![]() ![]() Jude sees his son’s suicide as symbolic of an impending universal death wish, and he mournfully reassures Sue that she could not have averted the tragedy. Located near Father Time’s body is a note with the victim’s last words: “Done because we are too menny.” The suicide letter reveals the boy’s belief that his father, Jude Fawley, and stepmother, Sue Bridehead, would be better off without the children, who only add to the couple’s woes in a Malthusian world. As if the boy’s suicide is not terrible enough, Hardy has him hang his younger half-brother and half-sister, the three children suspended from closet hooks. ![]() Little Father Time’s suicide in Jude the Obscure (1895) is the turning point of a novel demonstrating the cruelty that pervades nature and society. Ashoka’s book that explores self-love in the works of Thomas Hardy, in his erudite research, in the weekly column. We serialise a chapter, in eight parts, from Prof. More importantly, Father Time’s actions foreshadow the murderous impulses culminating in Sue’s grim return to her former husband, Richard Phillotson, and Jude’s own self-destruction. However artistically contrived Father Time’s ending may be, the fictional suicide reveals many of the characteristics of real-life suicides. ![]() Jude the Obscure remains one of the most psychologically rich novels in our language, as the published criticism confirms. ![]()
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