![]() ![]() The situation, in short, is a mirror-image of that inTess of the dUrbervilles, with the man, in this case, caught between contrasting kinds of love. Later he falls in love with his cousin, Sue Bridehead, educated and daring, a new woman, but with a sexual instinct, in Hardys words unusually weak and fastidious. Jude, a self-educated young man from a humble rural background, cannot gain admission to Christminster (the fictionalised Oxford), but he has in any case been temporarily distracted from his educational ambitions by the claims of the flesh, as represented by the sensual Arabella. He is writing about a deadly war waged between flesh and spirit. In his Preface to the novel, however, the author proposes a different, or a further emphasis. Judes career could be said to match all but the last word of this summary. In theLifeHardy identifies the probable germ of the novel in a note recorded in April 1888: A short story of a young man "who could not go to Oxford His struggles and ultimate failure. He undid most of these enforced alterations for the publication of the work in book form, by Osgood, McIlvaine, in November 1895, under the titleJude the Obscure. Hardy had been obliged by the editor to bowdlerise his text lest the readership should be offended. The Simpletonsor, as it was entitled after the first instalment,Hearts Insurgent, was serialised inHarpers New Monthly Magazinein twelve instalments, running from December 1894 to November 1895. ![]()
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