Assignment-Literature of the Victorians

 Existentialism in the Jude the Obscure 

                                                       by Thomas                                                                                      Hardy🙌

Name - Jignesh  K. Panchasara

             Paper - Literature of  the Victorians

             Roll No- 9

             Enrollment no-3069206420200013

Email id-jigneshpanchasara5758@gmail.com

             Batch- MA 2020-2022

Submitted to - S.B Gardi Department of              English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji  

                                 Bhavnagar University.

  

    

                Introduction👀

Jude the Obscure is a novel by Thomas Hardy, which began as a magazine serial in December 1894 and was first published in book form in 1895. It is Hardy's last completed novel. Its protagonist, Jude Fawley, is a working-class young man, a stonemason, who dreams of becoming a scholar. The other main character is his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is also his central love interest. The novel is concerned in particular with issues of class, education, religion, morality and marriage.

The Life of Thomas Hardy👨

Thomas Hardy, (born June 2, 1840, Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England—died January 11, 1928, Dorchester, Dorset), English novelist and poet.                                                                   

Hardy was the eldest of the four children of Thomas Hardy, a stonemason and jobbing builder, and his wife, Jemima (née Hand). He grew up in an isolated cottage on the edge of open heathland. Though he was often ill as a child, his early experience of rural life, with its seasonal rhythms and oral culture, was fundamental to much of his later writing. He spent a year at the village school at age eight and then moved on to schools in Dorchester, the nearby county town, where he received a good grounding in mathematics and Latin. In 1856 he was apprenticed to John Hicks, a local architect, and in 1862, shortly before his 22nd birthday, he moved to London and became a draftsman in the busy office of Arthur Blomfield, a leading ecclesiastical architect. Driven back to Dorset by ill health in 1867, he worked for Hicks again and then for the Weymouth architect G.R. Crickmay.

Existentialism in Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure👌

Thomas Hardy was an English poet and novelist, He criticised the Victorian society greatly in his works and focused on rural communities, as seen in his Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure.

The novel is a coming-of-age novel which centers on the life of the protagonist, Jude and his complicated love life. The novel is also tragic as we see the downfall of the protagonist (Jude’s deaths ). Hardy is known to depict suffering in his works and this has caused many negative views about these works. Little do they know that Hardy is merely giving us a clear picture of how many people, especially those in the rural areas, live.

Also, the negative comments could be as a result of the conscience of the readers. They probably are scared of their own lives or feel that their unlucky fate is being exposed. Meanwhile, Hardy was merely adapting the work from his own life. Just like Jude, Thomas Hardy first married Emma     who is the inspiration of the character of Arabella Don. Also, his love interest, like Jude is his cousin who is the inspiration for the character of Sue Bridehead. 

In this essay, we shall examine the theory of existentialism as seen in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. The novel reflects Hardy's concern about the existence of human beings. He also discusses man's existence, freedom, choice, responsibility and life value, foreseeing social contradictions of western society.

Existentialism has as its main key phrase: existence over essence. Also, among the themes seen in existentialism, Jude the Obscure comprises isolation, existence precedes essence, moral individualism, subjectivity, angst, freedom, authenticity and inauthenticity and the absurd. Examples will be drawn from individual decisions and actions of characters, and also the writer’s composition of the work. Since critics have derived that the writer draws most of the events in the novel from his personal experiences, then one can say that the writer expresses himself within the text.

We see Jude grow from an eleven year old boy to a man. His actions in the novel are an initiation of his subjectivity- his individual intuition. His aunt warns him not to get married, as their family is unlucky with marriages. Jude however ignores this warning and confronts what he encounters, getting married to Arabella. When he discovers Arabella is pregnant with his child, he takes responsibility immediately by getting married to her, not just because he refuses to obey his aunt’s warning, but to take responsibility for his actions; although his plans to study are disrupted. His knowledge of Arabella’s dishonesty causes him to leave the marriage and focus on his initial plans.

This revelation of the fake pregnancy portrays inauthenticity in human existence because Jude assumes a baby exists, and he acts in accordance with the deception, until he has found out the truth. Though, he does not mope around and give up on his previous goals, he accepts the inauthentic and moves on with his life.

Angst is revealed when Jude suffers tremendously. He is very hardworking and dedicated, but the novelist does not give him a successful or ‘happy ending’. He does not conform to the conventional idea that the good and bad get rewarded according to their actions or personality. The novelist simply reflects that human existence does not favour the good and condemn the bad; rather, whatever a person goes through is an inevitable part of human existence. Hence, existence precedes essence. Jude does not allow his sufferings to put him down; hence, Albert Camus’s description of the absurd man: the absurd man struggles with others to survive.

"Existence precedes essence" means that man firstly exists, and then creates himself by action. When brought into the small village, Jude appears as a "nothingness" that has many possibilities in the future. As a little boy, Jude embaces big dreams. In the process of pursuing them, Jude gains rich knowledge, and creates himself as an upright, brave and responsible man. Moreover, he is concerned about the future of human beings. Jude also wins Sue's love in a certain extent. Thus Jude has already realized his life value and existential significance in the process of action.

It explores the predicament of human existence: the meaninglessness and purposelessness of life, the alienation and anxiety of human beings in the absurd world. Meanwhile, it attaches importance to the quest for authenticity being in the absurd world.
Thomas Hardy presents the predicament of human existence in his last novel, Jude the Obscure. It is a story of a lonely individual's futile struggles in the absurd world. Jude, a poor orphan, strives to seek self and meaningful life in the absurd world. He is determined to go to the University and keeps fighting for it for a whole life but is rejected in the end; he persistently pursues true love only to get endless suffering.

In the love between Jude and Arabella as well as Sue, Jude tastes fully disappointment, loneliness and misery

Being unsatisfied with his present condition, Jude studies hard in order to become a member of university; he acts bravely in order to stay with his lover. With far-sight, Jude even tries to change social abuses. Facing various difficulties, Jude may feel miserable, but he never loses hope.

Sue Bridehead, Jude's lover, is seen as a foil to Jude because she initially is rebellious and is the typical existential character, but she is not consistent. After all her suffering, primarily after her children's deaths and miscarriage of her pregnancy, she automatically believes the supernatural has a lot to do with whatever goes on in life. She believes that God is punishing her for all the things she has done, probably for what society condemns Her for. Then she tries to fix it all by going back to Philotson, her ex-husband. This is because the Christian religion only permits divorce on the grounds of unchastity; rather, Arabella has earlier divorced her husband on the grounds of unpleasant sex.

In the novel, Hardy reveals that marriage has its troubles, despite the way people go about it. Also, there is no perfect partner. We see Jude married to Arabella and we are unhappy that he is married to someone who has deceived him; also, his Aunt warns him that their family is not lucky with marriage. Seeing that it is a hereditary luck, then Jude is expected to abide by her warning. Although, after divorcing Arabella and now living with Sue, we are happy that his love life seems normal. But when the situation of the murder suicide and miscarriage come into play, Sue leaves Jude for her ex-husband. This shows us the readers that humans would definitely flee from one another as far as they do not find what they are looking for. Also, a friend, partner or even family member would flee in times of trouble. It is only better for one to be true to one's self as Jude has been. Seeing that Jude's supposed true love has gone back to her ex-lover, this shows that there is no perfect partner. It only takes effort and dedication to build a relationship.

In the Victorian society, it is said that the class you were born into is the class you remain. Hardy criticises this class struggle in the Victorian era because it greatly affected many people and disrupted their plans on life. Jude is laughed at because he believes he can attend Christminster and have a better life. Christminster is modeled based on Oxford University in England. This shows how valuable Christminster is. Jude is determined to move from an extremely low class to an extremely high class,  but societal forces try as much as possible not to let him. This is why he tries to study Latin and Greek, but his Greek is not strong enough for him to be admitted. Also, for other people to say that he is too low class to be admitted into that kind of University, it is possible the admission officers think this boy is trying to joke with them by trying to gain admission into that high brow school.

Finally, existence precedes essence, in that Arabella is watching a game when Jude is at the point of death. As soon as she discovers his body, she does not abandon her game, as Jude's life is over and there is nothing she can do about it. Meanwhile, her game is still on and alive, did she believes she needs to finish it before dealing with Jude's corpse.
"Oh, I say--how jolly! I'm glad I've come," said Arabella.

"And--it can't hurt my husband--my being away."
This shows the choice that many people make- they consider what's more important, what has more value, depending on its essence, but Arabella here knows that Jude, a human being is more important than a mere man-made game on television, but she does not ignore that existence precedes essence. Hence, what it available and worth living for should be given more attention, especially at the moment.

                 Conclusion👇

we have seen the Existentialism in the Jude the Obscure.  The All Characters are representing the situation of Human being. The Theme of the Jude the Obscure is Marriage, fate, Social Criticism, Religion and women in Society.

Reference

 "Jude Fawley". Cliffsnotes.Com, 2021, https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/j/jude-the-obscure/character-analysis/jude-fawley.

"Jude The Obscure: Study Guide | Sparknotes". Sparknotes.Com, 2021, https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/jude/#bn-purchase-module.

"Jude The Obscure: Summary | Sparknotes". Sparknotes.Com, 2021, https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/jude/summary/.

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Assignment- History of English Literature -from 1350-1900

 👇Characteristics of the Restoration age👇

Name - Jignesh  K. Panchasara

             Paper - History of English Literature -from 1350-1900

             Roll No- 9

             Enrollment no-3069206420200013

Email id-jigneshpanchasara5758@gmail.com

             Batch- MA 2020-2022

Submitted to - S.B Gardi Department of              English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji  

                                 Bhavnagar University.

    The Restoration period✊

          Introduction

 The period from 1660 to 1700 is named as the Restoration period. In 1660 King Charles II was brought to the throne. The people of England were suffering from tension due to the strict rule of Cromwell. Thus the nation welcomed the Restoration of Charles II. This Restoration brought about a revolutionary change in social life and literature. The following characteristics distinguish this period.

Additionally, what is meant by restoration age?

    The period from 1660 to 1700 is known as the Restoration period or the Age of Dryden because monarchy was restored in England. Dryden was the representative writer of this period. The beginning of the Restoration began the process of social transformation.

Why is restoration period so called?😊

In English literature the period from 1660 to 1700 is called the period of Restoration, because monarchy was restored in England, and Charles II, the son of Charles I who had been defeated and beheaded, came back to England from his exile in France and became the King.

Characteristics of The Age

* Social and Political Conflict                 
                  With the come – back of Charles II, England’s social, political and religious tenets have transformed. The two devastating incidents – The great Plague of London and The Great Fire of London did much more harm to English Social life. W. J. Long said –

Though the king and court and high society of this period arouse our disgust or pity, the private life of England remained honest and pure even in the worst days of the Restoration.  Politically, the country was divided into two parties – The Whigs and The Tories. Both parties were largely devoted to the Anglican Church. Later, both the parties joined together to put an end to King James II who misrule for four years. After the bloodiness revolution of 1688, which called William of Orange and Queen Mary to the throne, was simply the indication of England’s healthy and sanity. According to W. J. Long,

Modern England was firmly established by the Revolution which was brought about by the excesses of the Restoration.

 

* Opening of Theaters
                  All the institutions that were closed in the puritanical movement were opened during the Restoration period. Political monarchy, Parliament Episcopacy and law were all restored. The clubs and coffee houses were also established during the period. These houses become the centers of political discussions and from here only, the periodical essays were originated.

*Rise of Neo-Classicism
               The Restoration marks a complete break with the past and the Elizabethan Romanticism was almost over. With the end of the past, literature took a new spirit and outlook and a different attitude in the subject and style. As Edward Albert says,

The Post – Restoration period is often setup as converge and anti – thesis of the previous Elizabethan Age. It is called ‘Classical’ as opposed to the Elizabethan Romanticism.

Realism
       Restoration literature is realistic. It was concerned with the life and with the fashion and manners. W. J. Long writes about the practice of realism of this period –

The early Restoration writers sought to paint realistic pictures of a corrupt court and society, and emphasized vices rather than virtues, and gave us coarse, low plays without interest or moral significance. Later, this tendency of realism becomes more wholesome.

               *New Literary Forms
           The writers of the age went against the Elizabethan romantic ideals and tried to give realistic picture of the corrupt court and society. They exposed vices rather than virtues. The most important literary forms expounded during this age are as under:


                           * Satire
Restoration age was an age of political unrest, sharp wit and personal contention. For this reason, satire got a new importance. Dryden’s Mac Flecknoe which was written in heroic couplet is considered as the best satire respectively.

                                *Poetry
The Restoration poets completely discarded the romanticism of Elizabethan poetry and also rejected the morals of puritan poets. Poetry presented a realistic picture of the corrupt court, society, men and manners; and its appeal was to intellect and reason.

                                *Drama
The theatres which were closed in 1642 were opened during the Restoration. Consequently, the plays were written for the play – houses. It gave rise to the development of the Comedy of Manners, which portrayed the sophisticated life of the dominant class of society.

                      * Heroic Couplet
Restoration literature adopted the heroic – couplet as a poetic medium that is two iambic pentameter lines which rhymed together. Waller, who began to use it in 1623, is generally regarded as the father of the couplet. Later, Waller and Dryden made the couplet a literary fashion.

 These are the main writers of the Restoration age. whose name are given below.

👉  John Dryden 

  Samuel butler

  Hobbes and Locke

  Evelyn and Pepys.

 so Today's our major writes is John Dryden.

Here is picture of John Dryden.

          

   John Dryden was born on 9 August 1631 at Northamptonshire, England. He was known as poet, Literary critic, play wright, and Librettist. John Dryden was educated from the west minister school, Trinity college, Cambridge.

    John Dryden came from a landowning family with connection to parliament and the church of England. His material grand father was Rector of all saints. He was son of Erasmus Dryden and Mary Pickering. His family were Parliamentary supporters with Puritans learning. He was an english poet ,Dramatist and  Critic. He was also leading figure of the Restoration age. He was so Dominating person that the Whole age was known as the The age of Dryden. Water Scott called him as Glorious john. He left behind almost 30 works for stage as well as a major Critical study ( An Essay Dramatic poesy) and a Number of Translations including  the works Virgil.

           After John Donne and John Milton ,John Dryden was the greatest english poet of the Seventeenth century. He published his first important poem, Heroic stanzas (1659), a eulogy On Cromwell's death. Here is Life related video of John Dryden.

         

 

LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS OF RESTORATION AGE 👀

The literature of the Restoration period marked the complete breaking of ties with the Renaissance literature. It reflected the spirit of the age. The spirit of corruption and moral laxity, which were predominant in the social life of the restoration, are reflected in literature. The following are the chief feature of the period.

 Realism and formalism Restoration literature is realistic. It was very much concerned with life in London, and with details of dress, fashions and manners. The early Restoration writers, observes sought to paint realistic pictures of corrupt court and society, and emphasized vices rather than virtues and gave us coarse, low plays without interest or moral significance. Like Hobbes, they saw only the externals of man, his body and appetites, not his soul and his ideal. Later, however, this tendency to realism became more wholesome. While it neglected romantic poetry, in which youth is eternally interested, it led to a keener study of the practical motives which govern human action. The Restoration writers eschewed all extravagances of thought and language and aimed at achieving directness and simplicity of expression. Dryden accepted the excellent rule for his prose, and adopted the heroic couplet, as the next best thing for the greater part of this poetry. It is largely due to Dryden that writers developed formalism of style, that precise, almost mathematical elegance, miscalled classicism, which ruled the English literature for the next century. 

 French Influence: 

In this age , There are so many writers who wrote his work as a different point of view. Like a The poem of Rochester, the plays of Dryden, Congreve , Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, All popular in their day, are mostly unreadable. also shakespeare Mid summer nights etc.

The couplet 

The form of Heroic couplet was very famous at that time, but the famous writer was John Dryden. He wrote so many works in the Heroic couplet. Also Chaucer had used the rimed couplet wonderfully in his Canterbury Tales.

New tendencies

with the final rejection of the restoration drama we reach a crisis in the history of our literature. The old Elizabethan spirit, with its patriotism, its creative vigor, its love of romance and the puritan spirit with its moral and at first there was nothing to take their places.

   Dryden when he said that in his prose and poetry he was drawing the outline of new art but had no teacher to instruct him. but literature is progressive art, and soon the writers the tendencies of their own the tendency to realism, and the tendency to that preciseness and elegance of expression which marks our literature for the next hundred years.

                  👇Conclusion 👊

The age of Restoration is Very famous. Meanwhile, the works of Dryden were very famous. The Restoration period is to be seen as one of transition. The glorious Revolution of 1688 also brought about a new change in social and political life. The Restoration literature developed realism and so the whole literature was developed in a new style. 

Reference

"Characteristics Of Restoration Period". Empire Tuition Classes, 2021, https://hlg7.weebly.com/characteristics-of-restoration-period.html.

"The Restoration Period (1660-1700) In English History | Good Study". Good Study, 2021, https://goodstudy.org/restoration-period-english-history/.

"What Are The Characteristics Of Restoration Age? | Everythingwhat.Com". Everythingwhat.Com, 2021, https://everythingwhat.com/what-are-the-characteristics-of-restoration-age.

                                         

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Tennyson and Robert Browning as a Poets

                        Introduction

Tennyson and Robert Browning is a famous Poet. They wrote many poetry. Also, Both have a very different personality.

  The Life of Tennyson     👦  works written: Poems, Chiefly Lyrical,   Mariana, 

Born: 6 August 1809, Somersby

Sibling: Edward Tennyson, Charles Tennyson 

Parents: George Clayton Tennyson, Elizabeth .

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in full Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson of Aldworth and Freshwater, (born August 6, 1809, Somersby, Lincolnshire, England—died October 6, 1892, Aldworth, Surrey), English poet often regarded as the chief representative of the Victorian age in poetry. He was raised to the peerage in 1884.

Tennyson was the fourth of 12 children, born into an old Lincolnshire family, his father a rector. Alfred, with two of his brothers, Frederick and Charles, was sent in 1815 to Louth grammar school—where he was unhappy. He left in 1820, but, though home conditions were difficult, his father managed to give him a wide literary education. Alfred was precocious, and before his teens he had composed in the styles of Alexander, Sir Walter Scott, and John Milton. To his youth also belongs The Devil and the Lady (a collection of previously unpublished poems published posthumously in 1930), which shows an astonishing understanding of Elizabethan dramatic verse. Lord Byron was a dominant influence on the young Tennyson.

           

Summary of the poem...

Ulysses expresses frustration at how dull and pointless his life now seems as king of Ithaca, trapped at home on the rocky island of Ithaca. His wife is old, and he must spend his time enforcing imperfect laws as he attempts to govern people he considers stupid and uncivilized. In Ulysses's eyes, all his people do is try to store up wealth, sleep, and eat. They have no conception of who Ulysses really is or what his life has been like. Ulysses still yearns to travel the world like he used to do. As long as he's alive, he doesn't want to stop doing the things that, in his eyes, make life worth living. He found joy, he claims, in every moment he spent traveling, even at the times when he was suffering. He found joy both when he was with his faithful crew members and when he was by himself; both when he was on land and when he was sailing the sea through rainstorms. He has become famous throughout the world as an explorer who was continually traveling and yearning to know more. Ulysses reflects that he has seen and learned a great deal about all the places where people live, about their lifestyles, cultures, and ways of governing themselves. Everywhere he went, he was shown honor and respect. Ulysses also found joy fighting alongside his fellow soldiers, men he honored and respected, when he fought in battles far from home in the Trojan War. Ulysses feels that each person and place he has encountered has been changed by the encounter, as has he himself. But all these experiences have not satisfied his desire for travel; rather, each encounter has only whetted his appetite to see more of the world. No matter how much of the world he sees, there is always still more to see, and it is these unseen regions that he always tries to pursue. Ulysses exclaims that it is boring and unsatisfying to stay in one place and stop doing the activities that defined your life, comparing himself to a sword that has been allowed to rust uselessly away rather than being used gloriously in battle. Merely being alive doesn't mean you are truly living. Ulysses feels that multiple lifetimes would still have been too little time to do all he wishes to do, and he is almost at the end of the one lifetime he has. Still, every hour that he has left to live before he dies has the potential to bring new opportunities for action. It would be disgraceful, he feels, to sit tight at home and just try to eat and stay alive for a few more years, when, even as an old man, his greatest desire is still to explore the world and keep learning more. He wants to go beyond the limits of what humans have seen and known, the way a shooting star seems to go beyond the horizon when it falls and disappears from sight.Ulysses then starts to describe his son, Telemachus, who will inherit Ulysses's role as ruler of the island when Ulysses dies. Ulysses affirms that he loves his son, who is conscientious and thoughtful about how he will best carry out his responsibilities as ruler. With patience and judgement, Telemachus will work to civilize the fierce, wild people of Ithaca and make them more gentle, and gradually teach them to devote their lives to productive civic activities. Ulysses cannot find any faults in Telemachus; he devotes his life to the responsibilities of his role, he pays proper respect to his people and his parents, and after his father dies, he will continue offering appropriate sacrifices to the gods that Ulysses most honored. Telemachus is well suited for the role of ruler—just as Ulysses is well suited for a different role, the role of explorer.

Ulysses looks out towards the port, where the wind is blowing in the sails of his ship and where he can see the wide, dark sea. He now addresses his former crew, the men who worked alongside him and explored the world and gained new knowledge with him. He reminds them that they always accepted joyfully whatever their travels would bring, whether trouble or good luck, and proudly faced every obstacle with resolution and bravery. Ulysses then acknowledges that both he and they have grown older, but insists that even as old men, they can still work do hard work and earn respect. Soon they will die and their chance to do great deeds will be over; but before they die, they can still accomplish something heroic, something fitting for men that once battled the gods. The people of Ithaca are beginning to light lamps in their homes; night is falling; the moon is rising in the sky; the waves of the sea are murmuring almost as if they are speaking to Ulysses. Ulysses urges his crew, as his friends, to join him on one last voyage—even now, they're not too old to explore some unknown region of the world. He invites them to board a ship, push away from shore, and man the oars so they can beat the waves; because Ulysses still has the goal of sailing past the horizon, as far as he can go, before he ultimately dies. He acknowledges that the waves may sink their ship; but they may also find their way to the place where the souls of the blessed go after death. There, they might even see their old companion, the accomplished warrior Achilles. Many of their heroic qualities have been diminished by old age, but they haven't been lost completely. They don't have the same strength or physical prowess they possessed as younger men fighting epic, world-changing battles; but inside, Ulysses declares, they are ultimately the same men they always were. Their minds and hearts are still brave and composed in the face of danger and obstacles. Their bodies have been weakened by old age, something all human beings are destined to face, but their spirits are as strong as ever. They remain determined to work hard, to pursue their goals and accomplish them, and to never give up.

The Life of Robert Burns👲

Burns’s father had come to Ayrshire from Kincardineshire in an endeavour to improve his fortunes, but, though he worked immensely hard first on the farm of Mount Oliphant, which he leased in 1766, and then on that of Lochlea, which he took in 1777, ill luck dogged him, and he died in 1784, worn out and bankrupt. It was watching his father being thus beaten down that helped to make Robert both a rebel against the social order of his day and a bitter satirist of all forms of religious and political thought that condoned or perpetuated inhumanity. He received some formal schooling from a teacher as well as sporadically from other sources. He acquired a superficial reading knowledge of French and a bare smattering of Latin, and he read most of the important 18th-century English writers as well as Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden. His knowledge of Scottish literature was confined in his childhood to orally transmitted folk songs and folk tales together with a modernization of the late 15th-century poem “Wallace.” His religion throughout his adult life seems to have been a humanitarian Deism.

         

                 

 

 Summary of the Poem.

. “A Red, Red Rose” is a poem composed by Scotland's national poet, Robert Burns. It was first published in 1794 in a collection of traditional Scottish songs set to music. Burns’s poem was inspired both by a simple Scots song he had heard in the country and by published ballads from the period. The poem has the form of a ballad and is meant to be sung aloud. It describes the speaker’s deep love for his or her beloved and promises that this love will last longer than human life and even the planet itself, remaining fresh and constant forever. The speaker describes his or her love—meaning either the person the speaker loves or the speaker's feelings of love for that person—as being as beautiful, vivid, and fresh as a flower that has just recently bloomed. This love is as sweet as a beautiful song played by a skilled musician.The beloved is so beautiful that the speaker loves her with a deep and strong passion—so strong, in fact, that the speaker's love will last until the oceans have become dry.Even after the seas have evaporated and the earth has decayed, the speaker will still love the beloved. This love will endure until their own lives have ended and even until all human life has ended.The speaker concludes by saying goodbye to the beloved—who is, the speaker reminds her, the only person the speaker loves. The speaker wishes her well during their temporary separation. The speaker reaffirms his or her faithful love by promising to return even if the journey covers a very long distance and takes a very long time.

                Conclusion👈

Robert Browning and Tennyson are poets and famous for his poems. The Robert Browning is one of The Romantic poet for his poem A red red rose .In that poem he says that my love is like a Red Rose.

                                                             Thanks😊

Words: 1753                                       

Hard times by Charles Dickens

                         Introduction

 Hard times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirises the social and economic conditions of the era.

Hard Times is unusual in several ways. It is by far the shortest of Dickens's novels, barely a quarter of the length of those written immediately before and after it.Also, unlike all but one of his other novels, Hard Times has neither a preface nor illustrations. Moreover, it is his only novel not to have scenes set in London.Instead the story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town, in some ways similar to Manchester, though smaller. Coketown may be partially based on 19th-century Preston. One of Dickens's reasons for writing Hard Times was that sales of his weekly periodical Household Words were low, and it was hoped the novel's publication in instalments would boost circulation – as indeed proved to be the case. Since publication it has received a mixed response from critics. Critics such as George Bernard Shaw and Thomas Macaulay have mainly focused on Dickens's treatment of trade unions and his post–Industrial Revolution pessimism regarding the divide between capitalist mill owners and undervalued workers during the Victorian era. F. R. Leavis, a great admirer of the book, included it – but not Dickens's work as a whole – as part of his Great Tradition of English novels.

                     

                    

 Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy, retired merchant in the industrial city of Coketown, England, devotes his life to a philosophy of rationalism, self-interest, and fact. He raises his oldest children, Louisa and Tom, according to this philosophy and never allows them to engage in fanciful or imaginative pursuits. He founds a school and charitably takes in one of the students, the kindly and imaginative Sissy Jupe, after the disappearance of her father, a circus entertainer. As the Gradgrind children grow older, Tom becomes a dissipated, self-interested hedonist, and Louisa struggles with deep inner confusion, feeling as though she is missing something important in her life. Eventually Louisa marries Gradgrind’s friend Josiah Bounderby, a wealthy factory owner and banker more than twice her age. Bounderby continually trumpets his role as a self-made man who was abandoned in the gutter by his mother as an infant. Tom is apprenticed at the Bounderby bank, and Sissy remains at the Gradgrind home to care for the younger children.In the meantime, an impoverished “Hand”—Dickens’s term for the lowest laborers in Coketown’s factories—named Stephen Blackpool struggles with his love for Rachael, another poor factory worker. He is unable to marry her because he is already married to a horrible, drunken woman who disappears for months and even years at a time. Stephen visits Bounderby to ask about a divorce but learns that only the wealthy can obtain them. Outside Bounderby’s home, he meets Mrs. Pegler, a strange old woman with an inexplicable devotion to Bounderby.James Harthouse, a wealthy young sophisticate from London, arrives in Coketown to begin a political career as a disciple of Gradgrind, who is now a Member of Parliament. He immediately takes an interest in Louisa and decides to try to seduce her. With the unspoken aid of Mrs. Sparsit, a former aristocrat who has fallen on hard times and now works for Bounderby, he sets about trying to corrupt Louisa.The Hands, exhorted by a crooked union spokesman named Slackbridge, try to form a union. Only Stephen refuses to join because he feels that a union strike would only increase tensions between employers and employees. He is cast out by the other Hands and fired by Bounderby when he refuses to spy on them. Louisa, impressed with Stephen’s integrity, visits him before he leaves Coketown and helps him with some money. Tom accompanies her and tells Stephen that if he waits outside the bank for several consecutive nights, help will come to him. Stephen does so, but no help arrives. Eventually he packs up and leaves Coketown, hoping to find agricultural work in the country. Not long after that, the bank is robbed, and the lone suspect is Stephen, the vanished Hand who was seen loitering outside the bank for several nights just before disappearing from the city.Mrs. Sparsit witnesses Harthouse declaring his love for Louisa, and Louisa agrees to meet him in Coketown later that night. However, Louisa instead flees to her father’s house, where she miserably confides to Gradgrind that her upbringing has left her married to a man she does not love, disconnected from her feelings, deeply unhappy, and possibly in love with Harthouse. She collapses to the floor, and Gradgrind, struck dumb with self-reproach, begins to realize the imperfections in his philosophy of rational self-interest.Sissy, who loves Louisa deeply, visits Harthouse and convinces him to leave Coketown forever. Bounderby, furious that his wife has left him, redoubles his efforts to capture Stephen. When Stephen tries to return to clear his good name, he falls into a mining pit called Old Hell Shaft. Rachael and Louisa discover him, but he dies soon after an emotional farewell to Rachael. Gradgrind and Louisa realize that Tom is really responsible for robbing the bank, and they arrange to sneak him out of England with the help of the circus performers with whom Sissy spent her early childhood. They are nearly successful, but are stopped by Bitzer, a young man who went to Gradgrind’s school and who embodies all the qualities of the detached rationalism that Gradgrind once espoused, but who now sees its limits. Sleary, the lisping circus proprietor, arranges for Tom to slip out of Bitzer’s grasp, and the young robber escapes from England after all.Mrs. Sparsit, anxious to help Bounderby find the robbers, drags Mrs. Pegler—a known associate of Stephen Blackpool—in to see Bounderby, thinking Mrs. Pegler is a potential witness. Bounderby recoils, and it is revealed that Mrs. Pegler is really his loving mother, whom he has forbidden to visit him: Bounderby is not a self-made man after all. Angrily, Bounderby fires Mrs. Sparsit and sends her away to her hostile relatives. Five years later, he will die alone in the streets of Coketown. Gradgrind gives up his philosophy of fact and devotes his political power to helping the poor. Tom realizes the error of his ways but dies without ever seeing his family again. While Sissy marries and has a large and loving family, Louisa never again marries and never has children. Nevertheless, Louisa is loved by Sissy’s family and learns at last how to feel sympathy for her fellow human beings.

             

   Industrialism - How do you see it today in the times of Digital Era?     👀

      Hard Times Dickens sharply criticizes the poor living conditions of the working class in industrial towns. He depicts life in a fictive industrial town Coketown as a symbol for a typical industrial town in Northern England of that time. It is a place full of exploitation, desperation and oppression. Soot and ash is all over the town; it is a dirty and suffocating place. The workers have low wages and work long hours. The work begins before sunrise, the production is important and there is no regard for the rights and suffering of the low class. Children in school are taught according to Utilitarianism philosophy – they should accept and live according to facts and facts alone, they are not allowed to fantasize or think for themselves. In Coketown, machines cause great pollution. The industrial workers have no chance of progress in life. The upper-middle class ignores their misery (Bounderby) and denies imagination and creativity (Gradgrind). Utilitarianism exerts mechanization of society and human mind. The character of Sissy Jupe represents the personification of fact vs. fancy conflict, she tries hard to learn facts, but is unable to, she freely thinks and imagines. She is the most stable character because she succeeds to find balance between the two. Dickens points out the flaws and limitation of the newly created industrial society and the necessity of social reform. 

*The situation of Women in Hard Times..💁

     This novel is deeply conservative in its concept of women. The Victorians believed that women embodied the traits of compassion, moral purity and sensitivity; they idealized the redemptive powers of femininity, so in Hard Times we have the female angelic types – Sissy and Rachael. Sissy is innocent and has the desire to serve because of her belief in humanity. She’s compassionate and tender-hearted, she brings salvation from facts. Because of her goodness she is rewarded with a happy life. Rachael is hard-working, compassionate, morally pure and sensitive. She is a nursemaid to Stephen’s hateful wife; she improves the lives of those around her. Then, there is Louisa. Gradgrind removes the burden of ideal femininity of his daughter but outside her family she’s unable to fulfill the idealized role of mother and wife. Her emotions are dormant and hidden until they burst out in the end, but she gets lost because she doesn’t know how to deal with her emotions. Louisa and Sissy point out the flaws of fact-philosophy. There is also a type of degraded woman embodied in Stephen’s wife. She is monstrous and barely human, has to be kept hidden. Women in this story often see things more clearly than men and remain strong and composed in crisis situation.

            Conclusion👈

we can compare Hard Times in Current time, so we can see the situation of Hard Times is Related with current time, Like some of the topics are fully related with The current time is Marriage, Education and famous is Industrialization.    

                                                         Thanks.... 😊         

1589 words.

Jude the obscure by Thomas Hardy

                      Introduction

Jude the Obscure is a novel by Thomas Hardy, which began as a magazine serial in December 1894 and was first published in book form in 1895. It is Hardy's last completed novel. Its protagonist, Jude Fawley, is a working-class young man, a stonemason, who dreams of becoming a scholar.

        

who dreams of becoming a scholar. The other main character is his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is also his central love interest. The novel is concerned in particular with issues of class, education, religion, morality and marriage.The novel tells the story of Jude Fawley, who lives in a village in southern England (part of Hardy's fictional county of Wessex), who yearns to be a scholar at "Christminster", a city modelled on Oxford. As a youth, Jude teaches himself Classical Greek and Latin in his spare time, while working first in his great-aunt's bakery, with the hope of entering university. But before he can try to do this the naïve Jude is seduced by Arabella Donn, a rather coarse, morally lax and superficial local girl who traps him into marriage by pretending to be pregnant. The marriage is a failure, and Arabella leaves Jude and later emigrates to Australia, where she enters into a bigamous marriage. By this time, Jude has abandoned his classical studies. Here you can see some videos of Jude the Obscure.

                      

After Arabella leaves him, Jude moves to Christminster and supports himself as a mason while studying alone, hoping to be able to enter the university later. There, he meets and falls in love with his free-spirited cousin, Sue Bridehead. But, shortly after this, Jude introduces Sue to his former schoolteacher, Mr. Phillotson, whom she eventually is persuaded to marry, despite the fact that he is some twenty years her senior. However, she soon regrets this, because in addition to being in love with Jude, she is horrified by the notion of sex with her husband. Sue soon asks Phillotson for permission to leave him for Jude, which he grants, once he realizes how unwilling she is to fulfill what he believes are her marital duties to him. Because of this scandal—the fact Phillotson willingly allows his wife to leave for another man—Phillotson has to give up his career as a schoolmaster.

Sue and Jude spend some time living together without any sexual relationship. This is because of Sue's dislike both of sex and the institution of marriage. Soon after, Arabella reappears having fled her Australian husband, who managed a hotel in Sydney, and this complicates matters. Arabella and Jude divorce and she legally marries her bigamous husband, and Sue also is divorced. However, following this, Arabella reveals that she had a child of Jude's, eight months after they separated, and subsequently sends this child to his father. He is named Jude and nicknamed "Little Father Time" because of his intense seriousness and lack of humour.

Jude eventually convinces Sue to sleep with him and, over the years, they have two children together and expect a third. But Jude and Sue are socially ostracised for living together unmarried, especially after the children are born. Jude's employers dismiss him because of the illicit relationship, and the family is forced into a nomadic lifestyle, moving from town to town across Wessex seeking employment and housing before eventually returning to Christminster. Their socially troubled boy, "Little Father Time", comes to believe that he and his half-siblings are the source of the family's woes. The morning after their arrival in Christminster, he murders Sue's two children and kills himself by hanging. He leaves behind a note that simply reads, "Done because we are too menny." Shortly thereafter, Sue has a miscarriage.

Beside herself with grief and blaming herself for "Little Father Time"'s actions, Sue turns to the church that she has rebelled against and comes to believe that the children's deaths were divine retribution for her relationship with Jude. Although horrified at the thought of resuming her marriage with Phillotson, she becomes convinced that, for religious reasons, she should never have left him. Arabella discovers Sue's feelings and informs Phillotson, who soon proposes they remarry. This results in Sue leaving Jude once again for Phillotson, and she punishes herself by allowing her husband sex. Jude is devastated and remarries Arabella after she plies him with alcohol to once again trick him into marriage.

After one final, desperate visit to Sue in freezing weather, Jude becomes seriously ill and dies within the year in Christminster, thwarted in his ambitions both in love in achieving fame in scholarship. It is revealed that Sue has grown "staid and worn" with Phillotson. Arabella fails to mourn Jude's passing, instead setting the stage to ensnare her next suitor.

1) Character study of Jude and Sue Bridehead

         

Jude👦

Jude is the hero and the central character of the book, and his life is interconnected with that of all the other major and minor characters in the story. Hardy presents the protagonist as an ordinary, working-class man of humble origins struggling hard to realize his dreams but thwarted by a cruel fate and a pitiless, snobbish social system. Despite the resemblance to the hero of Greek tragedy (in his nobility of character), Jude, of all Hardy's characters can be said to come closest to a kind of Marxist literary hero. He is the outsider who is denied access to improvement and social advancement by a rigid, conservative class-system.

The reader first sees Jude as a child of eleven, hardworking, persevering, affectionate, gentle and extremely sensitive. Hardy develops certain traits in Jude's personality as he grows older: he displays a lifelong inability to hurt any living creature or to see it suffer, whether it be an earthworm, a pig, a horse, a rabbit or even his wife, Arabella. His vulnerability and essential gentleness lead him to be careless regarding his own survival.

Part of Jude's tragedy arises from his incurable idealism. As a child he is fascinated with Christminster. It is the focus of all his dreams, a shining ideal of intellectual life. But even though he realizes his ambitions may be futile, the university remains an obsession with him. Similarly, he idealizes Sue as the perfect intellectual woman, but here too he is disillusioned and frustrated. His obsession with Sue continues nevertheless. Both Christminster, the intellectual ideal, and Sue, the ideal of womanhood, promise fulfillment, and both frustrate him. All his hard work and earnest effort at mastering Greek and Latin come to nothing, and despite his great patience with Sue and devotion to her, he loses his job, his children and finally even his title as husband. His utter loneliness and desolation create a strong emotional impact on the reader. It is here that Jude, despite his humble working-class origins, rises to heroic stature. Very often in the book he is compared to heroic figures such as Job; he has, like Job, the ability to bear great suffering. He reconciles himself to the endless tragedies and disappointments of life. At the end of the novel, he matures as a man. With all the setbacks life deals him, he never loses his dignity. At two places in the novel, he is compared to Samson (Part I, Chapter 7 and Part VI, Chapter 7), defeated by his own innocence and a woman's cunning. Sue herself compares him to Joseph, to a "tragic Don Quixote" (Part IV, Chapter 1) and to St. Stephen "who while they were stoning him could see Heaven opened."

Jude's death at the young age of thirty (the approximate age of Jesus Christ at his death) indicates that he has been "crucified" by society. But even the flaws that contributed to his downfall are not really faults. If his sensitivity, kindness, sense of honor, naïveté and idealism are considered weaknesses, they are also his strengths. His only real weakness is a tendency to drink when in despair, although he is not a drunkard.His death in Christminster on Remembrance Day and his loneliness and desolation has a strange poignancy. The reader is left with a feeling of bitterness and waste at the ruin of a promising life.

•  Sue Bridehead👩

She is vivacious, friendly and yet refined. Hardy contrasts Sue with Arabella to represent the difference between the spirit and the flesh. Sue is often spoken of as "ethereal" and "aerial." Jude himself calls her, "you spirit, you disembodied creature, you dear, sweet, tantalizing phantom, hardly flesh at all..." (Part IV, Chapter 5). Even Phillotson remarks on the rather spiritual affinity between Sue and Jude as something "Shelleyan." Though in some ways Sue represents a free spirit struggling against an oppressive, conventional social order, in other ways Sue can be very conventionally Victorian, for instance, in her shrinking from the physical and in her aversion to sex. She refuses to live with Jude as his lover even after leaving Phillotson. She regards physical relations as repugnant. Furthermore, she sees marriage as a "sordid contract" and a "hopelessly vulgar" institution. It often seems that she is merely seeking excuses to postpone marriage. Her dislike of Arabella is revealed in her comment to Jude about her being a "fleshy and coarse" and a "low-passioned woman."

Yet with all her sensitivity and apparent fragility, there is in Sue a selfishness and a corresponding insensitivity to the feelings of others.Ther is Christminster undergraduate whose heart she broke, kind and decent Phillotson whose career she wrecks, and Jude, to whom she does great injury by undermining the beliefs which are essential to his well being. She utterly fails to realize the pain she inflicts on Jude with her wavering attitude. Jude is provoked to remark, "Sue, sometimes when I am vexed with you, I think you incapable of real love" (Part IV, Chapter 5). Despite all the sacrifices Jude has made for her, despite being free to marry him after her divorce, she will not make a commitment. Hardy captures Sue's quality of unpredictability and elusiveness. She buys nude statues of Greek divinities, then repents and conceals them from her landlady. She snaps irritably at Phillotson, then regrets it later. Sue is sometimes reckless and then diffident, stern and then kind, warm and then standoffish, candid and then evasive. In portraying these glimpses of Sue--her unceasing reversals, her changes of heart and mind, her conflicting behavior-- Hardy creates a complex, fascinating character. The reader sees her telling Jude, "You mustn't love me" (Part III, Chapter 5) and then writing to him, "you may." After her marriage she forbids Jude to come to see her (Part III, Chapter 9), and then she revokes the ban and invites him the next week. Later, she cancels the invitation (Part IV, Chapter 2). Hardy indicates that along with her changing moods, she has a tendency to shift ground under pressure.

Finally, when tragedy strikes in the violent deaths of the three children, Sue is seen breaking down under the strain and becoming a sick woman. She plunges into a state of tormenting guilt and remorse. The reader sees a personality distorted by the effort to bear terrible burdens and now blindly seeking a self-inflicted punishment.

                      Conclusion👈

The Jude the Obscure is one of the play by Thomas Hardy. The Moral of the play is that the main character could not achieve his goal because he want to become a scholar like his teacher Phillotson was in that position of  Scholar man.

  words:1800                                                                                                                Thanks😃