I've been reading Jude the Obscure by my favourite author of all time, Thomas Hardy. It was his final novel before he turned to poetry, and it's speculated that he stopped writing novels because of the negative reception that it received (however, I'm not so sure). It is, however, very easy to see how Jude sparked controversy in Victorian society, with people calling it "Jude the Obscene". It challenges the, then, notion of marriage and the tyranny it causes for women oppressed by the patriarchal society, as well as truthfully depicting the struggle that the poor and disadvantaged face to make their way into the bourgeois world. I like it, but then again I like anything that Hardy has written. Hardy is a genius. However, I probably wouldn't recommend you start here with Thomas Hardy. It's probably the bleakest novel of his that I've read thus far and if I had dived into this without any previous readings/knowledge of his work, I definitely wouldn't appreciate it as much as I do.