Jude And Sue’s Tragedy In Jude The Obscure

Jude the obscure is the last novel by Thomas Hardy, one of the most famousrealist novelists in the later Victorian period in Great Britain. This book has drawngreat attention of scholars both at home and abroad because of its enduring value.There has been a great number of researches about this book since its publication in1895. As to the causes of Jude and Sue’s tragedy, they discuss them from differentangles. However, this thesis will analyze the causes of Jude and Sue’s tragedy fromsocial and cultural perspectives and holds that the external causes, such as Victorianmorality, educational value and patriarchism, together with the protagonists’ personalflaws lead to their tragedy.The thesis believes that Jude and Sue are real tragical characters who strugglefor their noble dreams with courage but fail at last. The thesis analyzes the externaland internal causes of the two protagonists’ tragedy and hopes to explore thefar-reaching significance of this book.Besides the introduction and the conclusion, this thesis falls into three chapters.The first chapter includes two parts. The first part introduces the social backgroundof Jude and Sue’s tragedy. It presents morality, education value and the conditions of women in the Victorian world. The second part goes further to put out how Jude andSue’s tragedy is related to the Victorian Society. The second chapter discusses thecauses of Jude’s tragedy. In this chapter, the first part focuses on Jude’s college dreamand curate dream and the causes of his failure on both. How his failure causes histragedy is also discussed. The main reason of the failure of Jude’s college dream is hissocial status, and Victorian morality is the important cause of the failure of his curatedream. The second part discusses Jude’s love tragedy. The Victorian morality givesgreat pressure on his love affair and it finally destroys it. The third part discusses Jude’spersonal flaws and how they play a part in his tragedy. The discussion of the causes ofSue’s tragedy is the content of the third chapter. In the first part, women’s victimidentity in Victorian society will be introduced firstly, then the tragedy of Sue as awoman will be discussed; the second part discusses the tragedy of Sue as a new woman.As a woman, Sue must obey the Victorian morality and as a “New Woman,” her pursuitdisobeys the requirements of Victorian period. All these, together with Sue’s personalflaws discussed in the third part, cause Sue’s tragedy.In conclusion, this thesis believes that Victorian morality, educational value,patriarchism in England at that time and the personal flaws of Jude and Sue togetherlead to their tragedy. Through this study, this thesis explores the far-reaching value ofthis novel concerning social and personal problem that affect people’s life and fate.