“JOSEPH THE DREAMER OF DREAMS”: JUDE FAWLEY’S CONSTRUCTION OF MASCULINITY IN THOMAS HARDY’S JUDE THE OBSCURE

It is certainly surprising that a closer look at the hundreds of articles, essays and monographs about Jude the Obscure reveals that most of these publications tend to ignore the eponymous hero of the novel and concentrate instead on Sue Bridehead, “perhaps the most remarkable feminine portrait in the English novel”.¹ One eminent critic, Mary Jacobus, even speaks of “Sue the Obscure”,² and in a letter Thomas Hardy himself called his novel “the Sue story”.³ Given this evident neglect of, or even discrimination against, the male protagonist in Hardy studies, it seems appropriate to shift the focus of critical attention.