Jude the obscure

Our hero Jude Fawley starts out his adventures in exactly the same way that Harry
Potter does: he's an eleven-year-old orphan being raised by his aunt. But
unfortunately for poor Jude, he's not a magically talented child of destiny. He's just a
small boy in the small town of Marygreen, in Wessex.

(By the way, Wessex is an English county that Thomas Hardy invented, based
heavily on his home county of Dorset, in southeastern England. Hardy describes
Wessex as a "partly real, partly dream country"—a place that we'd like to visit,
maybe, except that Hardy makes so many awful things happen there.)

Young Jude Fawley stands watching as his schoolmaster, Richard Phillotson, leaves
Marygreen and heads to the glorious city of Christminster. There, Phillotson plans to
go to university to become a great scholar. Jude decides, hey, I want that, too!, and
commits himself to one day becoming a scholar just like the man he looks up to.
(BTW, like Wessex, Christminster does not technically exist. But it's based
onOxford, the famous English university town.)

Okay, so maybe we don't all spend years and years dreaming about going to a
specific college, but we all have dreams for the future, right? Maybe you've spent
every day shooting jumpers in the hopes of being the next Lebron James or you've
converted your garage into the perfect spot for your band to rock weekly, so one day
you can take over the world and play Madison Square Garden. Whatever your
greatest hopes and dreams are, that's Christminster for Jude.

As Jude ages, he gets his hands on the classics and Latin and Greek grammar books,
and starts to teach himself. Yes, he's that hardcore. He just sits down and starts to
teach himself Ancient Greek and Latin. He also gazes off into the distance in the
direction of Christminster, knowing that someday he will go there to learn properly.

Unfortunately, when Jude is in his late teens, he runs into Arabella Donn. If only Jude
was as intuitive as that guy on The Mentalist—then maybe he would have run from
Arabella while he had the chance. Sadly, Jude's not a psychic. He's just an ordinary
guy about to make a terrible mistake.

Jude starts courting Arabella in a casual way, but through a bit of seduction, Arabella
convinces Jude to sleep with her. Of course, there's no actual sex within the action of
the novel, since that really would not fly in 1896. Arabella then convinces Jude that
she is pregnant (though, again, the word "pregnant" is never used, because—you
guessed it—it's still 1896). Being an honorable young man, Jude gives up on his
dreams of university life at Christminster and agrees to marry Arabella. Arabella
reveals that she was mistaken about her condition, and Jude feels both tricked and
trapped.
The marriage is pretty rough from the get-go (for obvious reasons), and soon
Arabella decides to leave for Australia with her family. This frees Jude to move on to
Christminster as he always dreamed. Of course, it's not easy for a poor boy from
nowhere to break into the university scene at such a high-and-mighty place as
Christminster, so Jude takes on work as a tradesman (he's quite a good stonemason)
while continuing to study on his own.

Thoughts of somehow becoming a scholar soon take a backseat to his desire for the
lovely Sue Bridehead, a cousin of Jude's who he has never actually met in person but
whose portrait stood in his aunt's house when he was growing up. At last, we've
reached a great set-up for a romantic comedy, right? Boy meets the wrong girl, the
wrong girl moves to Australia, boy spots the right girl from a distance, and he's even
seen her before (if only in picture form). Okay, it's not the most typical of love
stories, but we're keeping our fingers crossed that something is finally going to work
out for Jude.

Jude decides now is the time to start experimenting with a bit of stalking. Jude
follows Sue around for a while without letting her know he's there. It's a little creepy,
but we guess his motives are pure. After Sue finally spots him, the two meet face to
face at last, and the attraction is pretty instant. Problem is, Sue is leaving
Christminster soon. Jude has a great idea. He tracks down his old teacher Phillotson
and gets Sue a job as Phillotson's teaching assistant. What couldpossibly go wrong?

Of course, Jude is still legally married to Arabella, even if she is living literally on the
other side of the world from him. Jude continues loving Sue from afar while she's
working for Phillotson, but he wants to keep his vows to his estranged wife. Still,
Jude can't help how he feels: he winds up living close to Sue as she starts attending a
teaching school. Even though both Sue and Jude know that they should be together,
Sue goes off and gets engaged to Phillotson. (Sure. Thisis clearly going to turn out
well.)

Sue marries Phillotson, but it's no good. Phillotson may be an okay guy, but she
really can't stand being around him. Let this be a lesson to us all: don't marry
someone you can't stand being around. (Clearly, this is an important Life Rule that
Thomas and his first wife Emma Hardy probably both wished they had learned earlier
in life.) Eventually, Sue flees her husband and goes to Jude. So now, both Sue and
Jude are married to other people but living with one another. Probably, this is not the
best idea in 1896—but the heart wants what it wants.

Arabella returns to spoil things between Jude and Sue. She's like some horrible
dream-killer: even though it looks like she's helping, you can trust that she is going to
make things turn ugly at some point. This time, she lets Jude know that she has
married another man in Australia. This appears to let Jude off the hook a little,
morally and legally speaking, and he and Sue start to live openly as a couple. Sue still
does not want to marry Jude, since she despises the whole idea of marriage by this
point.

Jude and Sue have their ups and downs, like all couples do, but they love each other.
Still, just as it seems that this crazy idea of theirs just might work, Arabella returns
again (nooooooooo!) to tell Jude that she had a son years ago, and that the son is
Jude's. Arabella leaves her son with Jude.

Enter Little Father Time. Little Father Time is a strange, detached boy who got his
name because he seems so much older than he actually is. Little Father Time (we'll
call him "LFT" for short) bears the weight of the world on his shoulders, but he
quickly takes to Sue. In fact, he calls her "Mother" from the get-go. Jude, Sue, and
LFT spend time together and all seems mostly well, except that they can't ever seem
to get LFT interested in or happy about anything.

As the years go by, Sue and Jude have two children of their own, but they still never
get married. Even after they divorce their respective first spouses (Phillotson and
Arabella), they don't get married. Again, guys, this is 1896: divorce is bad enough,
but living together unmarried? Totally scandalous. Society is not cool with this, and
Jude starts to lose work.

These days, the tabloids mainly destroy celebrities over their personal lives. But in
the 1890s, when communities were smaller, no one's private life was off limits. Your
neighbors could ruin you if you didn't play by their rules. It reminds us of the HBO
TV show Big Love, but without the religion or the multiple spouses. Okay, honestly,
it's missing almost all of the elements of Big Love, but like the Henricksons, Jude and
Sue have to struggle constantly with the sense that the people around them will never
accept their moral choices.

As Sue and Jude become more and more ostracized, the family is forced to move
around to places where no one knows them or their unconventional living situation.
After an illness and a tough financial run, Jude decides it's time to return to
Christminster. He just can't let that dream of becoming a scholar die.

They struggle to find lodging, because people don't want kids in their homes, and it's
clear that Sue has another child on the way. Jude is forced to find separate lodging
from his family, and this hits LFT hard. Sue talks to LFT about how it's hard to find
lodging with children and it's hard to make enough money to support the entire
family. Then, she tells LFT that she is going to have another baby. He doesn't take
this well. Seriously, he takes this really badly. Like, about as badly as it's possible to
take such news.

In the morning, when Sue goes out to meet Jude, Little Father Time kills the two
babies and himself, leaving a simple note that says "Done because we are too menny"
(6.2.40). The horror of all of this causes Sue to have a miscarriage. This family
tragedy changes Sue entirely, and she believes they are being cursed by God for what
they have done.

Okay, it's safe to say that no one who starts this novel thinks anything like this
horrible murder-suicide is going to go down. This moment is crazy. So, take a breath.
And now, let's move on.

To make things right, Sue returns to Phillotson and remarries him. Arabella, always a
crafty lady, returns (she's like Jaws in Jaws 4: she just won't go away). Arabella gets
Jude drunk for days on end and basically tricks him into remarrying her. In the end,
Jude is ill, and still in love with Sue. He travels in the sleet and rain to see Sue one
last time. They kiss passionately and express their love for each other, but Sue will
not run away with Jude.

Jude returns home and dies soon after. So that happens. In conclusion: this is not
an uplifting novel—to put it mildly.

Hard times
In the industrial city of Coketown, Josiah Bounderby is a rich and fairly obnoxious
factory owner and banker. He loves to tell everyone he meets about how he grew up
in the gutter, abused by a drunken grandmother. He is friends with Thomas
Gradgrind, a rich politician and an education reformer in whose school students only
learn about facts. Gradgrind's own children, Tom and Louisa, also grow up in this
system. The kids are forbidden to be creative or imaginative or to have too many
feelings. Gradgrind is basically trying to make kids into robots, with predictably bad
results.

When a traveling circus show comes to Coketown, one of the clowns abandons his
daughter, Sissy Jupe, there. Gradgrind takes her in as a servant. She is a natural,
happy, not particularly robotic girl, and his system does not seem to make too much
of a dent in her good nature.

Louisa and Tom grow up (well, not really – she is nineteen and he is seventeen, but
everything happened faster back in the day, especially for robot-children). Gradgrind
basically gives both of them to Bounderby. Tom works for him as a bank clerk, and
poor Louisa ends up marrying the guy. Oh, did we mention that he's a nasty and
annoying? And that Louisa is grossed out by the sight of him? And that he has been
really creepily waiting to marry her? Let's all say it together now – ewwwww. But,
obviously Gradgrind thinks everything is fine – because since when do robots care
about that kind of thing?

Meanwhile, in Bounderby's factory, a worker named Stephen Blackpool is the

world's most decent man and he leads a pretty sad life. He got married too young to a
woman who is now a raging, half-crazy alcoholic. He pays her to stay away from
him, which she mostly does, except when she doesn't. He is also in love with a
factory worker named Rachael, but they're both out of luck, obviously. We know
what you're thinking (Stephen should get a divorce), but that's not the way Victorian
England rolled. As Stephen finds out from Bounderby, to get a divorce he would
need to pay for Parliament to pass a law letting him do it. Then he'd have to pay for
another law allowing him to remarry. Not happening.

A year later, Louisa is still pretty miserably married to gross Bounderby. Tom,
meanwhile, is getting into his own trouble with being a lazy bank clerk, gambling,
staying out till all hours, and generally behaving like a jerk to his sister. Bounderby is
as unpleasant as ever, and Gradgrind has now been elected to Parliament. The four of
them meet James Harthouse, a smooth operator who claims to be trying to get into
politics. He mostly just coasts on his good looks, his wealth, and his attitude of
completely not caring about anything or anyone. Because he is a born gentleman, he
is instantly the coolest, most popular kid on the block. He decides to use that
popularity to seduce Louisa. Hmm, let's see, Louisa's husband revolts her, she has
never been taught about emotions or how they work, and Harthouse is hot! But on the
other hand, adultery is a really big no-no…. Stay tuned to see what happens!

In the factory, all the workers are being organized into a union. Everyone is psyched
to finally stick it to the man, except Stephen, who for some undisclosed personal
reason doesn't want any part of it. So, the other workers decide to ignore and
ostracize him. Then Bounderby asks Stephen to rat on the union. When he refuses,
Bounderby fires him. Stephen is forced to look for work elsewhere. Before he leaves,
Louisa gives him some traveling money, and Tom in secret asks him to loiter in front
of Bounderby's bank for a few nights. To which the obvious answer seems "Um, no
thanks," but Stephen agrees.

The morning after Stephen leaves, Bounderby discovers that the bank has been
robbed! Of only 150 pounds. But still, a crime. Suspicion naturally falls on Stephen,
who seemingly was casing the joint before he left. People also suspect an old woman
who periodically comes in to town to watch the bank for unknown reasons.
Bounderby leaves town to personally oversee the investigation.
Seizing the opportunity, Harthouse reveals to Louisa his passion for her and asks her
to run away with him. She seems to agree to a complicated plan involving meeting
him later, but instead takes the train to her father's house in Coketown. For the first
time in her life, she confronts Gradgrind about the unnaturalness of her upbringing.
She tells him she might be in love with Harthouse, confesses that she almost had an
affair, and then faints. Gradgrind is shocked, and he finally realizes how much he
messed up his kids.

Trying to keep things civil, Gradgrind asks Bounderby to let Louisa be a semi-
permanent "visitor" at her father's house. But Bounderby is all like, "Actually, no,
because you pretty much sold her to me, remember? If she doesn't come back by
tomorrow, this marriage is over." This might seem ideal. But it means that Louisa
would no longer be financially supported by Bounderby, but would still have to be
married to him legally. She'd be totally stuck. Sissy seeks out Harthouse , telling him
to leave and never come back.

At the same time, Sissy Jupe and Rachael are worried about Stephen and try to find
him. Taking a walk across the countryside they stumble on him (literally) lying
almost dead in a huge well dug by some factory owner and not marked in any way.
He is fished out, pleads his innocence about the robbery, and dies. Yes, sorry, no
happy ending for the only decent guy in the whole book. Tom flees, and Louisa and
Gradgrind realize that he is the bank robber, and that the only hope is to smuggle him
out of the country. Tom hides as a clown in the same circus where Sissy's father used
to work. When Gradgrind confronts him, Tom tells his father that political economy
made him into a thief, and if he hadn't stolen the money, someone else would have.

Just as Gradgrind is about to put him aboard ship, the family is discovered by one of
Gradgrind's old students, Bitzer. Bitzer is quite the economist and refuses to be
swayed by Gradgrind's begging to let them go. After all, Bitzer has learned only to
advance his own self-interest, which at this point indicates that he should capture
Tom to get the probable reward. This is the final nail in the coffin of Gradgrind's
educational theory. Still, the circus guys help Tom get away.

In the end, Bounderby dies of some kind of fit in the street. Gradgrind lives to old age
and tries to undo the damage he did to his children. Louisa remains unmarried and
childless (which is a pretty severe punishment back in those days). Tom eventually
feels bad about being so awful, but has to remain abroad. Rachael lives out her life
taking care of Stephen's drunken widow. Sissy gets married, has children, and seems
to be the only light in everyone's lives.