Jude the Obscure : 新しい女と翻弄される男(岡田章子教授退任記念号)

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The term "New Woman", coined in 1894 by feminist novelist Sarah Grant(1854_1943), described a social and literary type that emerged in the 1880s. It referred to a woman who embodied many of the new ideas about female independence, but, while often equated with feminism, it defined a style of living rather than a political perspective. The typical New Woman was middle class but worked for a living, often at a job newly opened to women. She insisted on sexual freedom and eschewed marriage as imprisoning, engaged in physical exercise, smoked and drank openly, advocated dress reform, and even men's clothes. To antifeminist critics this figure epitomized the horrors of emancipation in her forthright speech, unladylike behavior, and constant demands for independence; for feminists she often emblematized the freedom for which they were struggling, although some were alarmed at the emphasis on sexuality and her apparent promiscuity. Influenced by realism and naturalism, the novelists incorporated into their works the contradictions and changes in women's lives, often emphasizing the apparently conflicting pressures of independence, sexuality, and love. Hardy's portrait of Sue Bridehead in Jude the Obscure (1895) typifies serious treatment in many ways. Sue's insistence on autonomy, her disregard for social conventions, and her refusal to marry Jude reflect the New Woman's quest for independence, while her sexual coldness suggests the neurotic component many writers saw as central. Jude the Obscure tells how the intellectual aspirations of Jude Fawley, a South Wessex villager, are thwarted by a sensuous temperament, lack of character, and the play of circumstances. Early in life, while he is supporting his passion for learning by work as a stonemason, he is entangled in a love-affair with Arabella Donn, and entrapped into marrying her. She presently deserts him and he resumes his studies, and aims at becoming a priest. But he falls in love with his cousin, Sue Bridehead, a vivacious intelligent young school-teacher. She marries an elderly school-master, Phillotson. Though Jude tries to suppress his passion for Sue, he hovers about her, and presently Sue, driven by physical repulsion, leaves Phillotson and flies to Jude, and their guilty connection debars Jude from hope of the priesthood. Though they become free to marry as result of divorce from their respective spouses, Sue shrinks from this step. Their children perish by a tragic fate, and Sue in an agony of remorse and self-abasement returns to Phillotson. The cause of the tragedy of Jude is that Sue, the new woman, cannot continue being a new woman and returns to Phillotson because she feels the punishment of God. Hardy represents that a poor and workingclass man is tossed about by marriage and dies in isolation by showing the tragedy of Jude.
2010-03-19

Jude the Obscure : 新しい女と翻弄される男(岡田章子教授退任記念号)

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