Jude the Acherontic

Is a woman a thinking unit at all, or a fraction always wanting its integer? 🤭

Remember that the best and greatest among mankind are those who do themselves no worldly good. 

Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy 

Learned a new word today. Rhadamanthine. To show stern and inflexible judgment. 

And another. Acherontic. An adjective describing something as dark, dismal, gloomy, or Infernal, often evoking a sense of death or the underworld. It is derived from the Greek mythological river Acheron and signifies a profound, hopeless sorrow or a pitch black atmosphere. 

And there you have the whole atmospheric canvas of Jude the Obscure; for, my goodness, this novel is grim and gloomy indeed, and rather shockingly so, in my mind anyway, for a novel published in 1894. 

And it is all rather wonderfully, astoundingly done. 

I wonder if anyone has ever counted the occurrences of the word obscure or its various forms through the pages of the novel. Surely someone has, I think. And then there are the many synonyms as well. Hardy has planted these throughout the text, and quite artfully so, I thought; gradually, though ceaselessly, adding darkness and dimness and gloom and fog and storm in ever heavier shades.

Only 50 pages or so remaining now. What else could go wrong? Much, I suspect, if the preceding 300 are any clue.