ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the class implications of the figure of the sublime woman in Jude and demonstrate why she is central to the aesthetic issues that create tragedy in Thomas Hardy’s final novel. The “great brains” are specifically tied to the romantic sublime and its principle of unity within the subject earlier in Jude’s attempt, on the top of the barn, to see Christminster. The characters of Jude the Obscure are all trapped between a class identity that is passing away and an aesthetic that promises class mobility but only serves to provide the production necessary to prop up the structures that exclude those it invites. Jude imagines radicality which would promise him connection with another person through education or Shellean love, but he finds in the ideals to which he turns only the isolation of the industrial capitalism that is replacing a more integrated way of life.
