Jude in the Classroom

The other day I posted a list of books that I need for this class that I am undertaking independently. I have some further information about that, but I'll get to it later.

This past vacation I spent a good deal of time reading Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. Now I am not done with the book; in fact, I am probably a good quarter of the way done, but I am beginning to really like what Hardy has to say. In the first part the main character - Jude - decided to study on his own and become a scholar; unfortunately, his plans were way-laid by a woman. It was not that he had fallen in love with the woman of mention and decided to marry her, but she wanted to become betrothed and in turn lied to our hero Jude and told him she was pregnant. Jude, being an honourable young man, married for the pregnancy as it was the proper thing to do; however, in the end, it turned out she consciously lied.

Students are not usually big into reading, so it is important that we find novels that fit state guidelines, but at the same time, have qualities that interest them. While Jude the Obscure may be a bit of a difficult text for high schoolers, I think some of the males may take to it as this image of a woman lying about pregnancy, or in fact, becoming pregnant, in order to keep a man from leaving is something they may have seen in their lives.

With that said, I will get back to the first few lines I spewed forth. My list has begun to dwindle. I ordered Jude the Obscure, and The Professor gave me Waugh's The Loved One. Also, I would like to make a special mention of thanks to my friend the Semi-Gleaner who gave me a copy of Forster's A Passage to India which he acquired illegally in Italy. (The publishers of this edition noted on the front cover that it is illegal to re-sell the text anywhere but the United States.) On top of all these texts seemingly falling into my lap, I have the Sixth Edition of Norton's English Literature, which has both Wilde's, and Beckett's works in it.