Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy

Context

When Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure was first published in 1895, its critical reception was so negative that Hardy resolved never to write another novel. Jude the Obscure attacked the institutions Britain held the most dear: higher education, social class, and marriage. It called, through its narrative, for a new openness in marriage laws and commonly held beliefs about marriage and divorce. It introduced one of the first feminist characters in English fiction: the intellectual, free-spirited Sue Bridehead.

Hardy is famous for his tragic heroes and heroines and the grave, socially critical tone of his narratives. His best known works are Tess of the d'Urbervilles,The Return of the Native,Far from the Madding Crowd, and The Mayor of Casterbridge. All his novels are set in Wessex, a fictional English county modeled after the real Dorset county. They deal with moral questions, played out through the lives of people living in the countryside, and point to the darker truths behind pastoral visions.

Hardy was born to a builder's family in 1840 and died in 1928. He spent much of his life working as an architect and was married twice.


Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy

Summary

Jude Fawley dreams of studying at the university in Christminster, but his background as an orphan raised by his working-class aunt leads him instead into a career as a stonemason. He is inspired by the ambitions of the town schoolmaster, Richard Phillotson, who left for Christminster when Jude was a child. However, Jude falls in love with a young woman named Arabella, is tricked into marrying her, and cannot leave his home village. When their marriage goes sour and Arabella moves to Australia, Jude resolves to go to Christminster at last. However, he finds that his attempts to enroll at the university are met with little enthusiasm.

Jude meets his cousin Sue Bridehead and tries not to fall in love with her. He arranges for her to work with Phillotson in order to keep her in Christminster, but is disappointed when he discovers that the two are engaged to be married. Once they marry, Jude is not surprised to find that Sue is not happy with her situation. She can no longer tolerate the relationship and leaves her husband to live with Jude.

Both Jude and Sue get divorced, but Sue does not want to remarry. Arabella reveals to Jude that they have a son in Australia, and Jude asks to take him in. Sue and Jude serve as parents to the little boy and have two children of their own. Jude falls ill, and when he recovers, he decides to return to Christminster with his family. They have trouble finding lodging because they are not married, and Jude stays in an inn separate from Sue and the children. At night Sue takes Jude's son out to look for a room, and the little boy decides that they would be better off without so many children. In the morning, Sue goes to Jude's room and eats breakfast with him. They return to the lodging house to find that Jude's son has hanged the other two children and himself. Feeling she has been punished by God for her relationship with Jude, Sue goes back to live with Phillotson, and Jude is tricked into living with Arabella again. Jude dies soon after.



Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy

Characters

Jude Fawley -  A young man from Marygreen who dreams of studying at Christminster but becomes a stone mason instead.

Susanna Bridehead  -  Jude's cousin. She is unconventional in her beliefs and education, but marries the schoolmaster Richard Phillotson.

Arabella Donn -  Jude's first wife. She enjoys spending time in bars and in the company of men.

Aunt Drusilla  -  The relative who raised Jude.

Richard Phillotson  -  The schoolmaster who first introduces Jude to the idea of studying at the university. He later marries Sue.

Little Father Time (Little Jude)  -  Jude and Arabella's son, raised in Australia by Arabella's parents. He is said to have the mind of an old man, though he is a young child.




Part I: At Marygreen

Summary

Everyone in Marygreen is upset because the schoolmaster, Richard Phillotson, is leaving the village for the town of Christminster, about twenty miles away. Phillotson does not know how to move his piano, or where he will store it, so an eleven-year-old boy of suggests keeping it in his aunt's fuel house. The boy, Jude Fawley, has been living with his aunt Drusilla, a baker, since his father died. Drusilla tells him that he should have asked the schoolteacher to take him to Christminster, because Jude loves books just like his cousin Sue.

Jude tires of hearing himself talked about and goes to the bakehouse to eat his breakfast. After eating he walks up to a cornfield and uses a clacker to scare crows away. However, he decides that the birds deserve to eat and stops sounding the clacker. He feels someone watching him and sees Mr. Troutham, the farmer who hired him to scare the crows away. The farmer fires him and Jude walks home to tell his aunt. She mentions Christminster again, and he asks what it is and whether he will ever be able to visit Phillotson there. She tells him that they have nothing to do with the people of Christminster. Jude goes into town and asks a man where Christminster is, and the man points to the northeast.

Jude walks two or three miles toward Christminster and climbs a ladder onto a roof where two men are working. He says he is looking for Christminster, and they tell him that sometimes it is visible, but not today. Jude is disappointed and waits, hoping he will see it before going home. Finally he sees it off in the distance and stares at its spires until the view disappears. He goes home. He decides that he wants to see the night lights of the city and goes back at dusk one day. On the road he meets men carrying coal and asks if they are coming from Christminster. They tell him that the people there read books he would never understand, and go on to describe the town. Hearing this, Jude decides that it is a "place of light" where the "tree of knowledge grows," and that it would suit him perfectly.

He runs into Physician Vilbert, a quack-doctor, on his way home and asks him about Christminster. Vilbert says that even the washerwomen there speak Latin, and Jude expresses a desire to learn Greek and Latin. Vilbert promises to give Jude his grammar books if Jude advertises his medicines in the town for two weeks. After two weeks, Jude meets Vilbert and asks for the grammar books, but the doctor does not have them. Jude is very disappointed, but when Phillotson sends for the piano, Jude has the idea of writing to the schoolmaster to ask for grammar books. Phillotson sends them, but when the books arrive, Jude is surprised to discover that there is no easy way to learn Latin, that each word has to be learned separately. He thinks that it is beyond his intellect.

Jude decides to make himself more useful to his aunt and helps her with the bakery, delivering bread in a horse-drawn cart. While he drives the cart he studies Latin. At the age of sixteen, he decides to devote himself to Biblical texts and also to apprentice himself to a stonecutter for extra money. He still dreams of going to Christminster, and saves his money for this possibility. He keeps lodgings in the town of Alfredston, but returns to Marygreen each weekend. One day, when he is nineteen, he is walking to Marygreen and planning his education and his future as a bishop or archdeacon when he is struck in the ear by a piece of pig's flesh. He sees three young women washing chitterlings. He asks one of the girls to come get the piece of meat, and she introduces herself as Arabella Donn. He asks if he can see her the next day and she says yes. He thinks of studying Greek the next afternoon, but decides it would be rude not to call on Arabella as promised and takes her for a walk. He meets her family afterward and is struck by how serious they perceive his intentions to be. The next morning he goes back to where they walked together and overhears Arabella telling her friends that she wants to marry Jude. Jude finds his thoughts turning more and more to her.

Their romance continues, and two months later Arabella goes to see the quack-doctor Vilbert. Jude begins to say that he is going away, but Arabella retorts that she is pregnant. Jude immediately proposes, and they marry quickly. Jude does not believe Arabella to be the ideal wife, but he knows he must marry her. Once they are living together, Jude asks when the baby will be born, and Arabella tells him it was a mistake, that she is not really pregnant. Jude is shocked. He feels depressed and trapped by the marriage, and even considers killing himself. He goes home one day to find Arabella gone and receives a letter saying she is planning to move to Australia with her parents.

Commentary

Early on in the novel, the village of Marygreen is set in opposition to the university town of Christminster. The young Jude sees Christminster as an enlightened place of learning, equating it with his dreams of higher education and his vague notions of academic success. Yet while Jude lives quite close to Christminster and knows a man who is going to live there, the city is always only a distant vision in his mind. It is nearly within his reach but at the same time unattainable, and this physical distance serves as an ongoing metaphor for the abstract distance between the impoverished Jude and the privileged Christminster students.

At the start of the novel, Jude is portrayed as an earnest and innocent young man who aspires to things greater than his background allows. He resists succumbing to the discouragement of those around him and does not fear the gap he is creating between himself and the other people of his village. He is seen as eccentric and perhaps impertinent, and his aspirations are dismissed as unrealistic. It is this climate, in part, that leads him to marry Arabella. All through his young adult life, he avoids going to Christminster. Perhaps he is afraid of the failure he might encounter there. In Arabella, he sees something attainable and instantly gratifying, as opposed to the university life, of which he fears he may never become a part. In this way Jude avoids disappointment, but finds that he cannot live within the confines of an unhappy marriage.

Confinement--particularly in regard to marriage--is a major theme in the novel. Jude feels trapped by a youthful mistake and Arabella's manipulation. He finds that the decision is irreversible and resigns himself to living with the consequences. The freedom he receives after Arabella leaves is only partially liberating: It lets him be independent in a physical sense, but because he is still married, it forbids him from achieving legitimate romantic happiness with someone else.



Part II: At Christminster

Summary

Three years after his marriage, Jude decides to go to Christminster at last. He is motivated partly by a portrait of his cousin Sue Bridehead, who lives there. He finds lodging in a suburb called Beersheba and walks into town. He observes the colleges and quadrangles and finds himself conversing aloud with the great dead philosophers memorialized around him. The next morning he remembers that he has come to find his old schoolmaster and his cousin. His aunt sent the picture of Sue with the stipulation that Jude should not try to find her, and he decides that he must wait until he is settled to find Phillotson. He tries to find work in the colleges. He finally receives a letter from a stonemason's yard and promptly accepts employment there. He thinks of going to see Sue, despite his aunt's continuing entreaties not to see her. He walks to the shop his aunt described and sees Sue illuminating the word "Alleluja" on a scroll. He decides that he should not fall in love with her because marriage between cousins is never good, and his family in particular is cursed with tragic sadness in marriage.

Jude discovers that Sue attends church services at Cardinal College and goes there to find her. He watches her but does not approach her, remembering that he is a married man. The next time he sees her, he is working on a church and sees Sue leaving the morning service. On another afternoon, Sue goes to the stonemason's yard and asks for Jude Fawley. When she is described to him, Jude recognizes who she was. He finds a note from her at his lodgings, saying that she heard of his arrival in Christminster and would have liked to meet him, but might be going away soon. He is driven to action and writes back immediately, saying he will meet her in an hour. They introduce themselves, and Jude asks if she knows Phillotson, whom he thinks is a parson. She says that there is a village schoolmaster named Phillotson in Lumsdon, and Jude is struck by the realization that Phillotson has failed in his ambitions.

Jude and Sue walk to Phillotson's house, and Jude introduces himself. The schoolmaster does not remember him, and Jude reminds him about the Latin and Greek grammars. Phillotson tells him that he gave up the idea of attending the university long ago, but invites them in. He says that he is comfortable with his current existence but is in need of a pupil-teacher. They do not stay for supper, and on the way back Jude asks Sue why she is leaving Christminster. She explains that she is quarreling with one of the women she works with, and it would be best to leave. Jude suggests that he ask Phillotson to take her on as a teacher, and she agrees. Phillotson agrees to employ her, but points out that the salary is quite low, so it would not assist her unless she viewed the job as an apprenticeship in a teaching career.

Sue begins working at Phillotson's school right away, and he is responsible for giving her lessons. According to the law, a chaperone must supervise them at all times. The schoolmaster thinks this is unnecessary because he is so much older than she is. However, one day when he is walking toward the village, Jude sees the two walking together. Phillotson puts his arm around Sue's waist and she removes it, but he puts it back and this time she lets it stay. Jude goes back to see his aunt, who is not well. Jude talks with a friend from home, who is surprised that Jude has not entered college yet. Jude decides to pursue admission the university more devotedly and writes to five professors. After a long wait he finally receives an answer from a professor at Biblioll College. The letter recommends that he remain in his current profession rather than attempting to study at a university.

Jude grows depressed and goes to a tavern to drink. Another mason, Uncle Joe, challenges him to demonstrate his academic ability by saying the Creed in Latin. Jude does, then grows angry when they congratulate him. He goes to see Sue. She tells him to go to sleep and that she will bring him breakfast in the morning. He leaves at dawn and goes back to his lodgings, where he finds a note of dismissal from his employer. He walks back to Marygreen and sleeps in his old room. He hears his aunt praying and meets the clergyman, Mr. Highridge. Jude tells Highridge of his failed ambition to attend the university and become a minister. Highridge says that if he wants, Jude can become a licentiate in the church if he gives up strong drink.

Commentary

Sue serves to attract Jude to Christminster, and he seeks her out with a strange devotion, as though he is following an inevitable path carved out by destiny. Taken together with his aunt's warning that marriages in their family never end well, Jude's haste to find and fall in love with his cousin creates a sense of foreboding about the young man's fate. His marriage to Arabella prevents him from pursuing Sue fully, but she clearly captivates him.

Jude is disappointed to find that Phillotson does not remember him and has not fulfilled his ambitions. Phillotson is a foil to Jude, his complacency set against Jude's fervor. Phillotson represents a path more accessible to Jude than his aspirations toward an academic career, but Jude is loath to give up his Christminster ambitions. He also clings to Sue, arranging for her to teach with Phillotson as a way of keeping her near him.

Jude finds that the Christminster colleges are not welcoming toward self-educated men, and he accepts that he may not be able to study at the university after all. His propensity for drinking emerges. The episode in the pub, in which he recites Latin to a group of workmen and undergraduates, shows the juxtaposition of Jude's intellect with his outer appearance. Christminster will not accept him because he belongs to the working class, yet he is intelligent and well-read through independent study. The realization that his learning will help him only to perform in pubs sits heavily with Jude, and he is comforted only by the possibility of becoming a clergyman through apprenticeship.




Part III: At Melchester

Summary

Jude decides to follow the path recommended by the clergyman and become a low-ranking clergyman. He receives a letter from Sue saying that she is entering the Training College at Melchester, where there is also a Theological College. He decides to wait until the days are longer to travel to Melchester himself because he will have to find work there. Sue writes that she is desperately lonely and begs him to come at once, so he agrees. Jude arrives and takes Sue to dinner. She mentions that Phillotson might find her a teaching post after she graduates, and Jude expresses his anxiety about the schoolmaster's romantic interest in her. Sue at first dismisses his fears, saying Phillotson is too old, but then she confesses that she has agreed to marry Phillotson in two years, and then they plan to teach jointly at a school in a larger town.

Jude finds work at a cathedral and reads theological books in preparation for his career. He goes for a walk with Sue and they find themselves far out into the countryside. A shepherd invites them to spend the night, saying is too late to go back to Melchester if they do not know the way. The next morning the students at Sue's Training College see that she has not returned, and the administrators decide to punish her. She runs away and arrives, cold and soaked from the rain, at Jude's lodgings. He takes her in and hides her from his landlady. They discuss their education, and Sue tells him about an undergraduate she knew in Christminster. They were friends and shared many ideas, but he wanted to be her lover and she did not love him. He died two or three years later. Jude is struck by Sue's freethinking mentality and calls her "Voltairean" (thinking like the French philosopher Voltaire). As they are leaving, Sue tells Jude that she knows he is in love with her and he is only permitted to like her, not to love her. The next morning she writes a letter saying that he can love her if he chooses. He writes back, but does not receive an answer. He goes to find her, and she tells him she no longer wants to see him because there are rumors about their relationship. However, she apologizes in another note, calling her words rash.

Phillotson asks Jude about Sue's history, and Jude assures him that nothing untoward has happened between them. Jude tells Sue his own story, including his marriage to Arabella. She is angered by his previous dishonesty. Two days later he receives a letter saying that Sue and Phillotson are to be married in three or four weeks. Sue also asks if Jude will give her away at the wedding, and he agrees. She comes to Melchester ten days before the wedding and stays in Jude's house. Sue and Phillotson marry on the appointed day. Jude finds he can no longer stand living in Melchester, and when he receives word that his aunt is dangerously ill, he returns to Marygreen. He writes to Sue encouraging her to come and see Aunt Drusilla before she dies.

In the meantime, Jude goes to Christminster for work. He goes to a pub and sees a familiar face: Arabella's. She tells him that she returned from Australia three months before. Jude misses his train to Alfredston and instead goes to Aldbrickham with Arabella. They spend the night together at an inn. In the morning, she says that she married a hotel manager in Sydney. Jude leaves her and unexpectedly encounters Sue. The two go to see Jude's aunt together, and Sue tells Jude that she made a mistake in marrying Phillotson. Jude takes Sue to the train and asks if he can come visit, but she says no. He devotes himself to his studies and develops an interest in music, and on the way back from a trip to see a church composer, he finds an apology and an invitation to dinner from Sue.

Commentary

Sue shows herself to be both radical in her intellectual views and conservative in her social practices. She leaves the Training College because she discovers that its rules are intolerably strict, and her supervisors' suspicions are too much for her to bear. She comes to see Jude as a protector, and for this reason is disturbed by the realization that he is in love with her. She wavers back and forth in her protests, sometimes wanting to enter into a romantic relationship with Jude and sometimes believing it to be misguided. When he confesses that he is married, she accuses him of dishonesty, but there is a hint of disappointment in her tone because his marriage only adds a further obstruction to their possible romance. She marries Phillotson in this state of anger and frustration, and Jude feels that he cannot and should not dissuade her.

Jude spends the night with Arabella because he feels it is his legal right, and he wants to ease his longing for Sue. When Arabella tells him that she has married a second time, Jude does not know what to do. He regrets his night with her and is dismayed by the realization that he has committed a form of adultery. Meanwhile, Sue tries to push him away again, then invites him to her home soon after. Sue does not know what she wants, but is slowly coming to the understanding that she finds Phillotson repulsive. She does not admit to loving Jude, but still turns to him to be her protector.





Part IV: At Shaston

Summary

Jude travels to Sue's school in Shaston. He finds the schoolroom empty and begins playing a tune on the piano. Sue joins him, and they discuss their friendship. Jude accuses Sue of being a flirt, and she objects. They discuss her marriage, and Sue tells Jude to come to her house the next week. Later he walks to her house and sees her through the window looking at a photograph. The next morning Sue writes saying that he should not come to dinner, and he writes back in agreement. On Easter Monday, he hears that his aunt is dying. When he arrives, she has already passed away. Sue comes to the funeral. She tells Jude she is unhappy in her marriage, but that she still must go back to Shaston on the six o'clock train. Jude convinces her to spend the night at Mrs. Edlin's house instead. He tells her that he is sorry he did not tell her not to marry Phillotson, and she suspects he still has tender feelings for her.

Jude denies it, saying that he no longer feels love since he has seen Arabella and is going to live with her. Sue realizes he is lying. She confesses that she likes Phillotson but finds it tortuous to live with him. Jude asks if she would have married him if not for his marriage to Arabella, but Sue leaves without answering. In the middle of the night, Jude hears the cry of a trapped rabbit and goes outside to free it. He kills the rabbit and looks up to see Sue watching him through a window. She says she wishes there was a way to undo a mistake such as her marriage. She kisses Jude on the top of his head and shuts the window.

Jude decides that he cannot in good conscience become a minister, considering his feelings toward Sue. He burns his books. Back in Shaston, Sue hints at her indiscretionary feelings to her husband. At night she goes to sleep in a closet instead of her bedroom, and Phillotson is alarmed. She asks if he would mind living apart from her. He questions her motives and asks if she intends to live alone. She says that she wants to live with Jude. In the morning, Phillotson and Sue continue their discussion through notes passed by their students. She asks to live in the same house, but not as husband and wife, and he says he will consider it. They take separate rooms in the house, but by habit one night, Phillotson returns to the room they once shared, and sees Sue leap out the window. However, she is not badly hurt and claims that she was asleep when she did it.

Phillotson goes to see his friend Gillingham and tells him of his marital troubles. He speaks of his intention to let her go to Jude, and Gillingham is shocked. He says that such thoughts threaten the sanctity of the family unit. At breakfast the next day, Phillotson tells Sue that she may leave and do as she wishes. He says he does not wish to know anything about her in the future.

Jude meets Sue's train and tells her he has arranged for them to travel to Aldbrickham because it is a larger town and no one knows them there. He has booked one room at the Temperance Hotel, and Sue is surprised. She explains that she is not prepared to have a sexual relationship with him yet. He asks whether she has been teasing him. They go to a different hotel, the one where he stayed with Arabella. When Jude is out of the room, the maid tells Sue that she saw him with another woman a month earlier. Sue accuses him of deceiving her, but he objects by saying that if they are only friends, it does not matter. She accuses him of treachery for sleeping with Arabella, but he argues that Arabella is his legal wife. Jude tells Sue that Arabella has married a second husband, but he will never inform against her. He adds that he is comparatively happy just to be near Sue.

Back in Shaston, Phillotson is threatened with dismissal for letting his wife commit adultery. He defends himself at a meeting but falls ill. A letter reaches Sue, and she returns to him. She tells Phillotson that Jude is seeking a divorce from his wife, and Phillotson decides to attempt the same.

Commentary

The moral implications of the friendship and romance between Jude and Sue emerge as an important issue. Hardy dwells on the question of marriage and its ramifications, and his portrayal of the tragic effects of marital confinement, beginning largely in Part IV, did not sit well with critics of the time. Hardy was accused of attempting to undermine the institution of marriage, and Sue in particular was thought to have inappropriate beliefs for a young female character. In many ways, she is a feminist before her time. She recognizes her own intellect and her potential for a satisfying career in teaching, and marries Phillotson partly out of a desire for a pleasant work environment. She resists a romantic relationship with Jude, but falls in love with him despite her misgivings. However, when it comes time to marry, she does not wish to enter into a legal contract in which she would again be confined.

By marrying Phillotson, Sue hopes to protect her reputation and achieve the traditional lifestyle of a married woman. She likes Phillotson despite his age, but is surprised at her inability to find him attractive. She even comes to be repulsed by him and later admits to jumping out of the window for fear that he would enter her bed. Phillotson tries very hard to preserve at least the external appearance of a typical marriage. As a man, he is legally permitted to force her to stay in his bed and even sleep with him. For this reason he is viewed with contempt for letting her leave him. However, his understanding brings him only more difficulty, as he is personally blamed for Sue's disobedience of convention.

Jude's relationship with Arabella is equally complicated. He does not love her as much as he cares for Sue, but he sleeps with her when she returns from Australia. Again, Hardy's casual depiction of people acting against established societal norms of marital and sexual behavior aroused controversy in Britain and the United States, and Hardy resolved to give up writing fiction as a result.





Part V: At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere

Summary

Some months later, Jude receives word that Sue's divorce has been made official, just one month after his own divorce was similarly ratified. Jude asks Sue if she will consent to marry him after a respectable interval, but she tells him that she worries it would harm their relationship. Jude worries because Sue has still not declared her love for him. One night, Jude returns home to find that a woman has come to see him while he was away. Sue suspects it was Arabella. A knock comes on the door and Sue knows it is Arabella again. Arabella tells Jude she needs help. Sue begs him not to go see her at her lodgings, as she asks. Jude hesitates, and Sue says she will marry him immediately. Jude stays home. In the morning, Sue feels guilty about her treatment of Arabella and decides to check on her at the inn. Arabella treats Sue rudely but asks if Jude will meet her at the station. Sue and Jude postpone their wedding and one day receive a letter from Arabella. It explains that Arabella gave birth to Jude's child in Australia, and their son has been living with her parents in Australia, but they can no longer care for him. Sue says she would like to adopt him so Jude writes to Arabella. The boy arrives sooner than they expected and walks to their house on his own. Sue tells him to call her "mother."

At an agricultural show in early June, Arabella spots Jude and Sue with her son, who is called Little Father Time because of his adult demeanor. Arabella attends the show with her new husband, Cartlett. She points out the family, and Cartlett remarks that they seem to like each other and their child very much. Arabella declares that it cannot be their child because they have not been married long enough.

Jude has trouble getting work, so he proposes that they move again. They find that people do not believe they are married. Jude wants to live in London because it would allow them more anonymity.

Two and a half years later, at the Kennetbridge spring fair, Sue encounters Arabella in mourning for her husband. Sue is selling cakes at the fair. She explains that Jude caught a chill while doing stone work and has been ill. Arabella is jealous and discusses her feelings with a friend as they drive toward Alfredston. She recognizes Phillotson on the road and offers him a lift. He says he is the schoolmaster at Marygreen again.

Sue goes home and tells Jude about Arabella. He says that when he recovers he would like to go back to Christminster, though he knows the town despises him; perhaps he will die there.

Commentary

Jude and Sue are both able to obtain divorces from their first marriages, so legally they can marry each other. Jude decides that he can be happy without being legally married to Sue as long as he is with her, and the two do not tell their neighbors whether they are married or not. However, they live as though they are married and are therefore considered sinful by people around them. The idea of raising Jude's son prompts Sue to think about formalizing their marriage, but ultimately they do not marry. The uncertainty surrounding their status foreshadows difficulties to come, as there is a sense of illegitimacy lingering in their relationship.

When Arabella sees Jude and Sue with her son she immediately points out to her new husband that the child is too old to be Sue's son, as though claiming motherhood from a distance. Sue immediately develops a relationship with the boy, although she dislikes the fact that he was born of Jude's first marriage. The child's old, world-weary face points to both his premature wisdom and his ability to see beyond childish things. In his eyes there is a danger that Sue senses but cannot, at this stage, define.






Part VI: At Christminster Again

Summary

Jude and Sue return to Christminster with Little Father Time, who is now also named Jude, and the other two children they have had together. They encounter a procession and see Jude's old friends Tinker Taylor and Uncle Joe. Jude tells them he is a poor, ill man and an example of how not to live. The family goes to look for lodging, but finds that people are reluctant to take them in. One woman rents them a room for the week provided Jude stays elsewhere, though when she discovers Sue's history and tells her husband, her husband orders her to send them away. Sue puts the younger children to bed and takes little Time out to look for other lodgings, but with no success. The boy remarks that he "ought not to have been born" and grows irate when Sue tells him that she is pregnant again.

In the morning Sue wakes early and goes to see Jude. They have a hasty breakfast together and then return to Sue's lodgings to make breakfast for the children. They get some eggs and place them in the kettle to boil. Jude is watching the eggs when he hears Sue cry out. He rushes in to find Sue unconscious on the floor, having fainted. He cannot find the children. He looks inside the door to the closet, where Sue collapsed, and sees all three children hanging from clothes hooks. Beneath little Time's feet lies a chair that has been pushed over. Jude cuts down the three children and lays them down on the bed. He runs out for a doctor and returns to find Sue and the landlady attempting to revive the corpses. On the floor they find a note, written by little Jude, that reads "Done because we are too menny."

Jude and Sue find lodgings toward the town of Beersheba, but Sue is despondent. She decides that she is rightly married to Phillotson, and it becomes clear that she and Jude never legally married at all. Arabella visits the house and explains that she did not feel she belonged at the children's funeral. Sue imagines that God punished her by using Arabella's son, born in wedlock, to kill her children, who were born out of wedlock. Phillotson agrees to take Sue back as his wife, and she moves into his house.

Arabella decides she will do the same and takes Jude, who is drunk, back to the house they lived in when they were married. After a few days, she and her father coerce him into marrying her again by suggesting that he has been living with them on that pretext. He agrees, and they are married. Jude is ill with an inflammation of the lungs. He decides that he wants to die but to see Sue first, so he travels to her home in the rain. Sue tells him that she still loves him but must stay with Phillotson, and he kisses her. At night she tells Phillotson that she saw Jude, but swears she will never see him again. She joins Philloston in his bed despite her lack of feeling for him, saying it is her duty.

In the summer, Jude is sleeping when Arabella goes outside to observe the Remembrance Week festivities. She wants to see the boat races, but goes upstairs to check on Jude first. Finding him dead, she decides that she can afford to watch the boat races before dealing with his body. Standing before his casket two days later, she asks the Widow Edlin if Sue will be coming to the funeral. The widow says that Sue promised never to see Jude again, though she can hardly bear her legal husband. She says that Sue probably found peace, but Arabella argues that Sue will not have peace until she has joined Jude in death.

Commentary

The tragic conclusion of the novel arises as the inevitable result of the difficulties faced by the two cousins. Sue sees young Jude's terrible murder-suicide as the result of her transgressions against the institution of marriage, and her only solution is to return to her ex-husband. Sue sees all the forces of nature working against her and comes to regard her love for Jude as a sin in itself.

Arabella is heartless where Sue is passionate. Jude dies after again being tricked into marrying her, but she is unwilling to sacrifice the diversion of a boat race to be with him while he is dying or even to take care of his body after he dies. She personifies the danger of a bad marriage in the novel, and the murder of Sue's children by Arabella's child perhaps more rightly represents the destruction of true love by adolescent infatuation.




Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy

Overall Analysis and Themes

Jude the Obscure focuses on the life of a country stonemason, Jude, and his love for his cousin Sue, a schoolteacher. From the beginning Jude knows that marriage is an ill-fated venture in his family, and he believes that his love for Sue curses him doubly, because they are both members of a cursed clan. While love could be identified as a central theme in the novel, it is the institution of marriage that is the work's central focus. Jude and Sue are unhappily married to other people, and then drawn by an inevitable bond that pulls them together. Their relationship is beset by tragedy, not only because of the family curse but also by society's reluctance to accept their marriage as legitimate.

The horrifying murder-suicide of Jude's children is no doubt the climax of the book's action, and the other events of the novel rise in a crescendo to meet that one act. From there, Jude and Sue feel they have no recourse but to return to their previous, unhappy marriages and die within the confinement created by their youthful errors. They are drawn into an endless cycle of self-erected oppression and cannot break free. In a society unwilling to accept their rejection of convention, they are ostracized. Jude's son senses wrongdoing in his own conception and acts in a way that he thinks will help his parents and his siblings. The children are the victims of society's unwillingness to accept Jude and Sue as man and wife, and Sue's own feelings of shame from her divorce.

Jude's initial failure to attend the university becomes less important as the novel progresses, but his obsession with Christminster remains. Christminster is the site of Jude's first encounters with Sue, the tragedy that dominates the book, and Jude's final moments and death. It acts upon Jude, Sue, and their family as a representation of the unattainable and dangerous things to which Jude aspires.














What role does Christminster play in the novel?

Christminster is a distant paradise in Jude's mind, the symbol of the academic life to which he aspires. It is also the meeting place for Sue and Jude, and the site of their children's tragic ends. Given Jude's obsession with the place, Christminster functions almost as a character in the novel, taking on human dimensions as it threatens and taunts the two lovers.



Why does Jude maintain a relationship with Arabella?

Despite his love for Sue, Jude still retains some tenderness for Arabella and once even spends the night with her rather than meeting Sue. Knowing that he cannot have Sue while she is married, Arabella may represent the familiarity and accessibility of marriage to Jude. She is also the solution to the repression of his sexuality enforced by his legal marriage and separation.




Why does Hardy emphasize that Little Father Time seems older than his years?

Jude and Arabella's son is different from most children in both his appearance and manner. He seems to see beyond what is normal for his age, feeding Sue's belief that he is acting as an agent sent by God to punish her for her sins.





Why does Sue return to Phillotson after the children's death despite her love for Jude?

Sue tells Jude she feels that in order to make amends for her sins against the institution of marriage, she must return to the man she first married in the eyes of God. However, on another level, she might feel that she needs to punish herself for the suffering of her children by forcing herself into a life of unhappiness.