Jude the Compassionate
Jordan Anderson, ALB ’04, published in The Hardy Society Journal
Jordan Anderson
I initially had written the paper submitted to The Hardy Society Journal as a student of Sue Lonoff, who teaches The Victorian Novel and Cross-Cultural Studies in the Novel. In one of her courses, we read Jude the Obscure. After doing a close reading of this novel, I sat down and wrote the paper over the course of three straight nights, working from about 4 pm until 8 am in the Science Center computer lab. I really tried to express a lot of my own feelings in the paper that gives it a sort of emotional tone. I think the nocturnal hours gave it a darker tone as well.
I came across the The Hardy Society Journal a year after I’d written the paper and thought I would submit it because I could contribute to showing how the novel—even though it deals with the utter failure and, as the title suggests, obscurity of the main character—is not at all a negative novel. Rather it is a novel that emphasizes the idea that worldly success is much less important than kindness toward others. I pitched the thesis to Dr. Martin Ray, who was then the editor of the journal, and he liked the idea and asked me to submit the paper to him. I did, and it was reviewed by a number of Hardy scholars and then accepted.
It was a long process from acceptance to publication, as there was a change of editors at the journal. Dr. Claire Seymour took over for Dr. Ray. It was about seven months from the time I heard that the paper was going to be published to its publication in March 2005. It was a very worthwhile experience for developing my own style of literary criticism, and, of course, I could not have done it without the support of Sue Lonoff and the rigorous nature of our undergraduate curriculum.
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