Jude the Obscure

A novel by English author Thomas Hardy published in 1895. This was his final novel.

Jude the Obscure is about a working-class man named Jude Fawley, a dreamer with aspirations to become a scholar in the town of Christminster (modeled after Oxford). He learns the craft of stone masonry and has a poorly-chosen marriage as a teenager, which finally ends in separation. He moves to Christminister to pursue his dream, but is is ultimately rejected and is disillusioned from becoming a scholar. Jude meets and has an ongoing affair with his cousin Sue Bridehead, even after her marriage. He and his family face a never-ending series of hardships, tragedies and disappointments.

Some of the themes in the novel are the limits of class structure in Britain, ill-fated love and marriage, and adultery.


 * The Baby Trap: How  convinces Jude to marry her.
 * Bungled Suicide: As noted above, both Jude and Sue fail spectacularly at committing suicide. Their survival becomes bitterly ironic when  subvert this trope.
 * Butt Monkey: It always gets worse for Jude.
 * Comedy of Remarriage: though definitely not a comedy
 * Creepy Child: "Little Father Time", as described below, fits this
 * Downer Ending: And how.
 * Drowning My Sorrows: Jude does this frequently, resulting in his famous reciting the creed in Latin while intoxicated scene.
 * From Bad to Worse: Essentially the whole book.
 * Hysterical Woman: Sue. She gets worse as time goes on.
 * I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: At first, is this trope. He helps, even though this means losing his job and social standing for abetting adultery.
 * Kissing Cousins: Jude and Sue are cousins, and furthermore their family has notoriously bad luck in marriages.
 * Law of Inverse Fertility: it could be argued that Sue keeps having children with Jude as a means of punishing herself. But
 * May-December Romance
 * Meaningful Name: Fawley is like "Folly," and Bridehead refers to -- well, work it out. See why bringing these two together is a bad idea?
 * Also, Jude is the saint of the impossible.
 * Only Known by Their Nickname: Jude's oldest son is known only as "Little Father Time"
 * Oxbridge: Christminster is a thinly veiled version of Oxford.
 * Poke the Poodle: After getting a snide rejection letter from, Jude is so depressed that he vandalizes the college by writing a Bible verse on the gates. In chalk.
 * Walking the Earth: Jude and Sue and their family cannot stay in one place for long, because when people realize they're, they're no longer welcome anywhere.
 * Wide-Eyed Idealist: Jude refuses to step on earthworms, thinks birds deserve a share of the farmer's grain, and believes that a manual laborer who lacks a formal education, not to mention money, can get into Christminster if he asks nicely enough.
 * Wide-Eyed Idealist: Jude refuses to step on earthworms, thinks birds deserve a share of the farmer's grain, and believes that a manual laborer who lacks a formal education, not to mention money, can get into Christminster if he asks nicely enough.