Jude the Obscure 511HarDy, THomaS Jude the Obscure
(1895)
The love and life story of Jude Fawley is Hardy’s
last novelistic achievement. Rural orphan boy Jude
dreams of an academic career encouraged by his
teacher and role model Phillotson. After a rash and
failed marriage to Arabella, Jude pursues his career
plans in Christminster (modeled on Oxford) where
he meets and falls for his free-minded cousin Sue
Bridehead. Instead of being accepted into college
Jude becomes a stonemason, while Sue attends
a training school to become a teacher and then
(forced by social pressure) marries Phillotson. Jude
tries to take up a clerical pathway. These plans
become obsolete when Sue leaves Phillotson to live
with Jude. They have several children, while a boy
from Jude’s first marriage to Arabella goes to live
with them. Their libertine life is overshadowed by
material hardships and anguish caused by public
rejection. Social ostracism leads to homelessness,
nomadic life, unemployment, poverty, and finally
to catastrophe: Jude and Arabella’s boy kills the
other children and himself: “Done because we are to
menny.” Sue is thrown into existential crisis and has
a miscarriage; convalescing, she returns to Phillot-
son, convinced of her own and Jude’s guiltiness: She
believes now that they have caused the disaster by
living together in sin. Jude, existentially defeated and
becoming seriously ill, is lured into remarrying Ara-
bella. He pays a final visit to Sue, then on the voyage
home completely loses his health. While Arabella is
out with another man, he dies alone.
Thomas Schares
ambition in Jude the Obscure
Not all is love in Hardy’s love story of Jude Fawley
and Sue Bridehead. As a young boy, Jude decides to
follow the example of his schoolmaster Phillotson
and go to the city and to the university to become
a scholar. This will be his lifelong obsession and
ambition. As with many of his time’s rural working
class, Jude is attracted to the city. The city stands for
the chance of social ascent. He pursues his destiny
monomaniacally by teaching himself classical works
in his childhood and youth, until his hasty marriage
to Arabella ends his efforts prematurely. After the
failure of this (forced) marriage, however, Jude leaves
for Christminster (Oxford) and becomes a part of
the rural migration to urban areas. He picks up the
profession of stonemasonry in order to earn his liv-
ing before admission to the university. Again, his
plans are postponed, because he meets and falls in
love with his cousin Sue. The assumed path to wis-
dom for Jude turns out to be stony; the answer to his
letter of inquiry from one of the heads of a university
college is a signpost of class barriers and social rank
haughtiness in Victorian England: “. . . judging
from your description of yourself as a working man,
I venture to think that you will have a much better
chance of success in life by remaining in your own
sphere and sticking to your trade. . . .”
The blow of this rejection letter does not cause
Jude to refrain from his ambitions. That Jude’s ambi-
tions are more than infatuation becomes unmistak-
ably clear when, the same evening, he embarrasses
students in a pub by quoting the latin Credo flaw-
lessly from memory. This phase of his life being
molded by the struggle for Sue, he reshapes his
original plans for an academic career: He starts to
consider applying for a position with the church (the
only traditional alternative for the poor in which to
pursue university studies). These plans also become
obsolete when his life with Sue begins. They live
together “in sin,” which, of course, is not suitable for
a post in the church.
Like Jude, the whole ensemble of Jude the
Obscure reveals ambition as an elementary human
impetus, aiming at varying objectives: Jude’s first
wife, Arabella, mainly represents the struggle for
wealth and the urge to marry (materially) well; hers
is the life-policy of immediate personal advantage.
She leaves Jude the moment she finds out that he is
not so promising after all in these terms. Sue, on the
other hand, lives more for ideas than for aspirations.
She is prone to compromise (marriage to Phillotson,
religious turn in the end), since her ideals and ideas
of new womanhood find little grounding in life as
it is in Victorian England and to some extent cause
her to act inconsistently. She is able and ambitious to
become a teacher, but her lack of conformity renders
this impossible. Jude’s teacher and the later husband
of Sue, Phillotson, is the model of young Jude’s
ambitions: The nobility of his character becomes
apparent when he risks his career to consent to Sue’s