Jude the Obscure

by Thomas Hardy

They seemed, like himself, to be living in a world which did not want them.

This weakness of character, as it may be called, suggested that he was the sort of man who was born to ache a good deal before the fall of the curtain upon his unnecessary life should signify that all was well with him again.

Nature’s logic was too horrid for him to care for. That mercy towards one set of creatures was cruelty towards another sickened his sense of harmony.

People said that, if you prayed, things sometimes came to you, even though they sometimes did not.

“You knew better! Of course I never dreamt six months ago, or even three, of marrying. It is a complete smashing up of my plans—I mean my plans before I knew you, my dear. But what are they, after all! Dreams about books, and degrees, and impossible fellowships, and all that. Certainly we’ll marry: we must!”

Uh oh

And so, standing before the aforesaid officiator, the two swore that at every other time of their lives till death took them, they would assuredly believe, feel, and desire precisely as they had believed, felt, and desired during the few preceding weeks. What was as remarkable as the undertaking itself was the fact that nobody seemed at all surprised at what they swore.

As usual they laughed before talking; the world seemed funny to them without saying it.

The animal’s note changed its quality. It was not now rage, but the cry of despair; long-drawn, slow and hopeless. “Upon my soul I would sooner have gone without the pig than have had this to do!” said Jude. “A creature I have fed with my own hands.”

Never again bacon is cancelled

Their lives were ruined, he thought; ruined by the fundamental error of their matrimonial union: that of having based a permanent contract on a temporary feeling which had no necessary connection with affinities that alone render a lifelong comradeship tolerable.

It was curious, he thought. What was he reserved for? He supposed he was not a sufficiently dignified person for suicide. Peaceful death abhorred him as a subject, and would not take him.

Some women’s love of being loved is insatiable; and so, often, is their love of loving;

“And it is said that what a woman shrinks from—in the early days of her marriage—she shakes down to with comfortable indifference in half a dozen years. But that is much like saying that the amputation of a limb is no affliction, since a person gets comfortably accustomed to the use of a wooden leg or arm in the course of time!”

“Why can’t we agree to free each other? We made the compact, and surely we can cancel it—not legally of course; but we can morally, especially as no new interests, in the shape of children, have arisen to be looked after. Then we might be friends, and meet without pain to either. Oh Richard, be my friend and have pity! We shall both be dead in a few years, and then what will it matter to anybody that you relieved me from constraint for a little while? I daresay you think me eccentric, or supersensitive, or something absurd. Well—why should I suffer for what I was born to be, if it doesn’t hurt other people?” “But it does—it hurts me! And you vowed to love me.” “Yes—that’s it! I am in the wrong. I always am! It is as culpable to bind yourself to love always as to believe a creed always, and as silly as to vow always to like a particular food or drink!”

Sue continued: “She, or he, ‘who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the apelike one of imitation.’ J. S. Mill’s words, those are. I have been reading it up. Why can’t you act upon them? I wish to, always.”

“But if people did as you want to do, there’d be a general domestic disintegration. The family would no longer be the social unit.” “Yes—I am all abroad, I suppose!” said Phillotson sadly. “I was never a very bright reasoner, you remember. . . . And yet, I don’t see why the woman and the children should not be the unit without the man.” “By the Lord Harry!—Matriarchy! . . . Does she say all this too?”

Lol

“I don’t say that it won’t. I don’t know—I don’t know! . . . As I say, I am only a feeler, not a reasoner.”

Big same

“And you have given up your cathedral work here?” “Yes. It was rather sudden—your message coming unexpectedly. Strictly, I might have been made to finish out the week. But I pleaded urgency and I was let off. I would have deserted any day at your command, dear Sue. I have deserted more than that for you!” “I fear I am doing you a lot of harm. Ruining your prospects of the Church; ruining your progress in your trade; everything!” “The Church is no more to me. Let it lie!

Giving up another dream job for a lady

“One thing is certain, that however the decree may be brought about, a marriage is dissolved when it is dissolved. There is this advantage in being poor obscure people like us—that these things are done for us in a rough and ready fashion.

They briefly hinted that they had not. “What—and ha’n’t ye really done it? Chok’ it all, that I should have lived to see a good old saying like ‘marry in haste and repent at leisure’ spoiled like this by you two!

“It would be better to be out o’ the world than in it, wouldn’t it?” “It would almost, dear.” “ ’Tis because of us children, too, isn’t it, that you can’t get a good lodging?” “Well—people do object to children sometimes.” “Then if children make so much trouble, why do people have ’em?” “Oh—because it is a law of nature.” “But we don’t ask to be born?” “No indeed.”

“And what makes it worse with me is that you are not my real mother, and you needn’t have had me unless you liked. I oughtn’t to have come to ’ee—that’s the real truth! I troubled ’em in Australia, and I trouble folk here. I wish I hadn’t been born!” “You couldn’t help it, my dear.” “I think that whenever children be born that are not wanted they should be killed directly, before their souls come to ’em, and not allowed to grow big and walk about!”

Moreover a piece of paper was found upon the floor, on which was written, in the boy’s hand, with the bit of lead pencil that he carried: Done because we are too menny.

was in his nature to do it. The doctor says there are such boys springing up amongst us—boys of a sort unknown in the last generation—the outcome of new views of life. They seem to see all its terrors before they are old enough to have staying power to resist them. He says it is the beginning of the coming universal wish not to live. He’s an advanced man, the doctor: but he can give no consolation to——” Jude had kept back his own grief on account of her; but he now broke down; and this stimulated Sue to efforts of sympathy which in some degree distracted her from her poignant self-reproach.

Then another silence, till she was seized with another uncontrollable fit of grief. “There is something external to us which says, ‘You shan’t!’ First it said, ‘You shan’t learn!’ Then it said, ‘You shan’t labour!’ Now it says, ‘You shan’t love!’

At a very late hour the intelligence was brought to him that a child had been prematurely born, and that it, like the others, was a corpse.

Geeeez

You certainly are my wife, Sue, in all but law. What do you mean by what you said?” “I don’t think I am!” “Not? But suppose we had gone through the ceremony? Would you feel that you were then?” “No. I should not feel even then that I was. I should feel worse than I do now.”

Your worldly failure if you have failed, is to your credit rather than to your blame. Remember that the best and greatest among mankind are those who do themselves no worldly good. Every successful man is more or less a selfish man. The devoted fail. . . . ‘Charity seeketh not her own.’ ” “In that chapter we are at one, ever beloved darling, and on it we’ll part friends. Its verses will stand fast when all the rest that you call religion has passed away!” “Well—don’t discuss it. Good-bye, Jude; my fellow-sinner, and kindest friend!” “Good-bye, my mistaken wife. Good-bye!”

“God above—and is that all I’ve come to hear? If there is anything more degrading, immoral, unnatural, than another in my life, it is this meretricious contract with Arabella which has been called doing the right thing! And you too—you call yourself Phillotson’s wife! His wife! You are mine.”

“You dear, sad, soft, most melancholy wreck of a promising human intellect that it has ever been my lot to behold! Where is your scorn of convention gone? I would have died game!” “You crush, almost insult me, Jude! Go away from me!” She turned off quickly. “I will. I would never come to see you again, even if I had the strength to come, which I shall not have any more. Sue, Sue, you are not worth a man’s love!”

“What—to commit suicide?” “Certainly.” “Well, I’m blest! Kill yourself for a woman.” “Listen to me, Arabella. You think you are the stronger; and so you are, in a physical sense, now. You could push me over like a nine-pin. You did not send that letter the other day, and I could not resent your conduct. But I am not so weak in another way as you think. I made up my mind that a man confined to his room by inflammation of the lungs, a fellow who had only two wishes left in the world, to see a particular woman, and then to die, could neatly accomplish those two wishes at one stroke by taking this journey in the rain. That I’ve done. I have seen her for the last time, and I’ve finished myself—put an end to a feverish life which ought never to have been begun!”

She went on: “I am never going to see him any more. He spoke of some things of the past: and it overcame me. He spoke of—the children. But, as I have said, I am glad—almost glad I mean—that they are dead, Richard. It blots out all that life of mine!”

“Every man has some little power in some one direction,” he would say. “I was never really stout enough for the stone trade, particularly the fixing. Moving the blocks always used to strain me, and standing the trying draughts in buildings before the windows are in always gave me colds, and I think that began the mischief inside. But I felt I could do one thing if I had the opportunity. I could accumulate ideas, and impart them to others. I wonder if the founders had such as I in their minds—a fellow good for nothing else but that particular thing? . . . I hear that soon there is going to be a better chance for such helpless students as I was. There are schemes afoot for making the university less exclusive, and extending its influence. I don’t know much about it. And it is too late, too late for me! Ah—and for how many worthier ones before me!”

The hurrahs were repeated, drowning the faint organ notes. Jude’s face changed more: he whispered slowly, his parched lips scarcely moving: “Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man-child conceived.” (“Hurrah!”) “Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it. Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein.” (“Hurrah!”) “Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly? . . . For now should I have lain still and been quiet. I should have slept: then had I been at rest!” (“Hurrah!”) “There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. . . . The small and the great are there; and the servant is free from his master. Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul?”