Sue soon gets engaged to Phillotson, but her relationship with Jude also grows stronger and the two cousins become very close.

He gets Sue a job with Phillotson, who has also failed to be accepted at a university and is a schoolteacher again.

He immediately falls in love with her, though he tries to resist his feelings. While in Christminster Jude meets his intelligent, religiously agnostic cousin Sue Bridehead. At first he is enthralled by the place but he soon finds he cannot enter the university without wealth and social stature. Arabella moves to Australia and Jude finally makes his way to Christminster. Arabella pretends she is pregnant and tricks the honorable Jude into marrying her, but the marriage soon falls apart. Jude starts teaching himself classical languages and learning stonemasonry work, but he is distracted from his studies by Arabella Donn, a vain, sensual young woman. He is inspired in this dream by his old teacher, Richard Phillotson, who left with similar ambitions when Jude was a child. Jude Fawley is a poor orphan raised by his great-aunt, but he dreams of studying at the university in Christminster, a nearby town. It may be that his weaknesses in narrative technique come in part from the demands of serial publication it may also be that he had less interest in this aspect of fiction than he did in others.Jude the Obscure takes place in Wessex, England in the Victorian era. Such shortcomings are to be found in this novel, but in Hardy's defense it should be said that he can develop a scene skillfully, he does use contrasting scenes with good effect in forwarding the plot, and he is capable of foreshadowing events in the novel with competence. And now and again he indulges in a sensational, melodramatic scene. He relies frequently on coincidence to bring together characters he wants to have meet. Sometimes his transitions are awkward, especially in the way in which he summarizes the passage of time. He characteristically uses a succession of short scenes to move the plot forward instead of longer scenes developed in detail. Hardy's narrative technique has often been criticized. But Hardy's desire to work out his theme seems to override most of this local reference. Edlin are very much a product of the area, the aunt with her references to family history, the widow with her comments about marriage. Almost all the characters are deeply rooted in and responsive to place, as shown, for example, in Jude's sense of all that has happened on the ridge-track near the Brown House outside Marygreen. Though in this novel Hardy makes less significant use of his Wessex landscape, as well as its customs, superstitions, humor, and human types, than he does in other novels, it is of some importance. Hardy's Writing Style and Use of Quotations.Symbolism and Irony in Jude the Obscure.

The obscure thomas hardy novel