BOOK NOTICES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2230, 26 November 1896, Page 44

BOOK NOTICES.

JUDE THE OBSCURE. Br Thomas Hardy. nondon : Macmillan and Co., Limited. Dunedin : J. Horsburgb.

One lays this book down with tbe conviction that the famous novelist has for once missed bis aim. He intended to write a novel setting forth the mental struggles and eventual triumph of a, woman who was honestly convinced that the formal marriage ceremony was a degrading compact — a license, in fact, authorising a woman to live with a man, but one in which all her individuality was ignored, and by which she was placed in servitude ; and he has given us a wayward and emotionally fickle creature who, as one of the characters observes, ought to be soundly smacked. He designed a man born in the lowest rank of peasant life, yet cursed with an individuality and consumed with a desire for learning that would have carried him to the topmost heights had not the doors of tbe university been closed against him by the blind prejudices of its authorities, and we find portrayed a rather weak and emotional person, who when he meets with any disappointment goes and gets vulgarly drunk, and who commits with the most perfect coolness outrages against morality. The afory briefly iv to tbe Jollowinc: efiaob i— Jude Fawley, the peasant

before referred to, is inveigled into a marriage with a vulgar trull. The courtship begins by the girl hitting Jude on the face with " the characteristic part of a barrow pig," and it culminates in an epiiode reminiscent of Venus and Adonis. They are married, and the woman soon forsakes Jude, who then betakes himself to the university town and obtains work as a stone outter. He there meets Sue Bridehead, and they mutually fall in love. She is at a training college, but compromises herself by spending the night (innocently enough) at Jade's lodgings, having waded a river to reach him, and appearing before him with her wet dress clinging to her form and revealing every outline. Loving Jude she marries Fhillotson, Jade's earliest teacher and her benefactor, though much her senior, bnt she insists on the marriage being one in name only. Pbillotson is a sohool teacher, and eventually consents to Sue leaving him for Jade. For this he loses his situation. Sue intends to maintain platonic relations with Jade; but his first wife appears on the sdene from Australia, and Sue's fortitude gives way under the pressure of rivalry. The married couples are divorced, and Sue and Jade are free to marry. But Sac's objections ■ are hard to subdue, as she prefers free love to formal marriage, and they make several attempts to have the ceremony performed, only to lose their courage at tho last' moment. Eventually Sue repents of her treatment of Fhillotson and rejoins him, is remarried to him, and punishes herself by the assumption of wedded responsibilities. Jude is also remarried to bis first wife, beiDg again inveigled into tbe connection— this time by being made drunk— but very conveniently, contracts a severe cold and dies. The book can only be called a sordid one. There is only one character in it endowed with even a modicum of common sense, and his advice is disregarded. The principal characters move about in a oonstant whirlwind of passion. The fault is, in faofr, that they are overdrawn, and instead of a picture in bold relief and one whioh would truly reveal to as the working of tbe mind of a female of tbe advanced type and the consequences of her aocion upon the men with whom she comes in contact we hive a nightmare. Mr Hardy has irretrievably injured his high reputation.