C h a r a c t e r7 3like and her own self- loathing. When an adopted child of Jude and
Sue hangs their other children and then kills himself, an event
which the novel does not even try to make realistically convincing,
Sue’s poor opinion of herself is pressed to a pathological extreme.
‘I should like to prick myself all over with pins,’ she cries, ‘and bleed
out the badness that’s in me!’ Convulsed by guilt and self- disgust,
she abandons Jude and returns to Phillotson, leaving Jude to die
wretched and alone. I note this fact in my Preface, but fail to
mention that Sue leaves her partner for the most understandable of
reasons. It is hardly surprising that a woman who has just lost her
children in this grotesque manner, and who is in any case the target
of vicious public censure, should take the death of her children as
divine punishment for her bohemian way of life, and finally submit
to moral orthodoxy. It is understandable not least because Sue’s
sexual emancipation is still embryonic and uncertain. It is a work
in progress rather than an achieved position. How could it be
otherwise when she is forced to go it alone, with no support
from society at large and a good deal of prejudice and hostility
to face down?
The tragedy of the novel is that Sue and Jude try to live out a
form of comradeship, but are thwarted in the end by the power of
patriarchy. Even a love as deep and steadfast as theirs is bent out of
true by the system. ‘Sexuality is blood- stained,’ as one commen-
tator on the book remarks. This superbly courageous novel is
about the impossibility of sexuality, not just its pitfalls and illu-
sions. Yet it refuses to accept that the couple’s failure was somehow
fated. It has nothing to do with Nature, Providence or a malevolent
God. It is just that the experiment was premature. History was not
yet ready for it. The same is true of Jude’s ill- starred attempt to
enter Oxford University as a working man. This project, too, was