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Jude Fawley dreams of becoming a scholar, but the detours and prejudices of life take him down a very different path.
I expected Jude the Obscure
to be tragic, but holy cow! And can a person, with his or her modern sensibilities, read this without wanting to slap Jude and Sue silly? The trashy, self-serving Arabella ironically seems the most reasonable person of them all.That makes it sound like I didn't like the book, but that is not so. Setting those initial snarky observations aside, the book was infectious. I didn't enjoy it in a, "Wow! This is so good!" manner. It was more of a, "Wow. I've done things just that stupid" manner. I could see a younger me in the angst and unrequited "love", in the grandiose dreams and seemingly unforgiving reality. While I didn't get sentimental about any of the characters, their trials still got under my skin and I felt sorry for them. And I'm really glad I got at least a little smarter with age. ;-)
