Jude the Obscure

This session, I've spent a lot of time discussing, researching, and writing about Thomas Hardy's last novel Jude the Obscure. It is a tragedy and a depressing depiction of society.

    The tragic life of Jude Fawley can also be seen to symbolize the tragedies of hasty marriages, social ostracism brought on because of living by a different moral code than that of the society, poverty, and the abandonment of dreams. Disillusionment with organized religion which seemed cruel, civil law which seemed irrational, and natural law which leads everyone, no matter their supposed worth, to suffer and eventually die, causes Jude to eventually enter into a state of inertia. He resigns himself to death. What has brought him to this state?

    As a child, an orphan, Jude Fawley dreams of becoming a scholar in Oxford (named Christminster in the book) because his beloved schoolmaster does so. So as a teenager, he works as a stonemason to make enough money to move there and pursue his dream. But one day when he's nineteen years old, as he's walking down the street thinking on his future plans, he's hit by something. When he bends down to see what it is, he finds it is a pig's penis! Yep, a pig's penis! Thrown at him by the flirty, uncouth country-girl, Arabella, who works in her father's slaughterhouse. She wanted to get his attention...and she sure does. As with many men his age, his hormones shout louder than his reason. Jude abandons his dreams of scholarly pursuits to spend time with Arabella, who wanting to trap him into marriage, seduces him and then pretends she's pregnant so he'll marry her. He does the honourable thing and marries her although they are completely unsuited for each other. Less than two years later Arabella leaves him to move to Australia with her family.

    Free from his responsibilities to Arabella, he finally moves to Christminster. He seeks out his cousin Sue Bridehead and quickly falls in love with her. They are completely suited to each other, but cannot marry because Jude is already married. When Sue finds this out, she marries Jude's ex-schoolmaster, to whom HE had introduced her. Jude is devastated and Sue immediately regrets her hasty marriage. Although in Christminster Jude cannot enter any of the colleges because he is too poor. So having completely lost hope of marrying Sue and of becoming a scholar, he turns to alcohol. In a bar one night he runs into Arabella who had returned to England and is working as a bartender. She tells him that while in Australia she got married again thinking that no one would ever find out she was already married. She wants a divorce so that her Australian husband can join her in England. Jude agrees to it. Sue, meanwhile, is completely repulsed by her husband and leaves him. She moves in with Jude, but refuses to sleep with him until both officially divorced. Her husband agrees to the divorce on the grounds that she is having an affair, so it is a faulty divorce.

    Living together, unmarried, in nineteenth century England, the couple is shunned by society. Jude cannot find work to support them because as soon as it is found out that he is living with a woman, not his wife, he is fired. It is even hard for them to find landlords that will accept them as tenants. They have to move from town to town throughout rural England. Then, Arabella drops a bomb on them...she had been pregnant when she had moved to Australia and although her parents had raised their son there, her parents have decided to send the child back to England to be cared for by his biological parents. Of course Arabella does not want the responsibility of raising the boy, so she sends him to Jude. The boy had never been christened so is nicknamed "Little Father Time" because he is so serious. He doesn't find joy in what most children enjoy. At school he is ridiculed because his "parents" aren't married, so Jude and Sue decide to marry. Yet every time they go to a church or before the justice of the peace they think that the marriage vows are anti-passion and decide not to go through with the ceremony. But they let those around them believe that they have married to protect "Little Father Time" from taunts at school. To show Jude that their "marriage" is serious, she agrees to sleep with him.

    Fast forward three to four years. The couple now has two children of their own and Sue is pregnant with a third. On impulse, Jude decides to move back to Christminster. They arrive completely unprepared and have to find a place to sleep for the night. They are rejected everywhere because they are unmarried. Finally they find a place that will accept Sue to stay with the children if Jude sleeps elsewhere. Being in Christminster reminds Jude of his failure to achieve his dreams, depressing him. Sue is overwhelmed by their poverty, taking care of three young children with another on the way, and also feels guilty that Jude never realized his goals. "Little Father Time," now nine or ten years old, in his uncanny sensitiveness asks Sue if she is upset because of life's difficulties. Instead of soothing him, she verifies that life is hard and that it would be better to die young than to have to suffer through it. He takes this to heart.

    The next morning Sue leaves the children alone to meet with Jude at his inn to decide what to do about finding a place for all of them to sleep that evening. When they return to her room they discover a ghastly scene. "Little Father Time" had hung his younger half-brother and half-sister by the neck to hooks on the door. Then he had hung himself. With the shock Sue also loses the baby she was carrying. Obviously Jude and Sue are in great distress. Sue decides that the tragedy happened to teach her that she should never have left her ex-husband, from whom she'd gotten the divorce on false grounds. She leaves Jude and returns to her ex-husband. Jude is completely devastated; he's lost his whole family. Arabella learns of the disaster and tricks him into marrying her again (her Australian husband had died by this time). Of course he is entirely unhappy with her and when he falls ill and can't provide for her anymore, Arabella comes to hate him. He becomes an invalid and his dying wish is to see Sue one last time and to try to mend their relationship. He sneaks out of the house while Arabella is gone and makes the long voyage to Sue in awful weather. Sue rejects him, so he returns home to die. When he dies, Arabella is out courting the doctor, so he dies completely alone and abandoned.