Why Did Thomas Hardy Stop Writing Novels After “Jude The Obscure”?

Thomas Hardy had been annoyed by the reception of his controversial earlier novel, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and realised that "Jude," published in book form in 1885, was likely to cause similar debates. However, he was unprepared for the burst of fury which greeted it. The Pall Mall Gazette described it as "dirt, drivel and damnation," and one bishop burnt his copy and sent the ashes to Hardy, "probably," Hardy later remarked, "in his despair at not being able to burn me." Essentially the uproar was caused by his sympathetic portrayal of a couple, Jude and Sue, who choose to live together without marriage. Both have been married before, and both have been miserably unhappy. Once they are divorced from their former partners, they do plan to marry (they have three children) but Sue (besides not fully believing in marriage as an institution) has developed a horror of the state and always draws back. The Victorian public regarded such scruples as "filthy." Hardy was so angry at this reaction that he abandoned fiction altogether, writing only poetry from then on.

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