The Meaning of Places in Jude the Obscure

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Hardy says in 'Preface' to Jude the Obscure, "Like former productions of this pen, Jude the Obscure is simply an endeavour to give shape and coherence to a series of seemings, or personal impressions, the question of their consistency or their discordance, of their permanence or their transitoriness, being regarded as not of the first moment."1) This impressionistic statement seems to have influenced some critics' judgments of the work in a negative way, as Hardy's last novels, especially Jude the Obscure, have been largely observed to evince increasingly personal and aesthetically undisciplined meditations or attacks on human fate and certain social institutions. For Carl Weber, Jude the Obscure is simply an unconstrained propaganda. He says, "If Hardy failed, as he did, it was not because the novel, as an art-form, is unfitted to bring about social reform; it was because Hardy's aim was too sweeping, his skill too defective, and--it must be admitted--his artistic control too frenzied."2) And Arthur Mizener disapproves of the quality of Jude the Obscure as a tragedy because "Hardy never really posed for himself the question on how the meaning of his impressions could be coherent without being consistent."3) He blames Hardy's too personal involvement in the novel, which renders the author's doctrines the only test of value, for the failure of the novel as a tragedy.