Divorce/marrige and symbolism in Jude the obscure - Essay Example

The novel captivates numerous themes which are inextricably inter-related throughout the plot of the novel. The themes of the novel, also raise much controversy precisely, the challenge to the institutions like marriage and Christianity against the orthodox and conservative Victorian era raise the criticism to a large extent. Also, the author did not set back to write and criticize against the values related to bourgeois life style like marriage through the display of star-crossed lovers Jude and Sue who attempt to deny and launch protest against the set conventions and social dogmas that actually paved their miserable consequence at the end.

At the same time, the confinement of the higher education within the reach of the socially and economically higher class in the Victorian era is attacked vehemently through this novel. Interpretation of the Theme of Marriage and Divorce in the Novel “Jude the Obscure” Role of fate and destiny is an inevitable element in the novels of Hardy. The novel, “Jude the Obscure” is not an exception in this regard. . Sue is entrapped by the conservative convention pertaining to marriage in the Victorian era but her desire and bodily longing for Jude is a symbol where she wants to break free the set conventions pertaining to the revered institution called marriage in the Victorian society.

With Jude the idea is that he wants to join church disdained from the unproductive and unhappy marriage and a futile relation with Sue but feels very unworthy for the place as he is never able to come out of the trap for his bodily desire for Sue. Through the unhappy marriage of Jude and Sue and the filial love of Sue and Jude, Hardy tried to challenge the conventional institutions of marriage and the taboo and the stigma related with the extra-marital affair, physical love and divorce prevailing in the Victorian era through the portrayal of the constant physical desire and conflict of Sue and Jude for their love of spirit and flesh in the novel.

Symbols of Jude and Sue in the Novel “Jude the Obscure” Hardy’s novels are pervaded by the symbolism and in the novel “Jude the Obscure”; the symbols of Christminster and Little Father Time are very prominent. But apart from these, even the major characters like Jude and Sue also do not escape the purview of symbolism in the text. Jude stands for the proletariat class or person from the working-class who aspire to enter the university campus but fails because of his economic and social limitations.

Jude stands for the aspiration that breaks the narrow shackles of the Victorian era thereby making education available for the mass irrespective of the barrier of the class and the economic standard. However, the aspiration for Jude could not materialise