2 However, the colony itself is sketched only minimally, and it would seem that its primary function – besides getting Arabella out of the way for a while – is to establish an axis stretching from the metropole to its remotest colony. Jane Mattison has compared this episode to the earlier emigrations of characters in Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield (1849-50) and Great Expectations (1860-61), highlighting how taken together they illustrate a shift in British perceptions of Australia, as well as in migration patterns. Indeed, the Empire’s main intrusion into the plot is the sub-narrative of Arabella’s emigration to Australia. This is notable in that the book was written during what has been called the height of Empire, when imperial expansion was driving drastic shifts in British society, among them large-scale emigration. Ancient Rome pervades the novel, from its lived traces in the landscape to its cultural legacies, 1 while by contrast the British Empire is acknowledged only in passing. British Library online collection, ref: Digital Store 012624.h.25/8Įmpire is everywhere in Jude the Obscure, but it is the Roman and not the British one.
Illustration on the title page of Jude the Obscure ( Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., 1896). Macbeth-Raeburn - ‘The “Christminster” of the Story’.
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