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Thomas Hardy’s ‘Wessex,’ as Raymond Williams discusses it, is that historical ‘border’ between the premodern and the modern in which a sense of belonging becomes increasingly unavailable. In Jude the Obscure, a novel of undoubted contemporary relevance, this ‘border’ experience is pushed to an extreme with its two main characters inevitably caught in the psychological mechanism of idealization and masochism. A man of deficiency and self-abusive disposition, Jude clings desperately to a set of ideals with which he might identify himself and the loss of which aggravates his unconscious sense of guilt. Interestingly, he develops what Freud calls ‘moral masochism’—he deliberately exposes himself to pain, embracing dominant religion and morality as punitive agency. Sue has more verve, and more potential for involuntary self-manipulation. Her idealized self-image is informed alternatingly by liberal individualism and patriarchal stereotypes, and the vacillation points not merely to ideological uncertainty typical of transitional subjectivity but more significantly to a narcissistic will that demands love regardless of the manner or the consequences. At some point, however, she does have to face the consequences, and masochistic behavior due to guilty consciousness is in order. As with Jude, Sue’s self-punishment involves submission to traditional power, thus reaffirming her psychology as that of the ‘border.’
