![]() ![]() ![]() Her name, Susanna, suggests the chaste wife of the Apocrypha, “a very delicate woman, and beauteous to behold,” 5 which, in turn, hints at her frigidity. 3) “Philistine” may also be taken in Arnold’s sense, 4 as the conventional middle-class person who oppresses the artist-Sue. (A twice-referred to picture of Samson and Delilah is used to symbolize Jude’s relation with Arabella. Phillotson’s name echoes “Philistine,” which can be taken in the Biblical sense of the non-Jewish, that is, nonaspiring people who destroyed Samson. 2 Jude’s character, combining sensuality and aspiration, is characteristic of Old Testament thought: the heavy, almost gross, sexuality of the Song of Solomon and the aspiration and despair of Ecclesiastes. Jude is, most immediately, the Jewish writer in the New Testament 1 who counsels the Christianized Jews to remember the Old Testament laws and dispensations. The names of the characters form an important part of this religious imagery. In the novel as a whole, the principal complex of images is that of Jewish, Christian, and pagan religious imagery. Norman Holland’s essay on Jude the Obscure has a paragraph about the significance of the names of the major characters in the novel: ![]()
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