Questions raised on reading 'Jude the Obscure'

(Note: you don't have to have read the book to read this post)

It's a couple of weeks since I finished it now, but I've been meaning to make a note of the kinds of issues it raised, so I might as well do it here, coz I thought it was interesting.

Wherein does the 'bond' aspect of marriage lie? Is it because you make the vows, and it's wrong to break a promise? Is it something animal, a jealous need for possession of the loved one? Is it simply a meaningless institutional requirement that must be undertaken in order to be respectable? Is its basis in the just provision for children - i.e. something basically economic? Is it the fact that the people are united before God, in some kind of mystical way that can never be broken, whatever the actions of the two parties? Or are all of those just artificial bonds that can be superceded by circumstances, and the real bond is in the loving consent of the two parties?

Hardy toys with all these ideas. It's kinda clever - he spends most of the book apparently advocating the latter view, ridiculing the idea that social institutions are binding in themselves, and implying that making a legality out of love is absurd and destructive, but then he ends up showing that going against the flow doesn't work either. The 'free spirit' type couple who never marry eventually revert to the mystical view and repent of their behaviour (though it's hard to tell whether Hardy is condoning or satirising this). He also complicates the promise-making view by having a man (much to the disapproval of society) willingly release his wife from her promise when she asks him to, telling her that, though he still loves her, he won't hold her against her will, and in his view she's free - which I thought was interesting. Should that be enough to nullify a marriage?

Possibly there's not much profit in asking such questions, since I think on the whole it's fairly obvious how we should behave, but anyway it kept my mind occupied for a few days.

A more sobering question, for me, was raised by the character of Sue Bridehead, the young woman with whom Jude falls in love. She is beautiful (of course), independent, intelligent, and well schooled in modern thought (i.e. late 19th century) - a free thinker, we might call her. She seems well able to inspire love in the men she is close to at various times, but for her own part, though she enjoys their attentions and the pleasure of their company, and feels a very real affection and respect for them, she doesn't seem to be able to return the kind of love they have for her.

With the three different men who love her, she tries various ways to manage this disparity. The first she shares a house with, in what seems to be a kind of flatting-type arrangement - which, of course, was decidedly 'not done' between a man and a woman at the time - but has no sexual relations with him. This is, of course, rather hard on him but she sticks to her guns. Eventually he dies, can't remember how.

The second man manages to get her to engage herself to him, and, being a woman of her word, she marries him, thinking that respect and affection will be enough, and eventually she'll learn to return his love. However, she finds she was mistaken, and is miserable, and their friendship is ruined by the sexual aspect, which she finds tortuous (he's 20 years older than her). She feels guilty that she's not attracted to him, and that that ruins everything. Eventually he lets her go (as described above).

The third man is Jude, who has been her close friend and admirer throughout her marriage to the second fellow. Sue goes to him on leaving her husband, and they 'live together' in the same way she had lived with the first one - though of course everyone assumes there is a sexual relationship. He earns their living and she keeps house, and they enjoy a very deep friendship. However, he too has been married previously, and Sue finds that this arouses jealousy in her for his affections, which eventually causes her to give in and live as his wife (i.e. sleeping together and having children), though this is not really the way she wants their relationship to be. Eventually they part, and return penitently but very unhappily to their original spouses.

I can't help but wonder if I'm not a bit like Sue - somehow incapable of being really in love, even when every circumstance seems to suggest that I ought to be. She too is an itellectual type who isn't strongly passion-driven, is drawn to men rather than women as friends, and enjoys the intellectual stimulus she gleans from her relationships with them. She has a wealth of affection within her, but never really knows 'love'. Yet at the same time she can't help but enjoy the attentions of her admirers. Consequently she is always stuck between feeling like a coquettish little flirt who leads people on and breaks their hearts, and wishing she could just have her friendships unspoiled, without the complications of love which she can't return.

It's not that I don't want to fall in love someday, and be married and raise a family. Quite the contrary, as you all know. It's just that I doubt my ability to do so. I think it's because I'm too analytical. And perhaps I shouldn't say such things, because one day (I hope) I'll have to eat my words - and now none of you will believe me if I say I'm in love. And nor will the person I fall in love with, if he's read this. Maybe it sounds weird. And maybe (probably) I need to learn to stop thinking and just go with things, like everyone else. Anyway, Sue's character resonated with me. And got me all worried. Sigh. Who the heck am I anyway? Does anybody know?

I am now a bachelor.

Unless something went horribly wrong in my last essays and exam. Which it didn't.