“The True Meaning of the Word Restoration”: Architecture and Obsolescence in <em>Jude the Obscure</em>
This essay situates Jude the Obscure (1895) in the context of the Victorian architectural restoration debate, a pitched battle of ideas in which Thomas Hardy (a former architect and preservation activist) was deeply involved. For Hardy, architec - tural restoration threatens historical continuity by approaching history as a traumatic process that must be reversed. In Jude this restorationist vision is disastrously trium - phant, trapping the novel's characters in cycles of meaningless repetition. In response, Hardy explores how the novel might serve as a compensatory medium, emplacing and connecting its characters in ways that material architecture no longer can. At the same time, Hardy imagines the printed text as a material object not unlike architecture, potentially opening up his work to contingent and unanticipated meanings.