Home » Book Reviews » Thomas Hardy » Jude The Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Possible spoilers ahead
I read this book years and years ago and don’t remember much about it, so it feels like I am reading it for the first time again now when I pick it up. I do remember that when I read it then I viewed it as rather a depressing book, so I’m keen to re-examine that sweeping statement from my younger self (!) and look deeper into the book and study its complexities and themes and the author’s writing (which I do remember as being quite poetical in its descriptiveness), and to see if now I am older I find more in the book to challenge that view of it being depressing.
Jude Fawley, even as a child, often feels very low. He dreams of being educated and studying in his beloved town of Christminster, and has been inspired to aim for this due to his admiration of his school teacher Phillotson who studied at Christminster. He faces setbacks achieving this and is disappointed and low, but picks himself up and is determined to try again. However, his plans are then halted by him meeting and falling in love/lust with Arabella, who he then marries when she tells him she is pregnant by him, though she later says she was ‘mistaken’ in this. They are poor and unhappy together, and she emigrates to Australia with her family and Jude is alone again planning his life in Christminster. Oh dear, Jude! I do admire his aim of wanting to be educated and his determination to achieve this by studying Latin and Greek and using second-hand books to do this, and he is clearly able to work hard and motivate himself which are also admirable qualities. I also admire his ability to pick himself up from the disappointments and set-backs he suffers, but I am slightly concerned about the possibility he is easily swayed by things, as he went from being interested in Phillotson’s life at Christminster to then swiftly being determined to achieve this himself, as I say it’s an admirable aim for him to want to educate himself but I partly wonder if he could have had another dream that he followed equally as ardently if someone else had happened to share their experience with him and to show interest in him. And it’s tempting to be harsh with Arabella and see her as manipulating Jude into marriage, but I also remember that there weren’t many opportunities for women at that time and their aim had to be to find security for themselves which mostly meant being married, so although she obviously tricks Jude into marriage I guess I am trying to see her as possibly having little choice in order to ensure her own security. However, saying that, I don’t like her (!), she and Jude seem very different people and I didn’t think they would be happy, and sure enough they weren’t. I did love Phillotson’s advice to Jude to ‘be kind to animals and birds, and read all you can’, I feel this is very good advice for everyone to apply to life!
Jude learns that his parents separated, as did his aunt and uncle, and concludes that he has inherited this trait of not being suited to marriage. He briefly contemplates suicide by walking and jumping on a frozen pond, although he is more hoping the ice will break than being determined to break it, and it doesn’t break. He eventually makes it to Christminster working as a stonemason and studying at night. He learns that his cousin, Sue, is also at Christminster and becomes quite obsessed with her, telling himself he just wants her friendship as he is lonely, but realising in himself that he wants more while acknowledging he shouldn’t as Sue is his cousin and he is still married to Arabella (even though she has left him). Hmmm, Jude’s obsession with Sue makes me feel slightly uncomfortable, and I’m realising that he seems to easily become obsessed about things and to be unable to resist them, whether these are ideas such as emulating Phillotson by being at Christminster, or physical things such as being unable to resist sleeping with Arabella, so whereas earlier I was admiring his single-mindedness and determination, I am now more viewing him as having a worryingly obsessive nature! And also earlier I’d admired his ability to pick himself up again in the face of disappointments and setbacks, but now I’m alarmed at the incident with him jumping on the ice and wishing to die which seems to imply he struggles to cope with things! Oh dear, he suddenly looks far more troubled and vulnerable than I’d thought him. And of course, I’d forgotten that it was extremely difficult to divorce in those days and that even though Arabella has left him he is still technically married so not free to have a relationship with anyone else, which seems very harsh and unfair.
In order to dissuade Sue from leaving Christminster, Jude gets her a job teaching with Phillotson, but then is distraught when he thinks she and Phillotson may be having a relationship. He also comes to the realisation that his studies are getting him nowhere and he will never get into the universities there. He gets drunk and goes to Sue’s place in the early hours of the morning, but leaves again before she gets up the next day. He is now completely disillusioned with Christminster and his aim of high study, he realises that money and class are necessary requirements to enter the college and without these he will never be accepted there, no matter how hard he studies or how passionately he wants it. He is fired from his stonemason job and has no money. He walks back to his childhood home, feeling lower than he’s ever felt before. He chats to a priest, who suggests he should aim to be a local curate as there is the chance to do good with that work and it requires less study, and Jude decides to follow this course. He then decides to be a curate in Melchester, as he learns Sue is at Teaching College there. When he arrives and contacts her to suggest they meet, she is keen to see him. She admits to him that she has agreed to marry Phillotson in two years’ time when she is qualified so they can purchase a big school together, him teaching the boys and her teaching the girls, though privately she is tired of her studies and is lonely. Jude suggests he should no longer see her as she is now engaged, but she insists they continue to see one another. Oh dear, poor Jude, I can imagine that now he doesn’t have his dream to hold onto of reaching Christminster then it is even harder for him to cope as he feels he has nothing to hope for, nothing to sustain him, and I can imagine he is also the type of person who wouldn’t bear that failure of his dream very well and would be very hard on himself for the failure too. I was feeling worried for him, knowing how he has struggled with low mood and suicidal thoughts before, but then he immediately leaps on this fresh idea of being a curate which I was initially seeing as a positive step as it gave him something else to aim for and it seems an admirable career as he would be making a difference to people’s lives (though again, I was slightly concerned at how easily he can be swayed into something or by someone), but now he’s back being obsessed again with moving to Melchester because Sue is there! And Sue, sigh, she is marrying Phillotson in order to achieve the aim of co-owning a school which she wouldn’t be able to achieve on her own as a single woman so this seems quite manipulative of her, but then I am reminded of my earlier thoughts with Arabella’s aim of marriage to Jude being due to the lack of choices for women and their need to attain security and this being most commonly attained through marriage, so really I guess Sue is doing the same thing here, using marriage to attain the security she wouldn’t be able to attain in another way being a woman in that time so perhaps I shouldn’t be hard on her for this, and it could be admired that she isn’t marrying Phillotson with the aim of him providing for her as she is keen to contribute herself by teaching at the school and wanting to make a difference to children’s lives, plus I admire her career ambition in this regard too. But I can’t help being a bit uncomfortable because this is with Phillotson, as he seems to be hoping for love from this marriage and I therefore worry that he will get hurt. And I can’t help feeling that Sue is being more cold-hearted and functional in this than Arabella was, it seemed like Arabella and Jude had the potential to enjoy their marriage and have fun together, whereas Sue’s motive for marriage seems not to include any possibility of enjoyment and fun. But perhaps I’m being harsh on Sue, she is someone I am struggling to feel I understand and part of me wants to admire her for being so modern in her time but there is just something about her that I struggle to like. I’m admiring her modernity, which is demonstrated by her being so well-read in books (Jude notes that she has read more books than he has), and she challenges the accepted relationships between men and women (when she was 18 she lived as friends with a male student in London, not caring that this would be frowned on, and she stays over at Jude’s flat when she needs somewhere to stay), and she is confident in expressing her views (speaking to Jude very easily and as his equal), and she is dismissive of the restrictions on women (she lived by herself in London). But she doesn’t seem to be aware of people’s feelings and of how her actions could cause them pain (though I guess I should question if I just find this unusual because she’s a woman, should she actually be able to follow her own path regardless of others’ feelings, just like men were able to do at that time?). I feel too with Sue that it is perhaps more an inability to understand and empathise with people’s feelings, rather than her understanding their feelings but not caring about their feelings. For example, the man she lived with when she was 18 ended up falling in love with her and told her she was torturing him by not returning his feelings and continuing to live with him, so firstly I struggled to understand how she could have been oblivious to his altered feelings for her, how she couldn’t see any signs of this and hadn’t debated whether it was wise to leave as she didn’t return his feelings and anticipated that the likely path ahead would be awkwardness and pain, but now I am beginning to consider if she was just oblivious to this and was unable to read the signs (and obviously the man was responsible for his own feelings too, he could have decided to live elsewhere or ask Sue to live elsewhere, rather than staying in the situation and then declaring that she tortured him, I don’t mean it was all just up to her!). And of course she is now staying at Jude’s flat (although not entering into a relationship with him) while she is engaged to Phillotson so it’s easy to imagine that Phillotson would feel hurt and betrayed by this and that Jude might begin to believe that this signals that she returns his feelings, but these things don’t seem to enter her head at all. So does she just not care about people’s feelings and thinks it’s up to them to look after themselves (and again, like the flatmate, there is something to be said for them being responsible for their feelings and not putting themselves in the way of possible pain), or can she not put herself in their shoes at all and anticipate that her actions may cause pain? I am still undecided, but I think I’m leaning more towards the latter. Or perhaps she’s just incredibly modest and can’t imagine that men would fall in love with her! And then there is the inconsistency she displays in her statements which also makes it harder for me to judge quite what she really does feel or believe, as she says one thing in a determined way and then immediately says the opposite thing in an equally determined way, eg she is worried that Phillotson will be angry that she’s left the Teaching College but then says she doesn’t care what he says and will please herself, and she suspects (eventually it dawns on her!) that Jude loves her and tells him he shouldn’t love her but then tells him she doesn’t mind if he does. So what does she really think, and does she even know herself? It’s tempting to view her as a bit of a tease and to be exalting in the power she has over men and to be deliberately perverse and cruel in tormenting them, and this was certainly my initial reaction to her, but I am trying to keep an open mind about her, as well as reminding myself that she is still a young girl (is she 18, I think?) and could also be immature and confused and potentially flattered by the attention she receives. But all this inner debate of mine makes me aware again how complex and well written these characters are!
Sue learns of Jude’s earlier marriage to Arabella and immediately brings forward her marriage to Phillotson, and then asks Jude to give her away at the marriage ceremony and tells him she wishes to continue being close friends with him after she is married. Jude wonders if she has married Phillotson in a fit of temper and to punish him for having married Arabella, and he is concerned that she doesn’t realise that marriage comes with responsibilities and obligations, and that it is not easy to release yourself from a marriage if you later regret it. Later, Arabella arrives in the town and works as a barmaid and Jude sleeps with her. She tells him that she has married again in Australia, even though this is illegal because she is still married to Jude. The following morning Sue comes to meet Jude, and he compares the two women and feels ashamed of being with Arabella the night before, however he doesn’t tell Sue that Arabella is back. Sue admits she’s not happy with Phillotson, though he is good and kind to her. After some time, Arabella writes to Jude saying that her Australian husband has come to England to join her and they will run a bar in London as husband and wife. Ooooh, Sue really does seem to have married Phillotson in a fit of temper and in order to hurt Jude, and it’s even harder now for me not to see her as cold and selfish and manipulative and to try and see her as a fragile vulnerable girl at risk of being taken advantage of. But then again (how this book makes me question and contradict myself!) shouldn’t I be relieved that she isn’t fragile and vulnerable at that time in history, given that it would then be likely that she would be taken advantage of, is she just protecting herself the only way she knows how, bearing in mind the lack of rights and power that women had at that time (or is she just cold and selfish and manipulative, tee hee?!)? And surprise, surprise, she’s not happy being married to Phillotson, even though he is a nice man and is kind to her, sigh, she seems more like a silly child again to me now! And why tell Jude that she isn’t happy with Phillotson, what is she hoping to gain by this? She chose this path and so surely she has to do her best within it, and not either expect Jude to help her escape from it, or hope that her married life might be more bearable if she can feel she still has the power to reignite Jude’s feelings for her, she just seems playing with both men at the moment, arrrggh! Again I really admire this book though as it seems to reverse the traditional emotions and roles of men and women, with the men seeming to be more thoughtful and easily hurt and sensitive, and the women seeming to be more selfish and inconsiderate and powerful and to be dictating events, and again what a book this is for making me think and analyse things and contradict myself! And Jude, oh dear Jude, sleeping with Arabella (though doesn’t it seem quite the coincidence that she comes back from Australia and just happens to end up in the town that Jude is in?)! For someone who seems to want a quiet, thoughtful, contemplative life of study, Jude seems to consistently be putting himself in the way of emotional dramas! He disappoints me, not just because he’s slept with Arabella, but because of how rashly he acts, not considering consequences, I feel this doesn’t bode well for him. Though I was interested in Jude considering his own personality and deciding that he doesn’t suit being a clergyman because he ‘was a man of too many passions…his passion for Sue troubled his soul, yet his lawful abandonment to the society of Arabella…seemed instinctively a worse thing’, and I guess I should admire this self-reflection (though unfortunately it comes after the event rather than before!), this seems more like the Jude I imagined he was, a deep and thoughtful man rather than the impulsive rash man he more often seems, and perhaps after this self-reflection he will aim to act differently (I can hope, though I suspect there’s more chance of that if he can just keep away from both Sue and Arabella!).
Jude tells Sue ‘I sometimes think you are a flirt’, to which she is very upset and offended. She explains that ‘some women’s love of being loved is insatiable and so, often, is their love of loving, and in the last case they may find that they can’t give it continuously to the chamber-officer appointed by the bishop’s licence to receive it’. She adds that she thinks it is best for her and Jude not to meet again. Jude’s aunt later dies and Sue comes to the funeral, so she and Jude then begin to see each other again. She tells Jude how unhappy she is in her marriage, particularly having to sleep with Phillotson. He tells her that he’s seen Arabella again and that he has ‘no feelings of love left in me’. He is determined to try to fight his feelings for Sue but they finally kiss passionately when she departs the town after the funeral. Sue asks Phillotson if she can live with Jude, describing it to herself as adultery to live with Phillotson ‘on intimate terms when one feels as I do’. Phillotson finally agrees to let Sue live apart from him in their house and that they will no longer sleep together, although ‘he felt as lonely as when he had not known her’. Phillotson then forgetfully walks into Sue’s bedroom and she jumps out of the window in horror at his presence, so he decides to release her altogether, although he doesn’t want to know if she will then go to Jude or not. Yay, I was cheering Jude on when he called Sue a flirt, finally he seemed to be opening his eyes to her true nature and I hoped he would then become more wary around her, ideally keeping his distance altogether, and I was pleased when Sue herself suggested that they didn’t see each other any more. But then of course, this resolution was all undone at the funeral, sigh. And I was interested in Sue’s explanation to Jude of her behaviour, she seems to be saying that she is aware that men fall in love with her and that she enjoys the feeling of this (‘some women’s love of being loved is insatiable’), but then she seems to be saying she can devotedly and loyally love a man (when she speaks about ‘some women’s…love of loving’), but then again there is her reference to some women not being able to love the man they are married to (I take it this is what she means by ‘the chamber-officer appointed by the bishop’s licence to receive it’) so I feared she was hinting to Jude that she does/could love him even though she is married to Phillotson, so run, Jude, run were then my immediate thoughts!! But of course, Jude seems to be irresistibly drawn to Sue, to be powerless against loving her, even though he did really seem to be trying to resist her when he told her about seeing Arabella again and said that he had no feelings of love left in him (and what sad words they were, how tragic that he could be that jaded with life and love!). But I felt he was doomed with how he seemed to view Sue as a fragile person, an ‘aerial being…ethereal, fine-nerves, sensitive girl’, oh nooooo, I felt he was going to see himself needing to step in and protect her (whilst I on the other hand don’t feel she needs protecting at all, much like a velociraptor doesn’t need protecting, tee hee!). And I was interested in Sue telling Jude that ‘a married woman in trouble of a kind like mine commits a mortal sin in making a man the confidant of it, as I did you’ as part of me wonders if the draw of Jude for her is that she can share her thoughts and concerns with him, and that he is the only person she can talk to. I’m not sure if she could ever love him, or if she confuses this sharing of confidence with love, but I can empathise with her need to share her feelings and the joy of finding someone she can talk to honestly and who listens (though I am concerned at the mixed signals this gives to the man), and this then makes me wonder if she is actually lonely, which then makes me feel sorry for her and to try and be more patient with her all over again (how I do struggle to make up my mind about her, tee hee!). Perhaps if she had a girl as a friend and she could share her thoughts and feelings with her, then it’d be easier for her to keep away from Jude (and certainly better for Jude!), but she seems to have no friends of her own sex and I wonder why, is it because she is different to them with her modern ideas? I guess she is quite masculine in her modernity, so perhaps this lack of femininity and obedience to the customs and rules of the time makes other women feel uncomfortable and intimidated by her, and perhaps makes it difficult for her to share her thoughts and feelings with women who are so far away from experiencing these thoughts and feelings themselves. She certainly does see things in a different way to other people (not just how women might see things, but how men might see things too, I suspect) with her viewing sleeping with Phillotson to be adulterous because of her feelings for Jude, rather than seeing her feelings for Jude to be adulterous because she is married to Phillotson! Though again, I try to see where she’s coming from and I guess I kind of respect her for not wanting to pretend to feel something for Phillotson when she loves another man, not wanting to fool him and risk hurting him more, but her viewing it as adulterous to sleep with her husband certainly shows her unusual way of viewing things! And her later explanation to Jude about her marriage to Phillotson is interesting, as she admits that she had encouraged Phillotson to love her whilst knowing that she didn’t love him, and then felt remorseful when she saw him suffering so tried to repair the wrong by marrying him. So this demonstrates she can feel regret for causing pain to someone and has a desire to then try and put this right, even though all she has done is just cause poor Phillotson more pain so she has judged incorrectly how to put things right! And poor poor Phillotson feeling so sad and lonely, poor poor man, I just knew he was going to end up being hurt, and I imagine he has never intentionally hurt anyone in his life, and I am reminded again of his earlier advice to Jude about ‘be kind to animals and birds’ which just shows what a gentle man he is. How unfortunate for him that he ever met Sue! And he has now become involved in this odd confusing relationship between her and Jude, though I thought his view about their relationship was fascinating, as he described them as having an ‘extraordinary sympathy, or similarity…seem to be one person split in two…their supreme desire is to be together, to share each other’s emotions, and fancies, and dreams’. Hmmm, this almost makes it sound like Jude and Sue are preordained/destined to be together, though his view of their similarity is also interesting and like they are ‘one person split in two’ which doesn’t sound altogether a healthy relationship, as well as wanting to ‘share each other’s emotions and fancies and dreams’ and I can see that it’s nice to want to understand your partner and to empathise with their feelings and experiences but that almost makes it sound all-consuming and obsessive and suffocating! Although obviously I must bear in mind that these are Phillotson’s views of their relationship and he is bound to be hurt and jealous so isn’t going to see any positives in their relationship. And then it gets even more puzzling with Sue’s attitude to Jude when she meets him after leaving Phillotson, as she seems not to want to be his lover, saying ‘my liking for you…is a delight in being with you, of a supremely delicate kind’, so am I right in thinking she just wants a confidante, like a kind of brother? But he obviously hasn’t understood it that way and is hurt, telling her ‘sometimes…I think you are incapable of real love’. However, he then seems willing to put up with anything just to be with her (sigh, I can’t decide whether to be frustrated for him or just pity him, or both!) as he says to himself that ‘neither length nor breadth, nor things present nor things to come, can divide me (from her)’.
Arabella asks Jude for a divorce. Sue finds out that Jude had slept with Arabella when they met up a while ago, and she is jealous and angry and says that he has been false to her and she will never forget it. He tells her that she is inconsistent and concedes nothing to him though expects him to concede all to her, but he then regrets these words and calls her a ‘spirit…a disembodied creature…a sweet tantalising phantom’. Phillotson loses his job when people find out he has condoned his wife living with her lover, as he is supposed to be in charge of his pupils’ morals. He offers to divorce Sue. After both Jude and Sue are divorced, Sue still tells Jude that she doesn’t want to marry him or sleep with him, and he notes she won’t even say that she loves him. She explains that their shared family experience of failed marriage means that any marriage between them would likely be doomed, and she also believes people fall out of love quickly when they are contracted by marriage to be with that person for the rest of their life and are no longer free, and adds that few women actually like marriage and that many only enter into it for the dignity and social advantage and she is willing to do without these things. Arabella turns up and asks to speak privately to Jude, which greatly upsets Sue and she becomes jealous and demands that he doesn’t meet with Arabella, pointing out that Arabella isn’t his wife, at which Jude points out Arabella is more his wife than Sue is. Sue tells him that if he meets Arabella then this means that he is deserting her, at which Jude points out that if Sue was his wife or had slept with him then this might be true but as Sue doesn’t intend to do either of these things then he can’t be said to be deserting her. Sue then declares wildly that she will sleep with him and will marry him, and the next day she speaks to Arabella herself, who notes that Sue now seems different when she speaks of Jude so she concludes that they hadn’t slept together before but now have. Arabella refuses to tell Sue why she wanted to speak to Jude, and instead writes to Jude, saying that there was a child from their marriage which she has never had much to do with and had left him with her parents in Australia for them to raise him, but they have now sent the boy to her and she is desperate for her new husband not to find out about him. Jude and Sue offer to have the child and Sue is keen to love and raise him and is touched by how unwanted he seems and how keen he is to call her mother and how much he seems to need love, though she is also jealous that he resembles Arabella as well as Jude. The boy is very quiet and withdrawn and says he’s always just been called Old Father Time and has never been christened. Hmmm, so Jude can challenge Sue at times, and this time it has resulted in what he wanted, as she has pledged to sleep with him and marry him. And Sue’s view on almost the hypocrisy of marriage is quite enlightening for trying to understand her better, that she feels most women don’t enter into it for love but for what they can gain by it, and also that she feels knowing you are obliged by the marriage vows to love that one person for the rest of your life actually causes you to fall out of love with that person! Where has she got these views from, I wonder? Do we know anything about her parents’ marriage, were they desperately unhappy and cruel to each other, and this is where she has gained this idea? Or is it the author’s view and he is just speaking through Sue? Though if he is, then it seems an unusual choice to speak through the female rather than the male character, but perhaps he thinks this unusualness would then make more of a dramatic statement and provoke more discussion. It certainly seems a distressingly cynical view, yes I can imagine that this is some people’s experience and purpose of marriage, but surely there are many many people for whom marriage is based on love and who cherish each other. However, hasn’t she just done what she professes to disapprove of, agreeing to marry someone for what the gain is to her, as her declaring she will marry Jude seemed an almost a childish desperation on her part and that she was using this to entice Jude to shun Arabella, rather than because she actually wants to marry Jude. And I am therefore concerned with how their marriage will be, if I could be convinced that she loved Jude then I’d be more confident that they could be happy, but I still can’t be sure of her reasons for wanting to be with him, and if she enters into another marriage without loving the man then it surely will be doomed to the failure she prophesied, and Jude will be hurt like Phillotson was hurt. Oh god, I almost don’t want to continue with this book, I don’t know if I can face seeing more pain! And wow, they now have a child to bring up! But oh, that poor poor boy, what a sad lonely life he has had, my heart just breaks for him to have grown up knowing he was unwanted by his mother and how this has surely affected his childhood and probably his views on life and relationships as he grows up, and it’s so tragic to see how desperately eager he is to be loved by Sue and Jude, bless him, he just seems so vulnerable! And Sue’s attitude towards him is interesting, and I wonder if this is another insight into her childhood, did she suffer from feeling unwanted and unloved so empathises with this child’s suffering? And her desire to love him and give him a good life is admirable, but (I almost feel bad saying this and seeming to be judging and condemning Sue further, and Jude also) I do have to question if they are fit people to be bringing up this sensitive boy, with how damaged they seem to be from their own experiences?
Jude and Sue attempt a few times to get married but each time they don’t go through with it, one time they are dissuaded by the unromantic questions on the marriage forms, and another time they are dissuaded by the sight and stories of other couples waiting at the registry office who (they feel) seem to be being forced into marriage due to their unhappy circumstances. Sue then voices again her reticence to marriage with her concerns of how it wrecks a relationship, and she also adds that Arabella had told her that she married her current husband in order to ensure his better treatment of her and to provide her with the security of a business with the pub, which reinforced Sue’s view that people only enter into marriage for gain rather than love. Jude says he has now become reluctant to marry too as he is worried about damaging their relationship because of his growing feeling that he and Sue are ‘queer sort of people…folk of whom domestic ties of a forced kind snuff out cordiality and spontaneousness’. During one of their discussions about marriage, Sue says the women being married seem like they are being given in sacrifice and Jude says it is often as worse for the man too. Jude and Sue tell the neighbours they are married and say that they went away to do this, but they are still a source of gossip and speculation and disapproval, and their son Old Father Time is teased at school and Jude is turned down for work, particularly stonemasonry work in churches as the couple are seen to be irreligious. They therefore move on from place to place, so people don’t know them and just assume that they are married, and Jude no longer looks for work in churches as he feels disillusioned with religion now. As time moves on, they have two children of their own, as well as Old Father Time. Arabella bumps into Sue and Old Father Time, when they are selling cakes at a fair, Sue is pregnant, and Arabella is a widow and now lives in the town that Jude and Sue are currently living in, Arabella has also seen Phillotson and learnt how he lost his school and income due to him being divorced. Jude is unwell, and declares he’d like to go back to Christminster, even though he realises now that he will never succeed there as he hoped and dreamed he would, cynically believing that Christminster hates self-taught men and scorns such men’s labours instead of respecting their efforts, and sneers at men’s mispronunciations when it should offer help and encouragement. They go there but struggle to find accommodation large enough for three children and with Sue shortly due to give birth to a fourth. They finally find accommodation but when the landlady questions Sue as to if they are married she says that they view themselves as married but technically aren’t, and they are told to leave. Well, I guess I shouldn’t be urging Sue to lie but really, that seemed foolish to admit that they weren’t married, given they know that they will then be disapproved of and likely refused the accommodation which they have struggled to find! And phew, that was quite a forceful section criticising marriage, it’s obviously a resounding no for marriage then! I’m beginning to wonder if the author wrote this book with the hope it would increase awareness of his possible belief of the futility and cruelness of marriage and to bring about its end, and I am suspecting that the author doesn’t support marriage and feels restricted with the rules of his marriage! And I can only imagine how this novel was viewed when it first came out, surely it faced condemnation from the church and from readers who had been brought up to believe in marriage, and also with Jude becoming disillusioned with religion in general, these were surely very bold statements for that time. Obviously views around marriage and relationships are far more relaxed now, and previous things that were once frowned upon are now accepted and people have far more rights to live the life they want to live, but at that time I can imagine the author’s statements about marriage being bad and it being better to live in sin must have caused a stir! The author seems almost too far ahead of his time in his views, although perhaps his views helped open people’s minds to alternatives and he could therefore perhaps be judged as bringing about the seeds of change, many years later? Books are certainly powerful things for broaching new ideas and discussions, which is why they are so vital and valuable! But on a lighter note (!), I would love to see those Christminster cakes which Sue was selling on her stall, described as having windows and towers and cloisters, wow! I am guessing that Christminster is based on a real town, so I wonder whether this real town also made cakes like that (or still makes them, in which case I will have to go there to sample them!). And I wonder why Jude wanted to go back to Christminster after being so cynical about it, as to be there again seems likely to only bring him into an even lower mood, I’d have thought.
Old Father Time is troubled by them struggling to find somewhere to stay and focuses on the fact that this is partly because of him and the other children. He says he wishes he hadn’t been born and says that children who are not wanted should be killed. Sue tells him there will be another child soon, at which he is extremely angry and states that Sue doesn’t care for them and is wicked and cruel and has done this on purpose. The following morning the children are found hanged, Old Father Time having killed the others and then himself ‘because we are too menny’. Omg, omg, omg, I am just in shock! I can’t believe this has happened, that the author wrote such a brutal tragic scene! This is just horrifying, it is surely one of the most depressing sections in literature ever! I can’t believe that I forgot this scene from my previous time reading this book, but maybe I blanked it out of my mind (I wish I could blank it out of my mind now!). Oh god, it’s just so awful, I don’t know how to describe how I feel about it and the shock of seeing those words on the pages. I almost feel annoyed at the author for writing this with no warning of what was coming (or at least, I didn’t guess from Old Father Time’s words what was coming), I feel like because I trusted the author then my guard was down and so this scene has hit me even harder, I’m not supposed to feel like this when I’m relaxing reading so I feel almost cheated by him and that I can no longer trust him!
Sue and Jude are deeply shocked and grieving, and Sue goes into premature labour and loses her unborn child. She blames herself for the tragedy for speaking to Old Father Time as if he was an adult, thinking that she encouraged him to develop thoughts that weren’t usual for a young boy, and she also blames herself for their choice of living unmarried as this was part of the reason why they struggled to find accommodation, as well as having the children. Jude believes he can see on Old Father Time’s dead face ‘the inauspiciousness and shadow which had darkened (his) first union…and all the accidents, mistakes, fears, errors of the last’. Omg, it continues to be so tough to read, this section seems hard and brutal too. Poor Sue losing her unborn child, how can the author do that to her, I am almost thinking that he must hate these characters to want to hurt them so much (whilst trying to remind myself that they are just fictional characters!), I remember when I read Tess of the D’Urbervilles I felt that he must have hated Tess for giving her the events she had to deal with, which makes me now wonder if he regularly hated the characters he created and sought out ways to make them suffer (oh dear, I think I’m being a little mean to the author here, I think I am just still reacting to the shock and horror of the last few scenes but clearly the author isn’t a demon, tee hee, he was undoubtedly a very thoughtful and sensitive writer who created beautiful poetical prose, I must try and calm down a little here!). And (now I’m calmer!) I am wondering now if the author was actually punishing the characters for their irreligious views (both Jude and Sue certainly felt like this tragic event was a punishment for them not being married), perhaps I was wrong in presuming that the views they expressed on marriage were the author’s views, perhaps he did believe in marriage and wanted to promote this by demonstrating that people were punished for not believing in marriage and for acting against God’s will? I can imagine that was more the view of the time, that people were punished and went to Hell for being irreligious and going against God’s wishes. Hmmm, I wonder. And I am also wondering again about Sue being lonely and if this contributed to some of her ill-judged behaviours and speeches, as her realising that she used to speak to Old Father Time as if he was an adult implies that she had no adult figures (apart from Jude) to speak to and to share ideas with and to gain ideas from.
Sue begins to go to church services and tells Jude that they must ‘conform’ because God’s wrath has been vented on them, that she is now ‘cowed into submission’ and they need to remove the evil and sin from themselves, and that ‘Arabella’s child killing mine was a judgement, the right slaying the wrong’. She tells Jude that she is still really Phillotson’s wife and belongs to him or to nobody, and that Jude is still Arabella’s husband. Jude accuses her of never loving him as he loves her, that she has ‘not a passionate heart, your heart does not burn in a flame, you are upon the whole a sort of fay or sprite, not a woman!’. She says that women have an ‘inborn craving…to attract and captivate, regardless of the injury it may do the man’ and that their relationship ‘began in the selfish and cruel wish to make your heart ache for me without letting mine ache for you’. Jude agrees for them to separate. Sue marries Phillotson again, feeling that she will try and learn to love him by obeying him. Jude feels that her grief has destroyed her reasoning, and that this is another one of her ‘impulsive penances’. Arabella turns up asking help from Jude, having learnt that Sue has gone back to Phillotson, and she says she feels that she is really still married to Jude as he was her first husband. She lives with him, keeping him drunk and confused, and then tells him that he had said he would marry her and that he now needs to do so in order to protect her honour. Jude therefore marries her, though is barely sober and doesn’t really seem to know what he is doing. Phew, Sue has quite alarmed me with how far she has gone the other way, almost using religion to punish herself and Jude, not participating in religion’s promoting of love and kindness and caring for others but interpreting it only as strict and forbidding and punishing, this feels almost as perverse (for the time) as not having any religious beliefs at all. And I’m back to wondering again at the author’s intent and message by writing this, as it seems to me like he is being very critical of women here and portraying them as being manipulative and scheming towards men, he seems quite bitter in his words! And it also makes me so sad how in their grief and shock, Jude and Sue have attacked each other, rather than relying on the other for support to get through this, they have become divided in their grief rather than sharing their grief, which is tragic all over again. And how differently Jude views Sue now, before he seemed to think of her as a fragile fairy that needed protecting and now it’s as an evil sprite! Ironically, there were times early in their relationship when I was hoping he would be wary of her and see her with different eyes to the ones he then saw her through, but now it seems cruel for him to criticise her like this and to contribute (with her) to the destruction of their love. Oh god, there’s just no let up, is there?! Obviously I realise we weren’t going to have cheerful happy chapters and scenes after everything that has happened (!) but it could have been a little more positive if Jude and Sue were supporting each other in their grief instead of tearing each other apart. I think I’m going to be drained after I finish this book, I will need something light-hearted and cheerful to read, I think! And I feel for poor Phillotson yet again and wish he hadn’t let himself get involved with Sue, I just see him being hurt all over again, sigh. And Arabella, wow, I didn’t expect her to turn up and to want to be married to Jude again, I feel she has misjudged the kind of character he is now, I don’t think there will be much laughter in the marriage like there was the first time round, but perhaps this is her again wanting marriage for the gain of security as she is now a widow (is this the final dig at people’s potential ulterior self-seeking motives for marriage?!). And there was one section which made me chuckle (and I didn’t expect to say that!) when the landlord of the room Jude and Arabella rented became convinced that they were in fact a married couple due to ‘by chance overhearing her one night haranguing Jude in rattling terms and ultimately flinging a shoe at his head, he recognized the note of genuine wedlock’, tee hee!
Jude goes to see Sue for what he presumes will be the last time, as he feels that he is dying. He tells her how ridiculous these false marriages of theirs are, and pleads with her to run away with him but she refuses, although she admits that she does love him and she kisses him. Jude becomes even more unwell after the exhaustion of the trip to see Sue, due to the emotion and also getting wet in the rain, and he tells Arabella that he hopes it will bring about his death. He later dies alone, while Arabella is out at a Remembrance Festival for graduates.
Phew, well, I guess I wasn’t expecting a happy ending given how the book had gone, but this really was a very sad and depressing ending, both with Jude again begging Sue to run away with him and being refused, and then with him dying alone. I do feel quite drained and exhausted! And I wonder how the book was described when it was first published, surely it can’t have been described as a love story, as even though Jude and Sue’s love story runs throughout the book it is hardly successful or happy, I’d describe it as more of a tragedy than a love story.
I was determined to find some positive things in the book however! I loved the descriptions of the beautiful towns, and I was curious whether these towns were based on real places so I’ve googled and Christminster is apparently Oxford, Shaston is apparently Shaftesbury, and Melchester is apparently Salisbury. I also loved the beautiful poetical way that Hardy writes and the way he phrases things, such as ‘the sun made vivid lights and shades of the mullioned architecture of the facades, and drew patterns of the crinkled battlements on the young turf of the quadrangles’. And I enjoyed how the book made me think deeply about the characters as well as the author’s aims in writing what happened to them, it always feels very rewarding to have your thinking stretched and challenged.
And I feel I have thoroughly debated Sue’s character and considered what may have driven her to make the decisions she did (though probably still not reached a firm decision!), but I feel I have given less thought to Jude’s character and aims, which is ironic seeing as the book is named after him! I think he can be viewed as dependable and loyal, though also vulnerable to being taken advantage of by the female characters in the book. I wonder if he is unusual for that time in the way he considers women’s feelings and listens to their point of view and he isn’t bullish and domineering towards women like some lead male characters in other books at that time, but then he seems to go too much the other way and almost be too submissive towards women. He seems to be very unsuspicious and doesn’t cynically suspect people of having ulterior motives and always sees the best in people (women, mostly!), but then he seems to go too much the other way again and be almost too naive and allow himself to be taken advantage of because he’s not suspected a person’s ulterior motive. He has an admirable self-determination and single-mindedness when wanting to achieve something, but then this also seems to tip into obsession, and he seems to allow himself to be very easily swayed and talked into such an aim that then becomes an obsession and almost hero-worships the person giving the advice and swiftly wants to emulate them by following the same path as them. And of course when he doesn’t achieve his aim, he very swiftly descends into depression (and perhaps this is partly due to his obsessiveness with trying to achieve the aim) and even being that depressed that he attempted suicide (by jumping on the ice hoping it would break and he would fall through). I think my main view of Jude is that he’s not strong enough to deal with the blows that life inevitably deals out, obviously he had such very dramatic and unusual blows later in life with the children dying but I’m not really thinking of that (and I doubt anyone would be able to deal with something like that unscathed!), it’s more just general life really and how vulnerable he seems when trying to negotiate his way through it, bless him.
And as I’m only really by the end of the book properly considering Jude’s character and aims, this made me realise that the book seems to be more about Sue than Jude, which makes me wonder why Hardy didn’t name the book after her rather than naming it after Jude. I wonder if this links with Jude’s title of being ‘obscure’ as I was trying to consider throughout the reading of the book why he is given this title. Google gives the definition of the word ‘obscure’ as ‘not discovered or known about/uncertain…not clearly expressed or easily understood…to be kept from being seen/concealed’ so if I combine my two puzzles about the book title (firstly why it’s not Sue in the title as she seems to feature more in the book, and secondly why Jude is labelled as ‘obscure’), I wonder if these are actually connected as Jude becomes unseen and not much is known about him in comparison to Sue’s dominant character and force throughout the book, and he also struggles to express himself and be understood when dealing with her? Or does the title actually symbolise how Sue views Jude, as she is too busy with her own feelings and actions to see him or understand him or consider him, or does it symbolise how Jude views himself and his life as being unimportant in relation to Sue?
And one last thought about the author’s possible message about marriage which he might have been trying to convey through this book, I wonder (if his view of marriage is that it was a negative institution and needed altering) if he saw Arabella as having the best attitude towards marriage as she does exactly what she wants and what suits and benefits her regarding marriage, she marries who she wants, leaves them when she wants, and is quite content having relationships with other men whilst she is (technically) married, and she is open to others about her reasons for marriage being how she gains by it?
Well, I think the light-hearted and cheerful book I am going to treat myself to next will be The Enchanted Castle by E Nesbit, as that feels very very far away from Jude The Obscure, tee hee! But when I feel ready to read another Thomas Hardy book (and I am certain I will as even though this has been a little tough-going (!) I am full of admiration for his beautiful writing and his depiction of characters), I will re-read Tess of the D’Urbervilles as (like this Jude book) I have only read it once and that was years and years ago so I’m keen to see what my view of it would be now. I’ve also picked up a few Thomas Hardy books in charity shops lately, thinking I’d go straight from reading Jude The Obscure to reading all of his books, so I have A Pair of Blue Eyes, and Wessex Tales, and The Woodlanders on my shelves waiting to be read.
Jude the Obscure is this month’s read at the book club my wife and I belong to. It’s not a popular choice by all accounts and I fail to understand why. I found the novel fascinating, insightful and yes frustrating. All our members know full well how depressing Thomas Hardy can be but that in my opinion is no excuse not to read the story. I look on the members and view them as emotionally intelligent people who being mature adults can handle difficult themes and events. It wasn’t my choice this month but I have read deeply and have much to discuss. It would be a great shame if the other members collectively have not. For where would we be then?
Hi Richard
Thank you so much for your comment. This book does fascinate me, it is so complex and involved, and constantly makes me think and ponder things. I agree with you that it is an important book to read. I hope your bookclub values your views on it and there is a lively and interesting debate.