Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism | Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy - Richard Benvenuto (essay date 1970)

Richard Benvenuto (essay date 1970)

SOURCE: "Modes of Perception: The Will to Live in Jude the Obscure", in Studies in the Novel, Vol . 11, No. 1, 1970, pp. 31-41.

[In the following essay, Benvenuto observes two differing modes of perception in Jude the Obscure: an objective, amoral mode that is indifferent to humanity and Jude's idealist, personalizing mode wherein lies the stonecutter's desire to live.]

The Fury that greeted the first appearance of Jude the Obscure has long since subsided, yet we are no closer than its reviewers were to an agreement upon Hardy's intent in the novel or the caliber of his performance in it. Jude is not an especially difficult novel; it continues to divide its readers, however, because it imposes upon them what are, by Victorian standards, rigorous and unusual demands. Until the final chapters of Jude, Hardy commits himself and the reader to the life...

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