Why this book

When it appeared in 1895, readers were scandalised by its raw attack on marriage and class, and one outraged bishop was said to have burned it. Wounded by the uproar, Hardy never wrote another novel, turning instead to poetry for good.

The Story

Jude Fawley is a dreaming orphan in the little village of Marygreen, raised by his stern great-aunt Drusilla. When the village schoolmaster leaves for the far city of Christminster, he tells the boy to be good and to love learning. Therefore a fierce ambition takes root in Jude.

Christminster, its spires shimmering on the horizon, becomes Jude's holy city of light and knowledge. Therefore, hungry to belong among its scholars, he sets his whole heart on one day walking through its ancient college gates as a learned man.

By night, working as a humble baker's boy, Jude teaches himself Latin and Greek by the light of a single candle. But he has no tutor and no money, and the harder he studies, the further that gleaming city of scholars seems to drift beyond his reach.

Then, one idle afternoon by a stream, a bold pig-farmer's daughter named Arabella Donn flings a scrap of offal to catch Jude's eye. She is coarse, cunning, and earthy, and she swiftly lures the innocent young dreamer into a heated courtship.

Arabella tells Jude she is carrying his child. Therefore, dutiful and ashamed, he abandons his precious studies and marries her. But there is no child; the pregnancy was a lie, and Jude finds himself yoked to a wife who mocks his books and his dreams.

The marriage quickly curdles into quarrels and cold silence. But then Arabella tires of him and sails away to Australia with her family, leaving Jude alone. Therefore, wounded yet suddenly free, he gathers his old ambition and sets out at last for Christminster.

Arriving in the ancient city, Jude gazes up in wonder at its soaring towers and hushed courtyards. But he cannot afford to enter as a student. Therefore he takes work as a stonemason, mending the crumbling walls of the very colleges he worships.

Day after day Jude carves and sets the old stone of Christminster, shaping with his hands a world of learning that will never open its doors to him. But his hunger to study only burns hotter as he labours outside the gates.

Seeking family in the city, Jude finds his lively cousin, Sue Bridehead, a quick, spirited young woman who reads freely and questions every rule. He is instantly enchanted by her fearless mind. But he is a married man, and she is his own blood kin.

Sue is unlike anyone Jude has known: she buys small pagan statues, mocks stiff convention, and dares to think for herself in an age that forbids women to. Therefore Jude loves her all the more, even as he hides that love beneath the manner of a fond cousin.

Clinging still to his old dream, Jude writes humble, hopeful letters to the heads of the colleges, begging for any chance to study among them. But he waits in an agony of suspense, torn between his forbidden love for Sue and his lifelong ambition.

At last one reply arrives, and it is crushing. A college master coolly advises Jude to remain in his own sphere and keep to his trade as a workman. Therefore the great door of learning slams shut, barred not by his mind but by his birth.

Shattered, Jude staggers into a tavern and, half-drunk, recites the Creed in flawless Latin to shame the scholars who spurned him. But wounding himself changes nothing. Therefore he turns his thwarted devotion toward Sue, resolving at least to see her future made safe.

Wanting Sue respectable and secure, Jude introduces her to his old mentor, the gentle schoolmaster Phillotson, who takes her on to train as a teacher. But the lonely older man soon loses his heart to the bright young woman himself.

Out of duty and quiet doubt, Sue agrees to marry Phillotson. But almost at once his touch fills her with a physical dread she can neither explain nor master. Therefore their marriage becomes a silent daily torment for them both.

Unable to bear it any longer, Sue flees to Jude and confesses that she simply cannot live as Phillotson's wife. She begs for her freedom, and Jude, though married himself, cannot bring himself to send the trembling woman back.

Then Phillotson does an extraordinary thing. Moved by pity rather than anger, he lets Sue go to Jude, sacrificing his own good name and his position for her happiness. Therefore both unhappy marriages are, at terrible cost, undone.

Divorced at last, Sue and Jude are finally free to be together. But Sue, terrified that marriage strangles all tenderness into duty, refuses to wed him. Therefore they live openly as lovers and companions, unmarried, quietly defying the whole watching world.

Then Arabella sends startling news: Jude has a young son by her, born after she left. The strange child arrives — solemn, old-eyed, and sorrowful far beyond his years, nicknamed Little Father Time. Moved to pity, Sue and Jude take him gently in.

Sue and Jude soon have two small children of their own, and for a while the little family is poor but tender and warm. But the grave older boy watches the world with a joyless, grown-up dread, as though he already senses the sorrow waiting ahead.

Wherever they settle, neighbours soon sense the couple are unwed and turn against them. Therefore doors close, Jude's work dries up, and the ragged family is driven from town to town, always moving, never once allowed to rest and belong.

At last they drift back to Christminster, footsore and destitute. But no lodging will take so large and shabby a family. Therefore Sue and the children are crammed into one bare rented room, while Jude, ill and weary, searches the streets for work.

That night, worn out and pregnant once more, Sue answers the anxious boy's questions with painful honesty, admitting there are too many of them and another child is coming. But the strange, brooding child takes her weary words as a dreadful verdict upon them all.

In the grey morning Sue returns to a horror beyond all words: the boy has killed the two little ones and then himself, believing he had spared the family a burden. Beside them hangs a note, on which Hardy gives him one line: 'Done because we are too menny.'

The horror breaks everything. Sue collapses and, in her anguish, gives birth to a stillborn child. Therefore the once bright, questioning woman who doubted every rule is shattered utterly, and she comes to believe the tragedy is God's judgement upon her sins.

Twisting her unbearable grief into penance, Sue renounces her love for Jude as wickedness. Therefore she crawls back to Phillotson and remarries the man she loathes, offering herself to him as a sacrifice while every fibre of her being recoils.

Jude is left hollow and drinking. Sensing his weakness, Arabella returns, fills him with liquor, and tricks him into marrying her a second time. Therefore both lovers end chained once more to the very spouses they had suffered so much to escape.

Ill and feverish, Jude makes one last desperate journey through freezing rain to beg Sue to come away with him. But she clings to her cruel vow and turns him from her door. Therefore he walks home soaked, knowing full well the chill will kill him.

Alone in a bare room, as the bells and cheers of a Christminster festival drift in through the window, Jude murmurs the bitter words of Job — 'Let the day perish wherein I was born.' Arabella is off among the revellers, and he dies obscure and unmourned.

What it means

Jude's tragedy is that he came too soon — a hungry mind and a tender heart, crushed between rigid class and merciless marriage laws that left no room for him to live. Hardy forces the question: how many bright souls does a cruel society quietly waste?

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