Jude the Obscure
A stonemason's dream of scholarship, and the two women who defined his tragedy
Page 1
In the Wessex countryside, a boy named Jude Fawley watched a cart carry his teacher away towards the horizon. Mr. Phillotson was going to Christminster, a famous city full of colleges where any man could become a scholar. Jude squinted, trying to see it. Far away, the setting sun glinted off the city's spires like a promise. Jude, a poor baker's boy, laid a hand on a weathered milestone. "I will go there too one day," he whispered to the empty field. "It is a city of light." He imagined the life he would have there, among books and learning, far from this quiet village. He resolved then to spend his life preparing. "I will be a scholar there," he vowed, his voice firm, his eyes fixed on the distant gleam until it faded into the evening mist.
Page 2
Years later, Jude was a young stonemason, his dream of Christminster alive in the books he studied each night. One afternoon, walking home, his mind on Greek verbs, he heard laughter from the stream beside the lane. A robust, dark-haired girl named Arabella Donn, who was there with her friends, saw him. "Ho, scholar!" she called out, laughing. To get his attention, she threw a piece of a pig's offal, and it slapped him on the ear. He stopped, shocked from his thoughts, and wiped his face. "Did I make you look up from your book?" she asked, her eyes bold and direct. Suddenly, the ancient words on the page seemed pale and dull beside the vibrant life in her face. He found himself smiling back. "You did," Jude admitted, unable to look away. "I was a long way from here."
Page 3
Jude stood beside Arabella in the plain registry office in Alfredston. A few months after they met, she had told him she was expecting a child. His dream of Christminster vanished. "Do you, Jude Fawley, take this woman?" the registrar asked, looking at the clock. Jude's duty, he believed, was to marry her. "I do," he said, his voice flat. He was a husband now, not a scholar. But the marriage was a mistake. "And that's that," said Arabella on the walk home. "Now we're properly caught." They had nothing in common. Not long after, she confessed it was a trick. One day, Jude came home to an empty cottage. She had sold their furniture and moved to Australia, leaving him free, but with his spirit bruised and his best years wasted.
Page 4
Jude finally walked the streets of Christminster, the city of his dreams. "This is the place," he breathed, looking up at the spires. "This is where I belong." By day, he worked as a stonemason, repairing the very college walls he longed to enter. By night, he studied, hoping a master would see his promise. One day, he went to a shop selling religious art. There, polishing a marble cross, he saw his cousin, Sue Bridehead. She was slender and quick, with an intelligent, nervous light in her eyes. He watched her from the doorway, unseen. Looking at her, Jude felt a connection deeper than any he had known. He left without speaking, his heart pounding. "She is my own soul, in another body," he thought, walking through the crowded streets. "What am I to do?"
Page 5
Jude helped his cousin Sue find a place at a teachers' college in Melchester. But she found its strict rules unbearable. "Jude, they've locked me in!" she had cried during a visit. "This place is a prison for the mind!" One night, after being punished, she impulsively escaped, wading a river and walking miles to Jude's lodgings. He opened his door to find her shivering and desperate. "I have nowhere else to go," she whispered, collapsing against him. "Let me stay." Jude wrapped a blanket around her, his face set with determination. Her teaching career was ruined, but she was with him. "Of course," Jude said, leading her inside. "You are safe here. I will always protect you."
Page 6
Pressured by society, Sue married Mr. Phillotson, Jude’s old schoolmaster. From her new home at the schoolhouse, she wrote Jude miserable letters. One evening, she confessed everything to her kind but conventional husband. "I try to be a wife to you, but it is a lie!" she cried, pacing his study. "I shrink from you! My whole self belongs to Jude." Mr. Phillotson, a man bound by duty, was horrified, but he saw her genuine suffering. He watched her, pale and trembling, and a great pity filled him. "Must you go?" he asked heavily. She nodded, unable to speak. In an act of quiet, radical compassion that would ruin his career, he made his decision. "Then go," he said. "You are free."
Page 7
In a rented room in Aldbrickham, Jude and Sue were finally together, unmarried and happy. "We have each other and our books," Sue said, touching Jude's cheek. "What more do we need?" Their peace was shattered by a knock. It was Arabella, returned from Australia. With her was a small, silent boy with an old, weary face. "Hello, Jude," she said, pushing past them. "I've brought you something." She nudged the boy forward. "His name is Jude, but they call him Little Father Time. He's your son. I can't be bothered with him anymore." Jude stared at the boy, who looked back without expression. "My son?" he whispered, his world tilting on its axis.
Page 8
Years passed. At a bustling agricultural show, Jude stood behind a small stall, trying to sell gingerbread models of Christminster colleges. "Christminster cakes!" he called out, his voice thin. He, Sue, Little Father Time, and their own two smaller children were now poor wanderers. A man from his home village saw him. "Jude Fawley?" the man bellowed, laughing. "Is that really you? Selling cakes? I thought you were going to be a great scholar!" Jude looked down at his crumbling gingerbread dreams, a bitter parody of his life's ambition. He felt a hot flush of shame. Sue saw the pain in his eyes and put her arm through his. "Pay him no mind, my love," she said, her voice fierce. "Let's go home. To Christminster."
Page 9
They returned to Christminster, but no one would rent a room to an unmarried couple with three children. They finally found one cramped, miserable room. While Jude went out again, Sue sank into despair. "We are outsiders everywhere," she murmured, wringing her hands as she looked at her sleeping children. "It would be better to be dead than to be us! Sometimes I think it would have been better if they had never been born!" Little Father Time, the strange, sad boy who never smiled, stood watching her, his face unnervingly calm. He heard her words. The next morning, the room was terribly still. Jude found a note on the table, scrawled in a child's hand. He read it and gave a cry of horror. It said: "Done because we are too menny."
Page 10
Cold rain fell on the ancient stones of Christminster. Jude Fawley stood across the street from a college, looking up at lighted windows where scholars lived the life he had always wanted. Grief had broken him. Sue, crushed by guilt, had left him to return to Phillotson, punishing herself with a life she hated. Jude was alone, sick, and defeated. He had come all this way from the hopeful fields of Marygreen, only to end here, outside the walls. He leaned against a lamp post, the rain running down his face, and whispered bitter words from the Bible into the wind, his voice a rasp. "Let the day perish wherein I was born," he coughed, "and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived."
About this story
- Audience: general readers
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