You're ahead of me there. Tess is the only other one I've read. I'm not surprised at anyone becoming enamored of his novels. He was a great storyteller, and he really made the English countryside seem real.
Thank you, Robert! I fell in love with Thomas Hardy when I read The Mayor of Casterbridge for high school English. What would have enamored my teenage self of Hardy's dark world, heaven only knows. In later years I went on to read Return of the Native, Far From the Madding Crowd, and maybe Tess--I'm not sure. Never got to Jude the Obscure, so maybe it's finally time to take it up!
Little Father Time's comment is pretty existential, but the work taken as a whole is typical naturalism. Forces outside Jude's control beat down his effort to better himself. That's the sort of thing you find in some works by Jack London, John Steinbeck, or Emile Zola.
Now we're talking about the meaning rather than the experience—preferable when the experience makes one want to throw the book in the trash, or worse, light it on fire to keep warm in a snow storm.
You're ahead of me there. Tess is the only other one I've read. I'm not surprised at anyone becoming enamored of his novels. He was a great storyteller, and he really made the English countryside seem real.
Thank you, Robert! I fell in love with Thomas Hardy when I read The Mayor of Casterbridge for high school English. What would have enamored my teenage self of Hardy's dark world, heaven only knows. In later years I went on to read Return of the Native, Far From the Madding Crowd, and maybe Tess--I'm not sure. Never got to Jude the Obscure, so maybe it's finally time to take it up!
So, is it pre or early existentialism?
Little Father Time's comment is pretty existential, but the work taken as a whole is typical naturalism. Forces outside Jude's control beat down his effort to better himself. That's the sort of thing you find in some works by Jack London, John Steinbeck, or Emile Zola.
Now we're talking about the meaning rather than the experience—preferable when the experience makes one want to throw the book in the trash, or worse, light it on fire to keep warm in a snow storm.