Mini Review - (2014) Volume 7, Issue 32
The present paper focuses on the concepts of Panopticon, gaze, discipline and punishment as discussed in Foucault’s work Discipline and Punish (1975). This Foucauldian framework is applied to Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure (1895) in which motifs of surveillance and discipline are present. The article further shows how Victorian society in general and the main characters in particular aresusceptible to scrutiny and examination.Jude and Sue, who have violated rules and ethics of society, are undercontrolling gaze of the community. They also feel guilty for illicit acts that they have done so they are entrapped in mental prisons in which they are both warders and prisoners.