Jude the Obscure + A Pair of Blue Eyes (Thomas Hardy)

This combo product is bundled in India but the publishing origin of this title may vary.Publication date of this bundle is the creation date of this bundle; the actual publication date of child items may vary.The following chapters were written at a time when the craze for indiscriminate church-restoration had just reached the remotest nooks of western England where the wild and tragic features of the coast had long combined in perfect harmony with the crude Gothic Art of the ecclesiastical buildings scattered along it throwing into extraordinary discord all architectural attempts at newness there. To restore the grey carcases of a mediaevalism whose spirit had fled seemed a not less incongruous act than to set about renovating the adjoining crags themselves.Hence it happened that an imaginary history of three human hearts whose emotions were not without correspondence with these material circumstances found in the ordinary incidents of such church-renovations a fitting frame for its presentation.The shore and country about ‘Castle Boterel’ is now getting well known and will be readily recognized. The spot is I may add the furthest westward of all those convenient corners wherein I have ventured to erect my theatre for these imperfect little dramas of country life and passions; and it lies near to or no great way beyond the vague border of the Wessex kingdom on that side which like the westering verge of modern American settlements was progressive and uncertain. This however is of little importance. The place is pre-eminently (for one person at least) the region of dream and mystery. The ghostly birds the pall-like sea the frothy wind the eternal soliloquy of the waters the bloom of dark purple cast that seems to exhale from the shoreward precipices in themselves lend to the scene an atmosphere like the twilight of a night vision.Part I – At Marygreen“Yea many there be that have run out of their wits for women and become servants for their sakes. Many also have perished have erred and sinned for women… O ye men how can it be but women should be strong seeing they do thus?”—EsdrasPart II — At Christminster“Save his own soul he hath no star.”—Swinburne.“Notitiam primosque gradus vicinia fecit;Tempore crevit amor.”—Ovid.Part III – At Melchester“For there was no other girl O bridegroom like her!”— Sappho (H. T. Wharton)Part IV – At Shaston“Whoso prefers either Matrimony or other Ordinance before the Good of Man and the plain Exigence of Charity let him profess Papist or Protestant or what he will he is no better than a Pharisee.”— J. Milton.Part V – At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere“Thy aerial part and all the fiery parts which are mingled in thee though by nature they have an upward tendency still in obedience to the disposition of the universe they are over-powered here in the compound mass the body.”— M. Antoninus (Long).Part VI – At Christminster Again“… And she humbled her body greatly and all the places of her joy she filled with her torn hair.”— Esther (Apoc.).“There are two who decline a woman and IAnd enjoy our death in the darkness here.”— R. Browning.