History Literature / JudeTheObscure

* {{Oxbridge}}: Christminster is a [[NoCommunitiesWereHarmed thinly veiled version]] of Oxford, and many of the colleges mentioned are similarly thinly veiled versions of real Oxford colleges.
** Biblioll College, to which Jude writes in the hope of gaining a place, is the fictional counterpart of Balliol, one of Oxford's oldest surviving colleges.
** Cardinal College, home to Christminster's cathedral (of which Jude and Sue make a scale model that is later displayed at the Great Wessex Agricultural Show), is the fictional counterpart of Christ Church, home to Oxford's cathedral.[[note]] The name "Cardinal College" was carefully chosen by Hardy; Christ Church was originally founded by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in 1525 under the name Cardinal College. After Wolsey's fall from grace, Henry VIII re-founded the college as Christ Church in 1546.[[/note]]
** Other colleges include Crozier, identified as a fictional version of Oriel College; Oldgate, the novel's counterpart to New College; and Rubric, Hardy's fictionalisation of Brasenose College. The windowless Sepulchre College is sometimes suggested to be the novel's version of either Corpus Christi College or All Souls College, but it is likely entirely Hardy's creation.

* WideEyedIdealist: 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 [[{{Oxbridge}} Christminster]] if he asks nicely enough.

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler: Jude's children ended dead in a murder/suicide. Sue miscarried their baby. She also returned to her husband, utterly screwed up and beating herself up morally, convinced that she had been justly punished. Jude dies alone, having lost the love of his life, while his wife flirts with a doctor.]]

Filmed in 1996 by Creator/MichaelWinterbottom as ''Jude'' starring Creator/ChristopherEccleston and Creator/KateWinslet.

** Fawley sounds like "folly"[[note]] It is also the name of Hardy's maternal grandmother's home village in Berkshire and the real life inspiration for Jude's home village of Marygreen.[[/note]] and Jude is the patron saint of the impossible.

* {{Oxbridge}}: Christminster is a [[NoCommunitiesWereHarmed thinly veiled version]] of Oxford; Biblioll College, to which Jude writes in the hope of gaining a place, is the fictional counterpart of Balliol, one of Oxford's oldest surviving colleges, while Cardinal College, home to Christminster's cathedral, is the fictional counterpart of Christ Church College, home to Oxford's cathedral.

* TheBabyTrap: [[spoiler:Arabella]] convinces Jude to marry her although she was not really pregnant.

* ShootTheShaggyDog: Poor Jude. He never realises his dreams of going to the university at Christminster or entering the clergy, [[spoiler:his children all pre-decease him]], the girl he loves returns to her unhappy marriage with his former role model, and his wife is already eyeing her next conquest before his dead body has gone cold. Jude the obscure, indeed.

* HourglassPlot: At the beginning of the novel, Jude is inspired by Phillotson's plans to get a university degree and enter the clergy to pursue the same dream, and becomes a devout Christian as a result. Sue, meanwhile, is indifferent at best to Christianity, thinking nothing of cutting up and re-ordering copies of the New Testament so that the books are in the order in which they were written. By the end of the novel, the smothering of his academic dreams and his inability to reconcile religious devotion with physical desires lead Jude to turn his back on religion, while Sue becomes devoutly religious while searching for answers after [[spoiler:her children die in a murder-suicide with Jude's son by Arabella]], and regards her misfortune as punishment from God for her sins.

* MayDecemberRomance: Phillotson courts and marries Sue, even though he says in so many words that he is old enough to be her father.

* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Jude's oldest son is known only as "Little Father Time", even after Jude and Sue have him christened with his father's name (his mother having chosen not to baptise him).

* TheAlcoholic: Jude has a weakness for drink, and he drowns his sorrows in alcohol when his marriage to Arabella disintegrates and again when his university dreams are crushed. Arabella later uses his alcoholism to her advantage by getting him drunk and persuading him to re-marry her before he sobers up.
* {{Asexuality}}: [[spoiler: Sue]] is apparently this; one of the tragedies is the love between a heterosexual man and an asexual woman.

* AwfulWeddedLife: One of the novel's themes is the misery Victorian marriage laws could inflict on couples who realised too late that their marriage was a bad idea; every married couple in the book is miserable.
** Arabella gets bored with Jude very quickly, while he goes off her after overhearing one of her friends say that she tricked him into falling in love with and marrying her. She eventually moves to Australia with her family, where she marries again, and later asks Jude for a divorce to get out of the problems a bigamous marriage might cause. Eventually that marriage breaks down as well and Arabella returns to Jude, but spends the rest of his life haranguing him and flirts with Vilbert the quack doctor before Jude's dead body is even cold.

* DidNotGetTheGirl: As much as Jude and Sue love each other, circumstances keep conspiring to ruin their attempts at any sort of relationship. Even after Jude grants Arabella a divorce and Sue leaves Phillotson, the fact that they are not married makes them outcasts, and the last straw comes when [[spoiler:Jude's son by Arabella kills his half-siblings and himself]], prompting Jude and Sue to return to Arabella and Phillotson, respectively.

* HystericalWoman: Sue flies into hysterical despair at the least provocation, which frustrates Jude no end as she seems just as upset when he tries to show her affection as she does when he treats her coldly. She gets worse as time goes on.

* FromBadToWorse: Essentially the whole book. Even as an eleven-year-old, Jude thinks it would be better if he had never been born, his parents both having died and his great-aunt and guardian finding him a burden. Then he gets tricked into a marriage with Arabella that is over before it begins, his dreams of attending the university at Christminster meet the cold hard reality of 19th century class immobility, he falls in love with Sue only to see her marry Phillotson, Sue leaves Phillotson for Jude but they cannot marry and so become outcasts everywhere they go, Jude's children by both Arabella and Sue [[spoiler:die in a murder-suicide]], Jude and Sue's "union" collapses and they return to their previous unhappy marriages, and finally Jude dies alone and miserable.

* HystericalWoman: Sue. She gets worse as time goes on.
* InherentInTheSystem: Part of the reason for Jude's lifelong misery is the constraints of Victorian society. His working-class background means his Christminster dreams are doomed from the start, as a letter from one of the college principals spells out for him. Victorian marriage laws mean that as miserable as he and Arabella are together, they're stuck in their union unless they want to go through the socially ruinous process of a divorce. Jude and Sue live together but are not married, leading them to be shunned everywhere they go.

** Fawley sounds like "folly" and Jude is the patron saint of the impossible.

* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Jude's oldest son is also called Jude, but is known only as "Little Father Time".

* FromBadToWorse: Essentially the whole book. Even as an eleven-year-old, Jude thinks it would be better if he had never been born, his parents both having died and his great-aunt and guardian finding him a burden. Then he gets tricked into a marriage with Arabella that is over before it begins, his dreams of attending the university at Christminster meet the cold hard reality of 19th century class immobility, he falls in love with Sue only to see her marry Phillotson, Sue leaves Phillotson for Jude but they cannot marry as they are already married to other people and so become ostracised, Jude's children by both Arabella and Sue [[spoiler:die in a murder-suicide]], Jude and Sue's "union" collapses and they return to their previous unhappy marriages, and finally Jude dies alone and miserable.

* ComedyOfRemarriage: Couples made up and separated are joined together at the end again. Although there is nothing comedic in it.

* DrowningMySorrows: Jude drinks frequently, resulting in his famous scene, reciting the creed in Latin while intoxicated.

** Both Jude and Sue fail spectacularly at committing suicide.

* FromBadToWorse: Essentially the whole book.

* KissingCousins: Jude and Sue are cousins, and furthermore their family has notoriously bad luck in marriages.

* MayDecemberRomance: Phillotson marries Sue, even though he is old enough to be her father.

* OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: Jude's oldest son is known only as "Little Father Time".
* {{Oxbridge}}: Christminster is a [[NoCommunitiesWereHarmed thinly veiled version]] of Oxford; Biblioll College, to which Jude writes in the hope of gaining a place, is the fictional counterpart of Balliol, one of Oxford's oldest surviving colleges.

A novel by English author Creator/ThomasHardy published in 1895. This was his final novel.

''Jude the Obscure'' tells the story of working-class man 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.

* {{Bowdlerise}}: The sex content has changed between editions, with one early critic calling the book 'Jude the Obscene'. Considering the amount of pregnancy real or at least plausible in the novel, taking it out entirely merely leaves the audience a little confused.

* {{Bowdlerise}}: the sex content has changed between editions, with one early critic calling the book 'Jude the Obscene'. Considering the amount of pregnancy real or at least plausible in the novel, taking it out entirely merely leaves the audience a little confused.
* TheBabyTrap:[[spoiler: Arabella]] convinces Jude to marry her although she was not really pregnant.

* MayDecemberRomance

* {{Oxbridge}}: Christminster is a [[NoCommunitiesWereHarmed thinly veiled version]] of Oxford. He writes to Biblioll College, trying to study there, which sounds suspiciously like Balliol.

* Asexuality: [[spoiler: Sue]] is apparently this; one of the tragedies is the love between a heterosexual man and an asexual woman.
* Bowdler/Bowdlerise: the sex content has changed between editions, with one early critic calling the book 'Jude the Obscene'. Considering the amount of pregnancy real or at least plausible in the novel, taking it out entirely merely leaves the audience a little confused.

* CalltoAgriculture: Subverted, as it turns out. Jude and Arabella raise a pig. In one of the novel's disturbing scenes, the butcher fails to show up and Jude has to kill the pig, which causes him great distress (and Arabella none at all, except that she would like it killed slower so the meat is less bloody).

* [[spoiler:PaterFamilicide: It's Jude's oldest son, not Jude himself, who kills himself and his siblings out of desperation, the family is already poor and there's another child on the way.]]

* IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy: At first, Phillotson helps Sue leave him for Jude, even though it means losing his job and social standing for abetting adultery.

Filmed in 1996 by Creator/MichaelWinterbottom as ''Jude'' starring ChristopherEccleston and Creator/KateWinslet.

Filmed in 1996 by Creator/MichaelWinterbottom as ''Jude'' strring ChristopherEccleston and KateWinslet.

Filmed in 1996 by Creator/MichaelWinterbottom as ''Jude''.