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Definition of Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... read full definition
Part 1, Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Lamb:
In Part 1, Chapter 8, the lovestruck Jude follows the more experienced Arabella like a lamb, a common symbol of innocence and childishness. Hardy uses this simile to contrast Arabella’s scheming and experience with Jude’s youthful naivety:
She kept her two lips resentfully together, and Jude followed her like a pet lamb till she slackened her pace and walked beside him, talking calmly on indifferent subjects, and always checking him if he tried to take her hand or clasp her waist.
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Part 3, Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—A Withering Blast:
Hardy employs a simile in Part 3, Chapter 7 to describe how receiving the official news of Sue's engagement to Richard Phillotson affects Jude. Upon hearing this devastating information, he is shaken about as if by a gust of wind, "withered" with disappointment:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Tidings from Sue a day or two after passed across Jude like a withering blast.
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Part 4, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Glass Eyes:
In Part 4, Chapter 2, Jude encounters a man who tells him that his Aunt Drusilla has died. The man describes watching Drusilla die, using a simile to compare her previously vivacious eyes to those of a doll:
Unlock with LitCharts A+‘She wouldn’t have knowed ’ee. She lay like a doll wi’ glass eyes; so it didn’t matter that you wasn’t here, ’ said he.
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Part 6, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Like A String:
In Part 6, Chapter 2, Hardy uses a simile about a stringed instrument to describe Sue’s tense, shivering delicacy after finding the dead bodies of her children. When Sue looks at the clothes left by her young family after they're killed by Little Father Time, her body quivers like a string:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Again Sue looked at the hanging little frock, and at the socks and shoes; and her figure quivered like a string. ‘I am a pitiable creature, ’ she said, ‘good neither for earth nor heaven any more! I am driven out of my mind by things! What ought to be done?’ [...]
‘We must conform!’ she said mournfully. ‘All the ancient wrath of the Power above us has been vented upon us, His poor creatures, and we must submit. There is no choice. We must. It is no use fighting against God!’
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Part 6, Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Like A Deaf Man:
In Part 6, Chapter 3, Hardy uses a simile invoking deafness to convey the difficulty Jude has in understanding Sue’s wish to leave him. In the following passage, Jude cannot understand why, when they have just lost their children, Sue wants to go back to Phillotson. Sue tries to explain that she can't make him understand the change she's undergone:
Unlock with LitCharts A+‘If two and two made four when we were happy together, surely they make four now? I can’t understand it, I repeat!’
‘Ah, dear Jude; that’s because you are like a totally deaf man observing people listening to music. You say “What are they regarding? Nothing is there.” But something is.’
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Part 6, Chapter 10
Explanation and Analysis—A Star and a Lamp:
In Part 6, Chapter 10, Jude describes Sue to Mrs. Edlin as being so intelligent and so bright that she's like a "star," while he's a "benzoline [oil] lamp." Hardy uses this simile to illustrate the extreme change in Sue's personality and her values after the tragic deaths of Little Father Time and their younger children. Jude says:
Unlock with LitCharts A+“[Sue] was once a woman whose intellect was to mine like a star to a benzoline lamp: who saw all my superstitions as cobwebs that she could brush away with a word. Then bitter affliction came to us, and her intellect broke, and she veered round to darkness.
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