Types of Obscurity in Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure and ...

Damascus University Journal, Vol.28 No.1, 2012Sabbar S. SultanThe obscurity then lies in this particular side of Thomas's characterand his vague relationship with Anne and its ramifications. It is not onlythe split ego that emerges to the forefront in Thomas's thinking, but thephysical and psychological presence and absence as well .Indeed most ofthe arguments Blanchot presents in his critical analyses have theirconvenient space in this novel. A character of Thomas's hypersensitivenature is fit to articulate the deep philosophical ideas the novel aboundswith. Here Blanchot could explore the intriguing questions of life anddeath, the overlapping between the two in addition to the intricatequestion of the meaning of existence,' Death was a crudemetamorphosis beside the indescribable nullitywhich Inevertheless coupled with the name Thomas' (p.97).Inanother situation following Anne's death, Thomas talks about this thestriking state of ambivalence where death can be a new life or life-indeath,Her face, more beautiful from one instant to the next was constructingher absence. There was not a single part of her which was still the propof any sort of reality. It was, then, when her story and the story of herdeath had faded away together and there was no one left in the worldto name Anne, that she attained the moment of immortality innothingness, in which what has ceased to be enters into a thoughtlessdream.(p.91)The pursuit of the ephemeral and evanescent in the conception andawareness of the human experience bestows upon the novel a distincttouch. The psychological manifestations of the ' obscurity 'of the title canbe shown in the following excerpt when Thomas is given the vantagepointof psychoanalyzing his innermost drives,' My existence becameentirely that of an absent person, who, in every act I performed, producedthe same act and did not perform it'(p.100). Interestingly, Thomasperceives keenly his own ' strangeness' or obscurity as the hallmark of hisown personality,' I was like her. My strangeness had as its cause all thatwhich made me not seem strange to her'(p.100).Rarely does the author present plausible or logical reasoning forThomas's alienation. The reason behind this, as far as one can guess, isthat this fiction is not primarily concerned with the outside reality and its137