THE ONE DIMENSIONAL MAN IN THOMAS HARDY’S JUDE THE OBSCURE

Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure (1895) successfully represents the conflict between the individuals and the bourgeois industrial society in the late Victorian period. Herbert Marcuse’s criticism of the contemporary industrial society, which is actually a one dimensional society that imposes absolute norms on the individuals who are forced to become one dimensional wo/men, is quite relevant for a critical approach on this conflict. Marcuse’s approach enables a critical analysis of the social hegemony on such characters as Jude Fawley and Sue Bridehead in the novel. The institutionalised form of social oppression on the individuals aims to force these characters to lead one dimensional lives in accordance with dominant social norms. Hence, the protection of social harmony and the established bourgeois social order depends on the subjection of these individuals to the rules of the one dimensional society. So, this article argues that, viewed from Herbert Marcuse’s perspective, social oppression in Hardy’s Jude the Obscure suppresses individuality to create one dimensional characters in a one dimensional society