Jude the Obscure

by Thomas Hardy

Jude the Obscure, published in 1895, was Thomas Hardy's last novel; the hostility it provoked helped turn him to poetry. Jude Fawley, a stonemason's apprentice in a Wessex village, teaches himself Latin and Greek in the hope of entering the university at Christminster, but the colleges will not have a working man. He is trapped into marriage by Arabella Donn, then falls in love with his cousin Sue Bridehead, an intelligent, nervous young woman who marries the schoolmaster Phillotson and leaves him for Jude. Their life together outside marriage brings poverty, ostracism and tragedy, and Sue's retreat into religious penance completes Jude's defeat. Hardy's attack on the marriage laws and the universities was called obscene; the book is now among his most admired. It is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, with the first chapter free.