Jude the Obscure

Abstract

Hardy’s novels sometimes had a long gestation period, and the embryo of Jude the Obscure (1895) is often traced to a note Hardy jotted down in April 1888: ‘A short story of a young man — “who could not go to Oxford” — His struggles and ultimate failure. Suicide.’¹ But before working out this idea fully in a novel-length study, Hardy rehearsed it in a short story, ‘A Tragedy of Two Ambitions’ (1888). In this neglected short story Hardy portrays the struggles and frustrations of two brothers, Joshua and Cornelius, whose academic aspirations are thwarted by a combination of meagre financial resources, class prejudice, and family circumstances in the shape of a feckless and drunken father. While Hardy’s sympathies evidently went out to the two brothers in their ‘untutored reading of Greek and Latin’, he was alive to the possibility that even the noblest intellectual aspiration could be both corrupt and corrupting.² Thus, the story strikes a balance between being an eloquent plea on behalf of deserving but deprived students who fail to make it to the University, and offering an unsentimental critique of the selfish pursuit of academic ambition.