Jude the Obscure (Novel). Thomas Hardy

 I don't suppose I'm giving too much away if I say that this Thomas Hardy novel doesn't end well for the eponymous Jude. Inevitably I'm reminded of GK Chesterton's cruel but funny description of Hardy's novels: the village atheist brooding over the fate of the village idiot. But Jude is not an idiot.  The point of the novel is that, seeing the position in society occupied by people of a certain intellectual stamp, he measures himself against them and, finding himself their equal, expects to rise to their level. The only obstacles in his way are his social class, his poverty and his openness to argument on moral issues. What could possibly go wrong?

Of course it isn't quite as simple as all that. Jude is himself enmeshed in the toils of  English Christianity, at  a time when Christianity not only meant most of what it said but exercised a baleful social and political power over the general population.

The novel follows Jude's relationship with his cousin, Sue Bridehead and her parallel relationship with Mr Phillotson (Jude's schoolteacher at the beginning of the book). All three possess a lively moral sense and a willingness to look at moral issues in non-conventional ways. At some times each of them conforms to the rules imposed by the Church of England  and at others  each reacts against those standards.  

This is one of those novels that I read for the first time when I was too young for it (early teens, I think). Re-reading it in the last couple of weeks I was struck by just how much influence religion had on the everyday lives of ordinary people in the late 19th Century. However I'm compelled to admit that you don't have to go back that far to find  similar influences. The experience of my own life underlines the fact that the Catholic Church in Australia, while not having the protected political position of the Anglican Church in England, still sooled its clerical heelers on to any member of its flock who showed signs of straying from the path. It would have been in the early 1960s that one of my father's friends ( a Protestant) asked him to be best man at his wedding. The wedding, of course, was to be in a Protestant church and therefore counted as a Protestant religious ceremony in which Catholics were forbidden (by their own Church) to participate.  Dad wanted very much to do this favour for his friend and he agonised about it for some time.  Eventually he discussed it with the Parish Priest  (a kindly, decent man, incidentally) who said "No dice. The Church's rules are clear.  You can't do it." Dad obeyed the Church, even though he felt that he was letting his friend down.

Sometimes I reflect on the changes in society since I was a kid and regret this alteration or that one: but let there be no doubt that our society in 2020 is saner and healthier than it was in 1960 if for no other reason than that religion has less power and less influence. If I'm ever tempted to doubt this conclusion I might read Jude the Obscure again; on the other hand I might just remember my poor father, whose god insisted that he disappoint his friend.