Jude the Obscure (Hardy, 1895)

General

• 9 again deep time and history in the landscape obscured by agriculture partly - also narratorial distance, the reflection on deep time is for the narrator "but this neither Jude nor the rooms around him considered"
• 56

And so, standing before the aforesaid officiator, the two swore that at every other time of their lives till death took them, they would assuredly believe, feel, and desire precisely as they had believed, felt, and desired during the preceding weeks. What was as remarkable as the undertaking itself was the fact that nobody seemed at all surprised at what they swore.

• 80-3 patternless set of intellectual statues and quotations from a book prioritizing Jude's experience of them rather than their total meaning - tied to Hardy's method (apparently) of "a series of seemings"?
• 93 wonderful description of the fated feeling of happenstance

Theme tracking

Reading/Writing

• 23ff the Greek and Latin grammars Jude so desperately wants
• ch I.5 has some interesting passages about Jude's reading
• and ch. 7 on the inverse relationship between Jude's scholarly interests and his attraction to Arabella. All too familiar.
• 80-3 patternless set of intellectual statues and quotations from a book prioritizing Jude's experience of them rather than their total meaning - tied to Hardy's method (apparently) of "a series of seemings"?

Materiality

• 6 the overlapping of historical periods and faiths in the material appearance of the churchyard - it's inclusion in the scene with young Jude and Phillotson reminiscent of the scene situating the aunt and uncle's parlor in deep history in Mill on the Floss
• 57 Jude's sickness at Arabella's fake hair: worldliness vs artificiality
• 72 finding his portrait at the pawnbroker's shop when himarriage to Arabella falls apart: "The utter death of every tender sentiment in his wife...was the conclusive little stroke required to demolish all sentiment in him" (and he subsequently buys and burns the photograph)
• 96 the statue images of venus and Apollo Sue buys