Intrigue, murder and suicide: by all accounts, Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure was a complete and terrible shock to religiously conservative readers of the late 19th century, and that's exactly what he meant. After all, they were the very people he was trying to criticize. Through the alienation of female protagonist Sue Bridehead, both self-imposed and externally inflicted, Hardy criticizes the servile and stoic nature of the society his era had created; women were slaves to men, all were slaves to God, yet none were slaves to love. Furthermore, it uses the deterioration of Sue's mental condition to show the consequential effects that such rigid cultural standards have on all those who are forced to live under them. Perhaps Hardy thought his work would inspire contemporary readers to break their own chains and avoid a similar fate, or perhaps he simply wanted to write a scathing commentary on accepted Victorian morality. In any case, Jude the Obscure is certainly an effective tool to convey his message. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayThe idea that a person who has fallen on hard times might be unwelcome in his parents' home would be unimaginable to many, but not to Sue Bridehead, who said of a similar situation: "...I returned to Christminster, as my father [...] didn't want me to come back" (Hardy 119). Why? What happened between her and her father to taint their relationship? Although it has never been stated directly, Sue shows signs of a woman who was sexually abused as a child. For starters, she has an innate desire to know that men find her attractive: "...how I feel that I should not have received attractiveness unless it was meant to be exercised! Some women's love of being loved is insatiable. .." (169). However, at the same time, she is completely disgusted by the idea of ​​intimacy, even jumping out of a window to avoid a situation where she feels she might be forced to have intercourse with Phillotson: "Before he had thought that she meant to do more than take air had climbed onto the windowsill and jumped out" (189). These two attributes combine to torment the men Sue has affairs with, but in many cases she seems to enjoy exacting such pain. In an earlier period of his life, he even stayed with a man for fifteen months, in the tantalizing privacy of his living room, despite being well aware that his unrequited love for her was slowly killing him: "He said I was breaking his heart holding it against him so long at such close range; he could never have believed that I could play that game one time too many, he said" (127). Finally, he is also prone to mood swings, once telling Jude that he must not love her, but then almost immediately replies, "If you want to love me Jude, you can: I don't mind at all; and I will never say again that you must not." !" (141). Indeed, the evidence for a traumatic childhood is staggering, but what may not be immediately obvious is Hardy's purpose in writing it. That is, of course, until one realizes that what Sue experienced is actually a metaphor for, and indictment of, society's treatment of women. Like victims of abuse, women were not seen as real people with thoughts, feelings, and opinions, but simply as objects to satisfy the needs of those who had power over them. In this case, this meant taking care of domestic affairs and indulging the sexual desires of husbands in a patriarchal country. Therefore, Sue's constant attempts to alienate her?