Three Unhealthy Family Generations in 'Jude the Obscure'.

 Academic Information :

Name : Dangar Rinkal Nathabhai

Roll no.20

Enrollment no.4049206420220007

Batch : M.A (2022-24)

Paper Name : Literature of the Victorians 

Paper code : 22395

Paper no.104

Topic : Three Unhealthy Family Generations in    'Jude the Obscure'

Submitted to : S.B.Gardi Department of English M.K.U Bhavnagar 

Submitted on : 07/11/2022

Three Unhealthy Family Generations in 'Jude the Obscure'.

As we are of the Psychology that many factors like Cultural,Social,Education are responsible to the behavior of a person or it shapes the personality.

Here in the novel there is the only reason for mental instability in characters because they are having unhealthy family relations and it has developed the chain of three generations.

Let's have an introduction of the writer of 'Jude the Obscure'

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840 in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England. He was an excellent satirist, English Novelist and Poet. 

Like many writers of the late nineteenth century, Thomas Hardy was continually striving towards understanding the human condition with a particular interest in Psychology.

Many of his novels explore a wide range of aspects of the human mind and emotions.

'Jude the Obscure' Novel Introduction 

• Jude the Obscure is a novel written by Thomas Hardy,published in 1895, Hardy had written about relationships and how outer Norms can affect an Individual.

• Thomas Hardy's last finished novel, Jude the Obscure, tells the story of Jude Fawley, a working-class man who dreams of becoming a scholar, and of his doomed relationships with the seductive Arabella Donn and the true love of his life, Sue Bridehead.

• Of Course that novel is about love, marriage and relationships but it seems devoid of a stable family,we can find that the root of all of Jude's problems is that he is surrounded too much by the specters of his family.

Introduction of Characters of the Novel

• Jude Frawley

The novel's protagonist, a poor orphan who is raised by his great-aunt after his parents divorced and died. Jude dreams of attending the university at Christminister, but he fails to be accepted because of his working class background. He is a skilled stonemason and a kindly soul who cannot hurt any living thing. 

Jude's "fatal flaw" is his weakness regarding alcohol and women, and he allows his marriage to Arabella, even though it is unhappy, to distract himself from his dream. He shares a deep connection with his cousin Sue, but their relationship is doomed by their earlier marriages, society's disapproval, and bad luck. Jude starts out pious and religious, but by the end of his life he has grown agnostic and bitter.

• Sue Bridehead 

The novel's other protagonist and Jude's cousin. Sue's parents were divorced and she was raised in London and Christminster. She is an extremely intelligent woman who rejects Christianity and flirts with paganism, despite working as a religious artist and then teacher. Sue is often described as "ethereal" and "bodiless" and she generally lacks sexual passion, especially compared to Jude. Sue marries Phillotson as a kind of rebuke to Jude for his own marriage to Arabella, and is then repulsed by Phillotson as a husband. She is portrayed as inconsistent and emotional, often changing her mind abruptly, but she develops a strong relationship and love with Jude. 

Though she starts out nonreligious, the death of her children drives Sue to a harsh, legalistic version of Christianity as she believes she is being punished for her earlier rebellion against Christianity, and she returns to Phillotson even though she never ceases to love Jude.

• Arabella Donn

Jude's first wife, a vain, sensual woman who is the daughter of a pig farmer. She decides to marry Jude and so tricks him into marrying her by pretending to be pregnant. Arabella sees marriage as a kind of entrapment and as a source of financial security, and she uses whatever means necessary to get what she wants. After Jude fails to provide for her, Arabella goes to Australia and takes a new husband there. She is often contrasted with the pure, intellectual Sue, as Arabella is associated with alcohol and sexual pleasure. When she wants Jude back she gets him drunk and forces him to marry her, and when he dies (or even just before) she immediately starts seeking a new husband.

• Richard Phillotson

Jude's schoolmaster at Marygreen who moves to

Christminster and fails to be accepted at the university there. Phillotson remains as a teacher, and he later hires Sue and falls in love with her. They marry, but Sue finds she cannot live with Phillotson as a husband. Though Phillotson is a conservative man, he finds that letting Sue leave him feels like the most moral decision, and he sticks by it even when he is punished by society for his disgrace and loses his job and respectability. Phillotson is a kindly, ethical man, but Sue's lack of love for him causes him great torment.

Little Father Time 

Jude's son with Arabella, he was born in Australia and sent to England to live with Jude years later. The boy was never named or given love, and his nickname is "Little Father Time" because he seems old beyond his years. Jude and Sue christen him as "Jude," but his old nickname sticks. Little Father Time is a world-weary, depressed child who lacks any curiosity or joy. He is portrayed as a result of the divorce, lovelessness, and bad luck in his life, and in this he acts as a symbol as well as a character. Little Father Time ultimately takes Sue's depressed words to heart and kills himself and Sue's two children in order to try to free Sue and Jude from their burdens.

These are the characters of the novel who are affecting each other's behavior and developing obscurity.

Three Unhealthy Family Generations in 'Jude the Obscure'

There are three generations which are being developed with the plot of the novel.

• Parents of Jude and Sue,

• Jude and Sue and 

• The Little Father Time and his Siblings

1.As I have introduced characters of the novel that Jude and Sue's parents are siblings and how their life made them obscure that both Jude's father and Sue's mother were been separated from their life partner is affecting their children's lives that Sue's mother left her husband and Jude's mother was no longer alive.

         When the novel begins Jude and Sue's father's are also dead but that sequence is affecting protagonists.

2.When there are two different protagonist that Jude is Religious and Sue is atheist but at the end they are converting their beliefs.They both live together without marriage which created difficulty for themselves and their children because Sue loved Jude though she didn't married him and returned to him with the permission of her husband.

As they were mentally unstable that they won't be able to deal with their financial crises, people who were against of their relationship and also in inspiring their own children also.

Now the third one is the generation which got a disastrous result of Unhealthy Family Relationships.

Little Father Time 

 

Little Father Time lacks personality except as an excessively morbid, unexcitable child, but when he kills himself and Sue's children it is the climax of the novel. As a symbol, Little Father Time represents the depression and amorality that Hardy sees as the inevitable result of the injustices in his society. Father Time is driven to despair by how poorly Jude and Sue are treated for being unmarried, and by his lack of love from Arabella and her parents. After Little Father Time's death, the doctor actually diagnoses his murder-suicide as "in his nature" and "the beginning of the coming universal wish not to live." 

In this way Hardy horrifies his readers and makes his social critiques seem that much more urgent, implying that the injustices of his generation will lead to tragedy in the next.

Conclusion : That is how, Unhealthy Family Generations became dangerous for the growth of mental health of characters which ended with the death of innocent children,that how disastrous it can be.