Discuss Jude The Obscure as a tragic novel.

Jude the Obscure is a tragedy that depicts Victorian society's oppression of the human spirit. Jude Fawley's life symbolizes not only the tragedy of hasty and poorly thought out marriages, but the social ostracism that living that comes from living by a different set of moral codes than the rest of society.

Jude's disillusionment with organized religion (something he deemed cruel), his belief that existing civil laws were irrational, and the natural law that condemned all humanity to suffer and die caused him to enter a state of inertia which seemed cruel, civil law which seemed irrational, and natural law which leads everyone, no matter their supposed worth, to suffer and eventually die, causes Jude to eventually enter into a state of inertia (inactivity, sluggishness). Jude resigns himself to death, and in turn loses his family; he loses everything. Eventually, he dies alone.

Discuss Jude the Obscure as a tragic novel.