. 430 (VI.-xi). (4) Ibid., p. 65 (I.-x). (5) Abrams, M. H., ed., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, sixth ed., Vol. 2., Norton, New York, 1993, p. 1692. Bibliography Abrams, M. H., ed., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 6th ed., Vol. 2., Norton, New York, 1993. Hardy, Thomas, Jude the Obscure, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1985.