Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section. His novel The Woodlanders, for instance, tackled the unfairness of divorce law at the time. For a Hardy novel, that is an unusually happy ending, and it is one without judgment on her as a woman or as a lowly-born illegitimate child – unusual for Victorian Britain. Thomas Hardy, despite his own problematic relationships with women, was a champion of women’s rights. He is inspired by the ambitions of the town schoolmaster, Richard Phillotson, who left for Christminster when Jude was a child. La realidad del fin (o de la ausencia) del amor en el matrimonio, que la sociedad obvia, es un tema recurrente en Jude el oscuro. She retains a sense of wonder that, for one whose broken childhood had taught her “happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain”, her adult life has become one of “unbroken tranquillity”. Jude Fawley dreams of studying at the university in Christminster, but his background as an orphan raised by his working-class aunt leads him instead into a career as a stonemason.

Elizabeth-Jane, now happily married and comfortable, is “forced to class herself among the fortunate”. Henchard’s journey from disreputable drunk to “man of character” is inextricably linked to his growing appreciation/love of Elizabeth-Jane.īy the end, Henchard is dead. Throughout the novel, we are reminded of her thoughtfulness and intelligence. We see Casterbridge through Elizabeth-Jane’s eyes. Jude the Obscure is the last of Thomas Hardys novels, begun as a magazine serial and first published in book form in 1895. Through her and the other women in the novel, Hardy critiques the male worldview. In The Mayor of Casterbridge, he created a strong woman in Henchard’s illegitimate stepdaughter, Elizabeth-Jane, who I believe is the real protagonist.

Jude thomas hardy