Jude the Obscure における霊と死のイメージ群:精神と身体の相克

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  • Ghostly Images and Death Images in Jude the Obscure : A Struggle between Mind and Body
  • Jude the Obscure ニ オケル レイ ト シ ノ イメージグン : セイシン ト シンタイ ノ ソウコク

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Jude the Obscure is Thomas Hardy's last novel. It is about the tragedy of the failure of marriage and sexual relationships. Jude Fawley and Sue Bridehead, the protagonists of the story, both wreck of their way of life and marriage through sexual emotion and cultural repression regarding sex. For them, therefore, sex and gender are always problematized. Their bodies, especially, become a fatal problem, because the presence of the body is the cause of impulsive sexual emotion and the gender code which binds them. Jude and Sue have negative emotions towards the presence of body and try to achieve an ideal comradeship without bodily sexual emotion or a sexual relationship. To have such a relationship, they are in conflict with instinctive impulses within their bodies and the gender code within their culture. Whenever they suffer and think about their ambition, particular images repetitiously appear around them. These are images of ghosts, specters, and deities, which have no physical body, and images of death. This, no doubt, is symbolical expression. And it indicates not only their hidden emotion of body and sex, when they are in conflict and suffering, but also suggests the hidden meaning of their ideal comradeship. This negative emotions about the body and their ideal thought seem to be generated from the relationship between the characters : it comes from the relationship between Jude and Phillotson, or the triangular relationship between Jude, Phillotson and Sue. Here, focusing on symbolical images, which imply the internal movement of characters, and the relationships between the characters which generate their sexual emotions or ambitions, I would like to consider the meaning of their experimental action to achieve an ideal comradeship in conflict with culture and society. In the web of relationships which generate sexual emotion and negative feelings about the body, Richard Phillotson, Jude's teacher, has an important position. He is a stimulus, not only to Jude's internal emotion but also to Sue's. He brings to Jude's mind an obsession about admission to university, a longing for higher education and sexual emotion. Jude admires of him as an ideal model for his life. For Jude, he is recognized as a holy intellectual spirit that should be his ideal model. Phillotson as an ideal being, therefore, is represented with the images of a spirit or deadman. Jude imitates Phillotson's desire to be admitted to university. At the same time, he attempts to be an equivalent being to him. For being so, he desires to be a spiritual being. He, therefore, often forgets his bodily presence, and indulges himself in fancy as if he has become a spiritual being without a body. Therefore, it could be said that Phillotson is the cause of Jude's ambition and fanciful personality. However, when the schoolmaster marries Sue, the marriage causes him to be envious of Phillotson. This is an emotion derived from his masculine desire to have Sue. He has also function to stimulate his sexual emotion. As a consequence, he has experiences conflict between his ideal vision and sexual emotion. Meanwhile his presence makes Sue aware of the sexual repression which assaults her. He demands that she be a proper lady or have a sexual relationship with him. As a result, she inevitably feels gender restriction and has a negative emotion for the brutal sexual emotion directed toward her. As a reaction to such restrictions, she takes characteristic action. To escape from it, she throws herself from a window. This suicidal action is a symbolical action. Throwing herself from window implies her subconscious will to negate her own body. As the body is an object of sexual desire and gender restriction, she attempts to erase it to gain her freedom. This curious action which evokes suicide and death, indicates such will. Phillotson, thus, is the cause of her rebellious action and negative thoughts about sex. In the same way, Phillotson is the stimulus for their ideal ambition and suffering of sexual emotion. Due to his presence they have known conflict and suffering regarding sex and gender. As well as this, a negative emotion for the body and ideals transcending the body are generated from him. And their desire to negate their bodies is represented with ghostly images and deathlike images. The ghostly images and images of death represent their negative emotion. But this has another meaning, which is discovered by the relationship between Jude, Sue and Little Father Time, their stepchild. Jude and Sue feel sympathy for each other. They attempt to live together without being married legally and without a sexual relationship. This, however, is hard to achieve. Finally, they can't resist such an instinctive desire, have a sexual relations and as a result, children. They have contradicted heir ideal. But they still insist on having an ideal. By adopting Little Father Time, Jude and Sue attempt to achieve a new ideal bond which is not based on a sexual relationship and blood relations, which is derived from sex, but a philanthropic ideal. However they pursue this ideal, so long as they have children who were born as a consequence of sex, they cannot escape from the contradiction. Therefore, they, are recognized as anomalous beings, and excluded from society by the presence of children and their lack of legal position. Little Father Time is quite sensitive to this fact. He thinks his presence and that of Jude and Sue's children, who were born by nature's law [sexual relations and sexual impulse] as the cause of their suffering and social exclusion which they have to endure. Thus, kills the children and then himself for Jude and Sue. This is the most disgusting scene in the novel. But his murder-suicide is derived from his love for his stepparents. Ironically, the ideal bond which Jude and Sue have always pursued is fulfilled at the hands of Little Father Time, the adopted child. He represents their ideals and thoughts. But his disgusting action exposes the risk of the ideal they have pursued : to negate the body and sexual emotion, and to have an ideal bond leads to the possibility of negating life itself, if taken to an extreme. The symbolical image of the bodiless ghost or images of death, which had appeared around Jude and Sue, metaphorically predict this possibility and risk. Thus, while the images of ghosts and death indicate Jude and Sue's negative emotions for the body, it also indicates the negative aspect of their ideal and its danger. And moreover, the text of the novel, by showing the negative aspect within the pursuit of an ideal, and the intolerance of a society which could not accept their relationship and exclude them as an anomalous beings, seems to ask readers to consider what society and culture should be like.

収録刊行物

  • 英米評論

    英米評論 (27), 65-95, 2013-03-27

    桃山学院大学

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