Theme of Education in JUDE THE OBSCURE:
The theme of
education plays a major role in Hardy’s last novel Jude the Obscure. Right from the start, the protagonist Jude is
shown to be aspiring for higher
education in universities, despite being the apprentice of a stone mason.
The novel courses, among many other issues, his pursuit of this dream, finally
showing his failure to achieve it. But the fault is shown not to lie within
him, but the society, in the very institution of education, which, rather than
helping out people like Jude, rejects them, regardless of their troubles to get
so far. Colleges and Universities are shown to pay more attention to the class
of the student, rather than his merit. Its not too hard to envision the role
education plays in this novel, when one discovers that one of its major
settings is a city renowned for its famous university- Christminister.
Hardy
highlights many kinds of education in Jude the Obscure. Most obviously, we have Jude's desire to get a university
degree and become an academic. However, Hardy also emphasizes the importance of experiential education, because Jude
is inexperienced with women and with social situations more generally, he is
especially susceptible to Arabella's seduction. In the novel, the level of traditional education one
reaches is closely tied to the class system, and if someone from Jude's
class wants to learn, they must teach themselves. Although the narrator seems
to admire Jude's willingness to teach himself, he also points out the limits of
auto didacticism, noting that despite Jude's near-constant studies, he cannot
hope to compete on the university entrance exam against richer men who have
hired tutors.
In the first
two parts of the book, the focus is on
Jude, a working-class boy firmly attempting to educate himself. He struggles patiently to realize his dream
of a university education but is thwarted by a cruel fate and rigid,
conservative social order. Jude teaches himself the classics, Latin, Greek,
and much more in the hopes that he will one day be able to further his
education in the proper setting: college.
When one
examines Hardy's presentation of the university and Jude's efforts to enter it,
two main views become apparent. Jude's
view is the romantic and illusory one, the society’s view is realistic, hence
hard and unmerciful. As a child, he was always fascinated with
Christminster (representing Oxford). He
sees it as a "city of light," where "the tree of knowledge
grows"; it is like "a castle manned by scholarship and
religion." Even years later, when he realizes his ambitions are futile, Christminster remains a shining ideal of
intellectual life, "the intellectual and spiritual granary of this
country." Broken and beaten by
life, Jude still retains his attachment to the place and returns, wishing to
die there.
Sue adopts a
different standpoint. She does not share
his romantic ideals and viciously attacks Christminster as an "ignorant
place, full of fetishists and ghost seers" (Part III, Chapter 4) and a "nest of common schoolmasters"
with a "timid obsequiousness to tradition" (Part V, Chapter 8).
Its intellectual life is dismissed as "new wine in old bottles" (Part
III, Chapter 4). She however is able to take a two years teacher’s training at
the end of which she hopes to join a school, which will at least guarantee her
economic freedom. Her institutional
education is at a much higher level than of Jude.
Phillotson's
view on the institution of education is
rather plain. He is the ordinary,
unassuming schoolmaster of Marygreen, but it is he who inspires Jude within the
desire to go on to the university. He moves off to Christminster, and it is
there that he marries Sue. However, his unconventional but kind attitude of
letting Sue go back to Jude gets a lot of criticism from other teachers, including
the chairman of the school committee. He
is also sacked from the very educational institution he taught in, for his
inability to keep his wife 'chained' under control. Thus the attitude of
the educated class here is criticised in
the sense that instead of a broader mindset, they are still narrow and clinging
on to old traditions.
Jude is not wanted at
Christminster, and often Hardy describes the gloom of the university city in
unfavorable terms:
"the rottenness of the stones--it
seemed impossible that modern thought could house itself in such decrepit and
superseded chambers" (Part II, Chapter 1). In Part VI, Chapter 2 the
"gloom, bigotry and day" of the place are stressed. The curt note from the master of the
Biblical College, where he had written for admission, crushing Jude's hopes,
emphasizes the loneliness of Jude's struggle. He is advised to remain in
his own sphere and stick to his own trade, i.e, that of a stone mason, if he is
to expect more chances of success in life. Neither
does he have the money to get into a big institution, nor does he have the
brilliancy to get a full scholarship. Thus his dream of becoming a scholar,
a professor, remains unfulfilled.
Hardy criticizes social and educational structures which are so rigid
and orthodox that someone like Jude, bright, hard-working, but lacking in
means, is permanently expelled from the academic scene. Hardy wants to emphasize that Jude will always
remain an outsider, denied access to improvement, not because of lack of ability,
but because of his social class. The end of the book underlines this isolation
with the bitter a picture of Jude on his death bed, lying alone, while the
revelry of Remembrance Day occurs outside. 