Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy (1895)
“Hardy's final novel was so reviled that a bishop burned it — because it told the truth about what England did to its poor, its women, and its dreamers.”
Short Summary
Jude Fawley, a self-taught stonemason in rural Wessex, dreams of studying at the university in Christminster (Oxford). His ambitions are derailed first by a manipulative marriage to Arabella Donn, then by his consuming love for his intellectually restless cousin Sue Bridehead. Jude never gains admission to Christminster. He and Sue live together unmarried, are persecuted by Victorian society, and suffer catastrophe when Jude's eldest child, Little Father Time, kills Sue's children and himself. Sue returns to her former husband in religious penance; Jude, broken and ill, dies alone in Christminster while the city celebrates around him.
Detailed Summary
Jude Fawley grows up an orphan in the village of Marygreen, raised by his great-aunt Drusilla, who reminds him that his family is cursed in matters of marriage. As a boy, Jude idolizes the distant city of Christminster — Hardy's thinly veiled Oxford — and teaches himself Latin and Greek from secondh...