A Haunting, Horrifying Book. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

 ‘He was the sort of man who was born to ache a good deal before the fall of the curtain upon his unnecessary life,’ Thomas Hardy writes about his central character Jude. He certainly faces terrible pain and sorrow that is almost impossible to bear in this excoriating indictment of class distinction, marriage, the church and Victorian hypocrisy. It’s a bleak, unremittingly depressing book, and one that you can never forget.

Jude, a poor man who lives with his old and rather nasty aunt who tells him that the Fawley family is cursed, admires his schoolteacher Phillotsen, and wants to follow him to the dreaming spires of Christminster (Oxford). He thrives on study, reading Greek and Latin in the fields, and deep into the night. However, studying at Christminster requires money, and Jude will take years to earn it as a stonemason.

Unfortunately, the first obstacle to his achieving his ambition occurs when the mendacious Arabella pretends to be pregnant, and traps him into marriage. Unsuited to Arabella, and deeply unhappy, Jude almost has a nervous breakdown, but when she runs off to Australia, he begins to dream of entering the hallowed ground of Christminster again.

Soon he falls in love with his unconventional and refined cousin Sue, who has an ‘intellect like diamonds,’ and tells her that he wants to be a minister after he fails to become a classics student at Christminster. The dons won’t help him when he writes to them - the only letter he receives tells him to stick to his career as a stonemason! 

Sceptical Sue has a liking for pagan gods and goddesses, and argues against Christian beliefs. However, she has made her own New Testament, by rearranging the books ‘much more interesting,’ and offers to make Jude one. This shows just how clever she is.

Sue is beginning to fall in love with Jude, but as he is tied to Arabella, she decides to marry Phillotsen, although she has grave doubts. This marriage doesn’t work out either, because she can’t face having a sexual relationship with Phillotsen. Seemingly gentlemanly, he lets her go to Jude, who has obtained a divorce from Arabella, but he loses his career for letting his wife go, in the deeply hypocritical Victorian society.

Finally, you’d think that Jude and Sue could be happy, but, of course not! Sue can’t face what she considers to be the chains of marriage again, and she and Jude pay a huge price for ‘living in sin’. The book gets bleaker and bleaker, as Arabella enters the picture again, handing over her and Jude’s child, Little Father Time, to Sue and Jude, and the couple become ever poorer.

Jude hasn’t got a chance in hell of entering Christminster, so Sue  tries to knock the truth into him.  She tells him that: ‘You are one of the very men Christminster was intended for when the colleges were founded; a man with a passion for learning,but no money, or opportunities, or friends. But you were elbowed off the pavement by the millionaire’s sons’. 

The horrifying ending of this book will never leave you. I read almost all of Hardy’s novels when I was young, but I avoided this one, because I knew that it would be incredibly depressing. You do have to be in the mood to face it. It really is worth it, though. Hardy’s writing is just magical.

Jude is a lovely character, so kind and good-hearted, but Sue got on my nerves a bit, because she doesn’t seem to know what she wants. Even though she loves Jude, she seems pretty passionless towards him, for some reason, which really isn’t made clear. Her views about marriage are easier to understand, but selfish as far as how they affect Jude’s life and career. 

I wonder if Hardy had trouble associating his otherworldly Susanna with sex, (although she did have three children with Jude) which was weird, but perhaps not as strange or annoying as D.H. Lawrence’s being critical of Miriam in Sons and Lovers for being scared of sex. (There is nothing wrong with being scared of sex!) Rohan Maitzen in his blog writes about how Julia in Brideshead Revisited reminded him of Sue, ‘another ethereal beauty prone to erratic mood swings and inconvenient fits of piety’. (He wonders if men really like this type of woman)!. I found Julia much more likeable and easier to understand than Sue. She seemed more straightforward, but it’s a more modern book, which maybe makes the difference.

I won’t read Jude the Obscure again, but it is a book that I think that everyone should read once.