SOURCE: "Jude the Obscure: A Psychoanalytic Study", in University of Hartford: Studies in Literature, Vol. 13, No. 1, 1981, pp. 78-90.

[In the following essay, Edwards and Edwards interpret the unconscious motivations of Jude, arguing that he "fails ultimately because he is too rational and too controlled."]

When Thomas Hardy wrote Jude the Obscure, he hoped that the novel would be "cathartic," but it isn't. Despite the fact that Jude becomes increasingly rational and, in some important ways, comes to know himself, the ending offers no consolation, no purgation. Instead, it fizzles out before Jude can discover answers to the questions which baffle him. So the elevation of feeling which accompanies Oedipus's discovery of the awful truth is replaced, in Jude the Obscure, with depression.

Attempts to explain Jude's string of failures and, consequently, the depressing ending, generally focus on Jude's passion or on what Hardy himself called "the opposing environment." Both are overwhelming and destructive, many critics maintain; both practically guarantee that Jude will fail. But in reality Jude escapes from his environment repeatedly; he leaves Marygreen, leaves Christminster, leaves Melchester, leaves Shaston, and leaves Aldbrickham. And he is by no means the victim of his passion. In fact, the very opposite is true. Jude fails ultimately because he is too rational and too controlled.

Of course the opposing environment is important. Victorian morality, rigid divorce laws, Jude's poverty, family background, and rules governing entrance to Christminster all contribute something to Jude's unhappiness. And Jude does have several outbursts which seem to be the expression of emotion. He gets drunk, fornicates, and tries to commit suicide. But drinking is Jude's defense against his real feelings; fornication with Arabella is drive discharge only: it is not accompanied by tenderness or any other personal feeling; and even the attempted suicide is carried out with virtually no affect—that is, with a lack of the emotional response appropriate to the situation. In fact, Jude does little more than muse over the fact that he tried to take his own life.

Of course Jude has other outbursts. For example, he is fervent when he addresses the crowd on Remembrance Day (392-94) and angry when he recites the Nicene Creed in a bar (142-45) [page numbers refer to the An niversary edition of Jude the Obscure, 1920]. But such outbursts should not be confused with those expressions of emotion which are curative or at least therapeutic. As Oedipus demonstrates, anger and suffering can purge when they are the emotional working through of repressed thoughts and impulses. But Jude's outbursts are not authentic: they have virtually nothing to do with what Jude consciously believes prompts them. Instead, they are the result of an accumulation of memories and produce what is called, in psychoanalytic terms, "flooding in the ideational field." As such they are defense mechanisms rather than healthy expressions of feeling. Consequently, these outbursts leave Jude frustrated and depressed, but they do not subvert reason. In fact, they leave Jude free to exercise reason again and again, often to his disadvantage.

Although Jude reasons well and even assesses his position in life with extreme accuracy a number of times, he suffers a great deal, remains confused and depressed, experiences defeat frequently, and dies at an early age. Nevertheless, Hardy's readers persist in assuming that reason always works to an individual's advantage and passion to his disadvantage in the Wessex novels. Consistent with this, F. B. Pinion says [in Thomas Hardy: Art and Thought, 1977]: "Only when a person is not swayed by emotions or prejudices, when he is open to reason, is he capable of exercising freedom of choice." But Jude the Obscure illustrates that reason, like passion, can distort the truth and, furthermore, that an idea (or ideal) untainted by affect can be a prejudice. The novel also illustrates that an individual cannot make the choices that are right for him unless he is influenced by his mind and his emotions simultaneously, unless he is able to express not only his ideas (motives) but also the feelings that should accompany these ideas.

Since Jude the Obscure is a novel that Hardy began during the 80s, but published five years after Tess of the d'Vrbervilles, it is easy to understand why Hardy's readers generally assume that Jude is destroyed by passion. After all, Tess succumbs to "reveries" repeatedly. In doing so, she ceases to use reason or exert her will, she is ruled by passion, and subsequently suffers. But Jude is not Tess. He is, in fact, as ideal as she is passionate. For this reason he sees Sue as "almost an ideality" (114) and has no difficulty rationalizing his relationship with her. He calls her "a kindly star, an elevating power, a companion in Anglican worship, a tender friend" (105). He is the victim of reason, of his ability to deal rationally with what is essentially a matter of passion.

There can be no doubt that Jude is attracted to Sue physically. He himself knows that his interest in her is "unmistakably of a sexual kind" (114). But this does not mean that Jude is overwhelmed by lust or even that his feeling for Sue is strong and healthy. In fact, Jude believes that his passion is "unauthorized" and requires a "cure" (114). He also describes his developing interest in Sue as "immoral" (114). As a result, he checks his impulses. For long periods of time he abstains entirely from sex. His interest in Sue continues to be physical, but his control is so strict and his conscience so severe that he does not act on his instincts. Even during those periods when they do make love, Jude continues to desire Sue not because he is so passionate but because she with-holds herself even during love-making and, as a result, never satisfies him.

Why, then, does Jude tolerate Sue? To begin with, she is an intelligent, attractive, and unique person. At the same time she is very much like Jude. Detecting this, Phillotson says: '"They seem to be one person split in two!'" (276). An d later the narrator observes that their "complete mutual understanding, in which every glance and movement was as effectual as speech for conveying intelligence between them, made them almost the two parts of a single whole" (352). But both the narrator and Phillotson fail to observe that Jude does not distinguish mentally between the two halves, between Sue and himself. In fact, Sue's wishes become his. At one point he tells her that they will marry whenever she chooses (331) and, later, says: '"Still, anything that pleases you will please me'" (343). In brief, Jude does not distinguish clearly between himself and the object of his love. He must, therefore, tolerate her indifference and cruelty since to reject her is to reject a portion of himself.

Jude's failure to distinguish sharply between himself and Sue suggests that his love for her is essentially narcissistic. This is reinforced in the novel in a number of ways. To begin with, Jude loves a cousin rather than someone who is in no way like him. Secondly, even when he barely knows her, he dreads being separated from her: "A cold sweat overspread Jude at the news that she was going away" (116). Fearful of losing a part of himself, he experiences anxiety. Finally, like the typical narcissist, he relies heavily on vision, sustains a belief in its power, and seeks to control his environment by means of sight.

Jude's reliance on sight is especially obvious in his relationship with Sue. Initially he prefers only to look at her, "to gain a further view of her" (106). In fact, he is "glad" that he can look at her without being detected, so he decides that "To see her, and to be himself unseen and unknown, was enough for him at present" (106). Of course he confronts her eventually, but he continues to watch her from a distance at times, from a window for example (247-48). Furthermore, even after his relationship with her has developed considerably, "his ardent affection for her" burns, significantly, "in his eyes" (284).

Why does Jude rely so heavily on seeing? The answer to this question is complicated. To begin with, Jude is ambivalent about sex. He wants sexual intercourse because his abstinence creates a strong need; however, because sex makes him feel disgusted, guilty, and ashamed, he also does not want it. He adjusts to this ambivalence by selecting Sue, a sexless woman he regards as "bodiless" (313), "almost a divinity" (174), and "a sort of fay, or sprite—not a woman" (426). But his natural desire to have sex asserts itself despite Sue's lack of physicality. As a result, Jude needs a substitute for sex. As the following passage illustrates, this substitute is seeing:

Jude left in the afternoon, hopelessly unhappy. But he had seen her, and sat with her. Such intercourse as that would have to content him for the remainder of his life. The lesson of renunciation it was proper that he, as a parish priest, should learn (190).

Acting in character, Jude is ready, perhaps even eager, to be celibate and to accept looking at Sue as the only "intercourse" he will have for the rest of his life.

Jude's reliance on sight is stressed often in the novel. He reads a great deal, strains his eyes, sees Arabella initially with his "intellectual eye" (46), and climbs a tower to gaze at Christminster, the city of his dreams. Furthermore, as a result of gazing at various objects, he derives what is called, in psychoanalytic terms, "libidinous gratification." Thus even before he sees Sue, he sees Christminster and reacts in the following way:

He was getting so romantically attached to Christminster that, like a young lover alluding to his mistress, he felt bashful at mentioning its name again (22).

His response to Christminster is similar to his response to Sue. Not surprisingly, then, Jude sees a halo above Christminster and above Sue's photograph when he looks at them. Both the city and the woman are idealized—even spiritualized—by young Jude. But Sue is a female nevertheless and, as an old man tells Jude, '"there's wenches in the streets [of Christminster] o'nights'" (23). So Jude will have to work hard to accomplish what he accomplished during the early stages of his affair with Arabella when he kept "his impassioned doings a secret almost from himself (54).

He tries and he succeeds. Using idealization and rationalization, he is able to tolerate anticipated "instinctual experience." In fact, he is able to control all feelings to the extent that control itself becomes his problem. Eventually he is unable to express feelings which are appropriate to a given situation or person. He cannot resent Arabella (223, 473). He wants to "annihilate" his rival Phillotson but, the narrator says, "his action did not respond for a moment to his animal instinct" (196). In brief, Jude is eventually so rational, so controlled, that he responds without affect. Governed exclusively by reason, he decides logically and, it seems, inevitably, to let himself die. In doing so, he does what at one level he wanted to do all the while. As D. H. Lawrence observed, "That was his obsession. That was his craving: to have nothing to do with his own life."

And yet, in one sense, Jude, like Oedipus, approaches the truth about himself more and more closely as the novel progresses. In fact, Hardy's narrator emphasizes that in a number of ways. He cites Jude's rally or recovery after each setback and, more important, records Jude's "mental estimates" of himself and his situation in life. In fact, the novel is centered on a series of "estimates" which are more accurate, more nearly founded on fact and the eventual revealed truth, man are Oedipus's appraisals of his own condition. For example, at the end of Part Fifth, Jude acknowledges that he will never enter Christminster but admits, too, that the university remains "the centre of the universe" to him because of his early dream (386). Here and elsewhere he courageously accepts the awful truth about himself.

But Jude's responses differ from Oedipus's in ways that explain why Jude declines and Oedipus rises to heroic stature. To begin with, Oedipus confronts Creon, Teiresias, and the shepherd. As a result, he, like a patient being psychoanalyzed, learns to acknowledge and to express his emotions with an intensity he could not experience at the beginning of the play. In contrast, Jude makes each "mental estimate of his progress so far" either to himself or to a crowd and is not challenged. Not surprisingly, he speaks without affect, deflects his real feelings with rhetoric, and makes mental leaps from an unrecovered past into an unrealized future. In doing so, he escapes from the present and, consequently, from the need to acknowledge or act on his real feelings. Relying on facts, he does not interpret.

Since Jude does not interpret, he fails to recover his repressed feelings. He becomes more and more conscious of himself and his surroundings but fails to develop emotionally. As Lawrence said [in Phoenix, 1936], Jude "dragged his body after his consciousness. But change is theoretically possible all the while. So at given moments in the novel it appears that Jude could, but won't, free himself from what plagues him; however, in retrospect it seems that Jude was fated all the while to suffer and to die.

Significantly, Jude feels he is destined to fail and to be unhappy. An d no wonder. After all, his Aunt Drusilla tells him repeatedly that he (like Oedipus) is part of a doomed family, and people such as Farmer Troutham convince him that he is worthless. So Jude learns to anticipate failure and is even "piqued" into action (33) and "illuminated" by it (80). Consistent with this, he aims for success only in the distant future. For example, he prepares for Christminster by going through the long process of studying Greek and Latin and later establishes 30 as the proper age for becoming a clergyman. So the possibility of success does nothing except enervate him in the present. Furthermore, he cannot receive stimulation from outside sources since he does not distinguish between himself and the external world. The world is a projection of his own mind. In fact, when he is only eleven, the landscape is already an emblem of his mind and the birds seem, "like himself, to be living in a world which did not want them" (11). He even identifies with trees that are cut down and earthworms that are stepped on (13). In brief, Jude projects his own pessimistic fatalism onto the physical world. Thus he is trapped from within and without. As a result, that change which is theoretically possible becomes, in actuality, impossible.

Jude's relationship with his parents helps to explain why he is so hopelessly trapped. To begin with, his mother abandoned him when he was a baby and shortly afterwards committed suicide. As a result, Jude does not learn to relate tenderness and sensuality. That's why he responds without affection to sensual Arabella and without passion to spiritual Sue.

Jude's relationship with his father is more difficult to explain. Jude lived with him for a while in South Wessex and can recall that his father did not speak of his mother "till his dying day." But virtually nothing else is known about Mr. Fawley. Nevertheless, it's clear that Jude needs a male to emulate. This need is reflected in his imitation of Phillotson and in his desire to follow in the footsteps of an uncle he has never met (37).

Significantly, Jude does not attempt to emulate his father. He simply does not want to compete with him. (This is consistent with his unconscious desire to fail or at least to delay success.) But he does feel rivalry. Speaking to Sue at Melchester, he reveals his conflict. Like his father, he wants to be a parent, but he does not want to be involved in the act of procreation. He tells Sue that he would "gladly" live with her "as a fellow-lodger and friend, even on the most distant terms" (211), but there would be children nevertheless. Behaving characteristically, Jude "projected his mind into the future, and saw her with children more or less in her own likeness around her" (212). Rationalizing, he decides that such children would be a "continuation of her identity," but he reiterates that he would like a child that is "hers solely." Then the narrator says: "And then he again uneasily saw, as he had latterly seen with more and more frequency, the scorn of Nature for man's finer emotions, and her lack of interest in his aspirations" (212).

Clearly Jude is again rationalizing. He views his reluctance to have sex with Sue as one of "man's finer emotions." Furthermore, searching for the cause of his failure, he blames Nature which, like fate or bad luck in general, is a substitute for the rivalrous father in the male child's mind.

But of course Jude is unconscious of all this as, perhaps, Hardy himself was. Then, too, because Jude merely fantasizes, he cannot recover repressed feeling. After all, the person who fantasizes is responding purely intellectually; he is thinking without becoming involved bodily; he is using intellectualizing as a defense mechanism—as the means of fleeing from reality. And, all the while, he reinforces repression.

So Jude makes accurate mental estimates of his progress in life, makes shrewd comments about the human condition in general, and rationalizes in a consistent, coherent manner. But he does not express the emotion that is appropriate to his ideal love for Sue. He does not because he cannot: he is the victim of too much thought, too much reason, too much conscious control. This, not passion, is his affliction.