H o w t o R e a d L i t e r a t u r e7 2normal sex- impulses are turned into devilish domestic gins and
springes [that is, traps] to noose and hold back those who want to
progress?” ’ (Whether anyone ever spoke like this in real life is
another question.) If she tries to disavow her love for Jude, with
calamitous consequences for them both, it is not because she is
heartless but because she recognises that love in these social condi-
tions is inseparable from oppressive power. Sexuality is about
subjugation. As Hardy writes in Far from the Madding Crowd, ‘it is
difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is
chiefly made by men to express theirs’.
If Sue finds it hard to commit herself to Jude, it is not because
she is a flirt but because she values her freedom. She grew up, so we
are told, as something of a tomboy; and this epicene or sexless
quality, which puts her beyond the pale of conventional sexual
behaviour, makes it hard for her to understand men’s sexual
feelings for her. She can thus hurt them without intending to. She
would prefer simply to be their friends. The novel sees with
extraordinary insight that the sexual institutions of late Victorian
society have destroyed the possibility of comradeship between
men and women. Some of Sue’s apparent perversity springs from
the fact that her advanced sexual views are inevitably somewhat
theoretical. Women’s emancipation is still at an early stage. So her
beliefs can easily succumb to social pressures. She is thrown out of
college for unbecoming conduct, and then, alarmed by the public
outcry this occasions, tries to set matters right with respectable
opinion by marrying the mildly repulsive Phillotson. The result is
predictably disastrous.
Throughout the book, Sue has a dismally low estimate of herself.
She is a far more admirable woman than she imagines, and the
novel allows us to see the discrepancy between what she is really