H05071 SOURCE OF NAME "JUDE" -9/3/05 - HARDY FORUM ARCHIVES ____________________________________________________________________________
From: J.L.Pearce@exeter.ac.uk
Subject: St Jude
Date: September 3, 2005 5:57:46 AM PDT
I have just read that St Jude is the patron saint of lost causes. Is it
possible that Hardy might have known this? It certainly lends an added
poignancy to the novel
Jess Pearce
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From: hardycor@owl.csusm.edu
Subject: Re: St Jude
Date: September 3, 2005 7:24:57 AM PDT
Hi Jess,
I have just finished reading M. Millgate's *TH: A Biography Revisited* so
the following passage on page 321 was fresh in my mind. Here are
Millgate's thoughts on the naming of Jude:
"Jude seems,in the manuscript, to have been first called Jack, with a
possible glance towards John Antell. The status of Jude as the patron
saint of lost causes was doubtless in Hardy's mind when making the change,
and since he had on his shelves a copy of Charlotte M. Yonge's then
standard *History of Christian Names* he evidently chose the hero's name in
full consciousness of the ill-omened similarity to Judas Iscariot, Indeed
he drew deliberately upon that association in establishing from the first
the sense of his hero as doomed to perpetual homelessness and pariah-hood."
I guess we will never know the actual reason for Hardy's choice, but your
conjecture is certainly interesting.
Betty Cortus
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From: wesspix1@btinternet.com
Subject: Re: St Jude
Date: September 3, 2005 2:35:29 PM PDT
It was apparently because of the similarity of the names that poor old Jude didn't get any proper causes to be a patron of. The idea being that the devout, in offering their prayers, didn't like to petition St Jude Thaddeus in case the heavenly post office accidentally redirected them to Judas Iscariot. So if a prayer was offered to Jude, it had to be really serious, and all the other saints had to have failed. Hence desperate causes.
The biblical Epistle of Jude is sometimes attributed to this Jude (sometimes instead to Judas the brother of Jesus). Its main theme is perseverance under persecution - something Jude Fawley may have associated with.
Gary Alderson
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From: hardycor@owl.csusm.edu
Subject: Re: St Jude
Date: September 5, 2005 11:37:54 AM PDT
Getting back to lost causes, coincidentally I was just now reading Hardy's
letter to Florence Hennicker dated 10 Nov. 1895, in which he identifies for
her the names of a list of philosophers cited in *Jude the Obscure* II i,
whose writings spring into the protagonist's mind as he meditates on
Christminster. Jude speaks of one of these "spectres" who mourned this
city (Oxford) as "the home of lost causes." In the letter Hardy names
Matthew Arnold as the originator of this remark.
I'm not sure if this would imply that Arnold's words played any part in
influencing the naming of the character Jude--but it is a thought. Does
anyone know where Arnold said this? I would like to see it in context.
Betty Cortus
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From: gary.alderson@btinternet.com
Subject: Re: St Jude
Date: September 5, 2005 11:57:43 AM PDT
According to my Oxford Book of Quotations, it's from "Essays in Criticism" First Series (1865) - preface (of Oxford).
"Beautiful city! so venerable, so lovely, so unravaged by the fierce intellectual life of our century, so serene! ... whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age... Home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties!"
Looking at this quotation, it strikes me the place hadn't changed that much by the time I was there...
Jude was presumably an unpopular name?
Gary Alderson
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From: hardycor@owl.csusm.edu
Subject: Re: St Jude
Date: September 5, 2005 12:26:05 PM PDT
Thanks so much Gary for this. Interestingly enough I can almost imagine
Jude echoing these sentiments.
Betty
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From: patrick@prassociates.co.uk
Subject: RE: St Jude
Date: September 5, 2005 12:49:18 PM PDT
"Jude seems,in the manuscript, to have been first called Jack, with a
possible glance towards John Antell."
There is an interesting parallel in the title of the famous Beatles song
'Hey Jude'. As with TH's Jude this was not the first choice of name:
"Originally titled 'Hey Julian' it later developed to 'Hey Jules' then
finally 'Hey Jude' because it was thought Jude was a stronger sounding
name." It was written by Paul McCartney for five-year old son of John &
Cynthia Lennon at the time of their divorce.
I cannot help wondering if Paul McCartney knew about some of the
implications of the name Jude.
Patrick Roper
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From: segr@segr-music.net
Subject: RE: St Jude
Date: September 5, 2005 1:12:36 PM PDT
Well, what are the "lyrics" of this famous song?
Could they give us some idea of Sir Paul's
source of inspiration(destined for the five-year-old)?
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From: gary.alderson@btinternet.com
Subject: Re: St Jude
Date: September 5, 2005 2:00:29 PM PDT
Well you could say that "Don't carry the world upon your shoulders" could apply to Jude F as well as Julian Lennon. But I don't think the Beatles were issuing a commentary on Jude the Obscure.
Gary Alderson
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From: patrick@prassociates.co.uk
Subject: RE: St Jude
Date: September 6, 2005 1:28:04 AM PDT
The history and lyrics of this song (Hey Jude) are on this web site:
http://www.iamthebeatles.com/article1172.html
Paul McCartney has, I believe, a Roman Catholic background and may have been
aware that Jude was the patron saint of lost causes. There was also a St
Jude's Church in Hardwick Street, Liverpool, which was closed in 1965 three
years before Hey Jude was recorded and he may have been conscious albeit
subliminally of this 'lost cause'.
Whether or not he was aware of Jude the Obscure I have no way of telling but
it is not outside the bounds of possibility.
Patrick Roper
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From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: RE: St Jude
Date: September 6, 2005 4:27:42 AM PDT
St Jude as patron saint of Lost Causes was much lauded during my conventual days in the 1950s. No inmate of my generation escaped him. Reverend Mother even gave me a St Jude pendant to wear following first sentence of expulsion (no reflection on St Jude but I'm afraid his spell didn't work).
Best
Rosemarie
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From: nhardyboy@aol.com
Subject: Re: St Jude
Date: September 6, 2005 8:07:11 AM PDT
The number of origins for Jude's name is, apparently, legion. The connection to "Hey, Jude" is a new one to me, though, and now I'm tempted to see Hardyan parallels in "Obla-Di, Obla-Da." "Desmond has a barrow in the market place / Molly was a singer with a band / Desmond says to Molly, 'Girl, I like your face' / And she sings this as she takes him by the hand. . ." What is more Hardy-like than the simple working man smitten with the glamorous and seemingly unobtainable woman? Dick and Fancy, Gabriel and Bathsheba, Giles and Grace, Desmond and Molly--it all fits!
But, seriously, another possible meaning in the name is that "Jude" is the German word for Jew, and Mr. Fawley has often been compared to the Wandering Jew of legend. Personally, I feel one of the best readings of the significance of Jude's name is Richard Nemesvari's "Appropriating the Word: _Jude the Obscure_ as Subversive Apocrypha" (Victorian Review 19.2, 1993, 48-66), which draws parallels to the apocryphal Book of Jude, a version of the Gospel that stands outside the accepted texts.
Now to find Hardy references in "Why Don't We Do It In the Road". . .
Best,
Paul Niemeyer
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From: patrick@prassociates.co.uk
Subject: RE: St Jude
Date: September 6, 2005 8:55:34 AM PDT
I am sure no one, certainly not me, was making any direct connection or comparison between the Hey Jude of The Beatles and the works of Thomas Hardy.
What I think is quite interesting, and is brought out in some of Paul Niemayer's comments, is that 'Jude' seems to be a powerful and complex word and that, perhaps, attracts creative people. There is the connection with Judas, Jew and Juden and it can be ambiguous/androgynous as it is also short for 'Judith'. Though post-Hardy I am sure, it is almost identical in sound to 'dude' (which is thought to derive from German dialect 'Dude' meaning 'a fool'). It must have many more reverbrations.
Hey Jude was, apparently, the most successful song The Beatles ever released, selling five million copies in its first year. While there are no doubt many and complex reasons for this, the power of the word 'Jude' may have been a factor and perhaps the earlier choices of Julian or Jules would not have worked so well any more than 'Jack the Obscure' might have had the force of the final version.
Patrick Roper
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From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: Re: St Jude
Date: September 6, 2005 9:44:11 AM PDT
One aspect of the eponymous Jude which may have lurked in Hardy's mind seems to surface in a letter he wrote to Lady Jeune (17/11/1895) expressing his anxiety that Jude might have been "too much a book of moral teaching -- the inculcation of Mercy, to youths & girls who have made a bad marriage, & to animals who have to be butchered." St Jude was not only a martyr but his name -- Thaddeus Jude-- means sweetness or gentleness of character.
Another aspect, but this time explored in a letter to Gosse (20/11/1895), arises from Hardy's idea of establishing contrasts between Jude and Sue: "Of course the book is all contrasts -- or was meant to be in its original conception.e.g., Sue & her heathen gods set against Jude's reading the Greek Testt; Christminster academical, Chr in the slums; Jude the saint, Jude the sinner; Sue the Pagan, Sue the saint; marriage, no marriage; &c. &c." One of St Jude's attributes was his ability to exorcise pagan idols; in driving out their demons he would reduce the statues to a crumbling mass. I wonder what readers make of this in the context of Sue's purchase of pagan idols -- subsequently stamped upon, but not by Jude.
Cheers,
Rosemarie
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From: shjoan1002@qwest.net
Subject: Re: St Jude
Date: September 6, 2005 12:19:15 PM PDT
Thanks, Rosemarie, for bringing in the idea of contrasts to this discussion. Extending this line, it appears to me that a theme of divorce, or being split apart or cut off from, runs through the novel. Jude is cut off, or kept, from connecting with a natural, religious, or intellectual past; Sue is a disembodied intellect while Arabella is, although cunning, much like a soulless animal. All are lost souls, and in spite of Jude's tortured attempt to make a sensible life, all become more so. In connection with St. Jude, Jude Fawley is indeed the patron saint of lost souls, and is also infected with grief and doubt. He nonetheless "abides with" others in the novel's unchanging condition which I can best describe as hell, and thus both St. Jude and Jude Fawley rise out of irony to the tragedy of their loss to us - no redemption, no re-connection, no comforting resolution.
Joan sheski
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