Fiction

A great novel exists on many levels, and Jude the Obscure is no exception. It is at once a bitter attack on Victorian morality, institutionalized religion, and social and economic injustices, as well as a penetrating study of the subtle and intricate relationship between man and woman. Thomas Hardy is no systemic philosopher. In fact, his philosophical lubrications — inspired by his reading in Greek tragedy and Darwin's Origin of Species — impede the flow of his charged novel. Hardy is at his...