Jude the Obscure

One of the main concerns of the novel is education, partly because the latter is the principal means for social mobility, and partly because the opportunities in the field were restricted, in the latter part of 19th century, in order to protect the already crowded middle-class professions. Jude's educational hardships, and desperate attempts to enter Christminister symbolize the struggle of a whole class back then; a class that strove towards education in order to better its status, and yet was crushed under the weight of a costly training it could not afford. Another central theme in the novel is marriage. The book illustrates the unhappy unions of the era by means of that of Jude and Arabella. Hardy focuses here on the absence of divorce as a way out of such domestic difficulties, and emphasizes the social hypocrisy of a community that favored a life-time of misery and unhappiness under such fake ties, and preferred it to a loving relationship outside of it like that of Jude and Sue. The book also dwells on the limited opportunities of women in a male-dominated society. The two female characters in the text illustrate the only two courses which were available for their sex. On the one hand, Arabella represents the faction of women who found in marriage the only way out of financial difficulties. On the other hand, Sue represents the New Women who chose economical independence by seeking a professional career and nurturing new unconventional ideas. The novel follows Hardy's tradition of tossing his main characters into the vortex of an indifferent universe, for no matters how Jude had tried to overcome his hardships, the world seemed to go against him which emphasizes the meaninglessness of life and suffering in a philosophical reading of the story.