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Houria Baqir
Houria Baqir
Houria Baqir
(0325-BH-ENG-2015)
22 December 2017
Adverse effects of domestic life on a child’s psychology: Does Thomas Hardy succeed in
Argument:
Domestic life is not just the epitome of a perfect life as considered by Victorians.
Sometimes it proves to be the worst thing that can happen to a child’s mind especially in lower
classes. The domestic life depicted in Jude the obscure gave birth to the domestic violence that
Proposal:
In this essay I propose that the domestic life that is not really in its stable state leaves an
unfortunate impact on the mind of a child. Victorians laid quite an emphasis on domestic life and
encouraged large families but large families, especially in poor households, lead to a disaster.
This essay focuses on how a child’s mind is too sensitive to bear the troubles of this life.
First part of this essay will deal with the negative side of the domestic life, focusing on
the large and poor families. The second part will present the intensity with which a child
perceives certain things. It focuses on how something that is not really a great deal for adults
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may become a matter of life and death for a child. The third and last part will deal with Hardy’s
depiction of a sensitive and innocent child and how the quarrels and divorce of Father Time’s
Jude the Obscure, the last completed novel by Thomas Hardy, began as a magazine serial
in December 1894 and was first published in book form in 1895. He was one of the greatest
writers of the Victorian era. This novel focuses on the negligence of the state towards its people
and how it affected Jude and his Domestic life. Thomas Hardy was considered as a man who was
ahead of his time due to his liberal ideas. England maintained strict laws regarding marriage and
divorce which Hardy criticized both publicly and in his fiction. Due to these reasons, his work
was highly criticized by the audience. In his novel Jude the obscure, he not only discussed the
Domestic life is considered as the ideal form of living in most parts of the world. In upper
classes, may be this way of living doesn’t cause much problems and it actually is a source of
fulfillment and love but if we talk about the poor class, then this often leads to disaster. Every
child is a gift and a joy. But when income is scarce and a family is already struggling, why do
parents expand their families? A child who is a member of a poor domestic family does not get a
chance to live his life in a normal manner. He is not even able to have the basic necessities of
life. Domestic violence is not always in the form of physical violence. Sometimes parents
unknowingly subject their children to domestic violence that affects them mentally. The lack of
attention from parents makes a child emotionally unstable. It harshly affects their developmental
growth. When the environment around them is not stable and full of miseries, they began to
question their own existence. Children often suffer an emotional and psychological trauma from
living in homes where they don’t get the love they deserve, where there is a lack of resources and
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basic needs. They become creatures full of fears and insecurities or they just become numb. A
family with 5 to 6 children will at least have one child, who will not be emotionally fine. So the
domestic life of poor people is usually unstable. A behavioral scientist and economics professor
talk in this issue as “So if you want to understand the poor , imagine yourself with your mind
elsewhere. You did not sleep much the night before. You find it hard to think clearly. Self-control
feels like a challenge. You are distracted and easily perturbed. And this happens every day. On
top of the other material challenges poverty brings, it also brings a mental one… Under these
When a child is born, he is just like an empty notebook and it is the society and the
environment that start writing on it. We are all much more sensitive to the world around us then
we usually like to imagine ourselves as beings. Childhood is the phase of life where a child
grasps information from his surroundings to the highest level. They feel things much more
deeply, they make little decisions by keeping the happenings around them in their minds. So if
something that affects you in your childhood in a really deep manner, then that thing will surely
not leave your mind for the rest of your life. Experiences of childhood live with you forever.
People who suffer from abusive childhood never really get a chance to get rid of it throughout
their lives, in their minds, it’s always there, haunting them. Emotional abuse, including ridicule,
intimidation, rejection and humiliation, is experienced by about one third of children worldwide,
The character of Father Time in Jude the obscure, by Thomas Hardy represent such a
child whose environment made him take a decision that destroyed everybody’s life. Throught his
little life, he had been rejected by everybody around him. His grandparents, his mother Arabella,
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his Father, all of them failed to give him the love he deserved. The domestic issues of Jude’s
household resulted in the death of his child. Children take everything way too seriously because
they are too sensitive. When Father Time noticed that he was rejected by every single person he
goes too, he began to consider himself as a burden. In the novel, Father Time cries to Sue, “I
oughtn’t to have come to ‘ee – that’s the real truth! I troubled ‘em in Australia and I troubled
folk here. I wish I hadn’t been born!” Since his birth, almost everything around him was
pessimistic. He suffered a life time of miseries in just some early years of childhood.
Keeping in mind the fact that how sensitive the mind of a child is, we can assume why
Little Father Time took such a big step. A child, who since he gained consciousness considered
himself a burden got scolded by his step mother who complained about her large family in
anger, found out a way to lessen their burdens. He wanted to make himself of some worth, that is
why in order to help his parents and prove himself as not a burden but a blessing killed his
siblings and hanged him. His innocent mind couldn’t think of a better way to deal with the
Mind of a child is not something that adults are supposed to take granted for. Even
Thomas Hardy himself was influenced by something in his early years of growth that affected
him for the rest of his life. “In his early years, he saw two men hanged from a tree which made a
strong mark upon his plastic brain. He it is said never missed a funeral though he rarely attended
a marriage party”
I will conclude my essay with the truth that a child’s mind is extremely sensitive and the
problems of large and poor domestic families can affect them in a way that can’t be cured.
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Through the character of Little Father, Hardy showed us the sensitivity of children’s mind and
Works Cited:
● Hardy, Thomas. "Jude the Obscure." By Thomas Hardy. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Dec. 2017.
● Saxon, Jill, and Robert S. Siegler. How Children Develop, 3rd Edition. New York: Worth,
2010. Print.
● Burt S. A., McGue M., Krueger R. F., Iacono W. G. (2005). How are parent-child conflict
and child externalizing symptoms related over time? Results from a genetically