Attempted Construction Of Master Morality In Jude The Obscure

Jude the Obscure,Thomas Hardy's?1840-1928?last novel,was published in 1895.Set in the late Victorian Britain,the novel has primarily presented Victorian moral conflicts and predicament.While Christian morality works as universal morality that time,the protagonists of the novel,Jude,Sue and Phillotson awake from their past blindness to Christian discipline during their experience of stern reality.Yet there's not an alternative value system and therefore,they have no choice but to start the new values based on their examination of the conflicts between their instinctive passion and the dogmas.As far as Hardy is concerned,he conceives literature as a moral interpretation of life.And paganism associated with Ancient Greece is for him the source of ideal aesthetics,or ideal ethics,and vice verse.Paganism in appeal for a worship of life and fulfillment of individuals,is an alternative to the old civilization,or Christianity in his works.Jude the Obscure is Hardy's aesthetic fulfillment of a moral mission.The story is exactly progressing in accord with the protagonists'process of questioning the justification of Christian morality along with discovery of themselves,then figuring out the absurdity of the fallacious Christian morality,and attempting to found a new value system where humanity is free.As a contemporary of Hardy,Friedrich Nietzsche?1844-1900?in the late 19^th century when science advance was shaking the religion,claimed the fact that“God is dead”.After that,he has been the first one to base the critique of European traditional morality on the critique of Christianity.According to him,European traditional morality is Christian morality.And Christian morality is in his opinion,a self-denial morality that life is denied by Christian scale of“good”and“evil”.Based on this,Nietzsche proposes humans are supposed to start a new system of morality different from Christian one,in which human passion is esteemed.It asks for individuals'transcendence of discipline of“good”and“evil”and humans'being the masters of their morality.Hardy and Nietzsche living in the same age,both have foreseen the collapse of Christianity and the values rooted in it.They knew people including themselves had to face the coming falling of the belief and find a way out.And protagonists Jude,Sue and Phillotson in Jude the Obscure are in no doubt pioneers in finding this spiritual exit.They try to set up another value system in favor of their righteous humanity when mainstream moral codes of conduct are modeled by Christianity in their society.This new values is by its very nature,master morality put forward by Nietzsche.This thesis studies the protagonists'constructions of a new system of value in light of Nietzsche's theory of master morality along with Hardy's paganism ideas.It is hoped to provide some help to comprehend the necessity and exploration of the characters'behaviors in both a historical and philosophical context.The thesis firstly analyzes the background culture of the novel and its effects on the characters'values.Then it traces the protagonists'pace from being blind to the old civilization to awakening from it or reinforcing their instinctive passion.In the last chapter,the results of the three characters'attempted constructions of a new value system are presented and the reasons leading to the results are analyzed.The results of the study show that the three characters'construction of the new values is a construction of master morality,and it's a process of what Nietzsche calls“self-overcoming”.By presenting the resistance,Hardy has posed a criticism of his society and his wish to refer paganism as an ideal alternative ethics to Christian morality is fulfilled by making Jude the hero who has triumphed in himself over the old civilization.