Hardy Shakes Up Critics

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Hardy Shakes Up the Critics In the novel Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, Jude is the typical working class boy who dreams of being more than just a working class citizen. He is inspired by a schoolmaster by the name of Richard Phillotson. Jude longs to travel to Christminster and be a scholar at the college. Hardy uses Victorian views of social class, education, and marriage to cause chaos throughout Jude’s life and critique people’s views on these topics. He not only uses views of others to hold back Jude but creates a complex chain of events to destroy any opportunity of being successful. Many critics of his time were offended by Hardy’s book, and it received horrendous reviews for contesting the norms of modern society at that time. Jude grew up an orphan living with his aunt in a small working class town. At this time working class children were not exposed to school or any education. They usually followed the footsteps of their fathers and took up their father’s profession. Jude wanted more than to just be a stonemason or work a normal working class job. He had a different way of thinking than other people of his class. He wanted to study and become a scholar at the University in Christminster. Jude wished to move up in the world and be more than just a nobody. He wanted to advance his social status which did not happen in that time period. People did not change social classes and usually accepted what they were born into. Jude’s dreams of going to Christminster and attending the college are seen as unrealistic and unattainable by others around him. Hardy used Jude to suggest the idea of a working class citizen being able to move up in society and have an equal opportunity as others from the upper class. This did not sit well with the critics of that time. It was not normal for an individual to try to do such a thing. Back in the Victorian Age only the
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