Jude the Obscure: Color Illustrated, Formatted for E-Readers
Thomas Hardy, Leonardo
eBook
(HMDS printing press, Aug. 30, 2015)
How is this book unique? Formatted for E-Readers, Unabridged & Original version. You will find it much more comfortable to read on your device/app. Easy on your eyes.Includes: 15 Colored Illustrations and BiographyJude the Obscure, the last completed of Thomas Hardy's novels, began as a magazine serial in December 1894 and was first published in book form in 1895. Its protagonist, Jude Fawley, is a working-class young man, a stonemason, who dreams of becoming a scholar. The other main character is his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is also his central love interest. The novel is concerned in particular with issues of class, education, religion and marriage.The novel tells the story of Jude Fawley, who lives in a village in southern England (part of Thomas Hardy's fictional Wessex), who yearns to be a scholar at "Christminster", a city modelled on Oxford. As a youth, Jude teaches himself Classical Greek and Latin in his spare time, while working first in his great-aunt's bakery, with the hope of entering university. But before he can try to do this the naĂŻve Jude is seduced by Arabella Donn, a rather coarse and superficial local girl who traps him into marriage by pretending to be pregnant. The marriage is a failure, and they separate by mutual agreement, and Arabella later emigrates to Australia, where she enters into a bigamous marriage. By this time, Jude has abandoned his classical studies.Beside herself with grief and blaming herself for "Little Father Time"'s actions, Sue turns to the church that she has rebelled against and comes to believe that the children's deaths were divine retribution for her relationship with Jude. Although horrified at the thought of resuming her marriage with Phillotson, she becomes convinced that, for religious reasons, she should never have left him. Arabella discovers Sue's feelings and informs Phillotson, who soon proposes they remarry. This results in Sue leaving Jude once again for Phillotson. Jude is devastated and remarries Arabella after she plies him with alcohol to once again trick him into marriage.After one final, desperate visit to Sue in freezing weather, Jude becomes seriously ill and dies within the year. It is revealed that Sue has grown "staid and worn" with Phillotson. Arabella fails to mourn Jude's passing, instead setting the stage to ensnare her next suitor.The events of Jude the Obscure occur over a 19-year period, but no dates are specifically given in the novel.[note 1] Aged 11 at the beginning of the novel, by the time of his death, Jude seems much older than his thirty years, for he has experienced so much disappointment and grief in his total life experience. It would seem that his burdens exceeded his sheer ability to survive, much less to triumph.