Research Paper on:
Analysis of Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

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The convenience of rail travel, the new styles of architecture, the questioning of cultural mores and institutions, all point towards a society moving rapidly into the twentieth century and  modernity. Yet, Hardys narrative is also inextricably linked to the past, and there is a great deal in the story to suggest that the past cannot be easily or lightly  left behind. Hardy accomplishes this task through his use of personal history to caution against a na?ve sense of the modern. Throughout the novel, Hardy indicates that Jude, with his  fixation on studying for the ministry at Christminster, is not seeing his world realistically. Early on, it occurs to Jude as he stands in the stone yard that his  work there is as "dignified" as any conducted in the "name of scholarly study win the noblest of colleges" (Hardy, 2002). But, he also immediately loses this illumination under the  "stress of his old idea" and resolves to accept employment as a stonemason only as provisional measure. Hardy comments that "This was his form of the modern vice of unrest"  (2002). Jude is a na?ve youth at the beginning of the novel and retains much of his idealism and naivet? throughout the novel. He nurtures his quest for scholarly study  at Christminster in much the same manner as a knight with the Holy Grail. Hardy comments that Jude did not see that "mediaevalism was as dead as a fern-leaf  in a lump of coal," nor did he perceive the "deadly animosity of contemporary logic and vision towards so much of what he held in reverence" (Hardy, 2002). Repeatedly, throughout  the narrative, Hardy points to instances where the old and historical is being demolished to make way for the new. For example, in Marygreen, Judes village, the well-shaft was