Jude the Obscure

So I like how in the first chapter we jump from age eleven to somewhere around age nineteen; because most books just start another chapter when that happens. Just sayin. Anyways, so Jude seems like a pretty boring person, and his life kinda sucks... A lot. His parents die when he was young, so he gets shoved off with his grumpy aunt (that's no fun) in this poor little village. He gets stuck doing crap chores, like drawing water out of this fathomless well with a bucket and rope and scaring birds off of Farmer Troutham's farm for a little money to help his Aunt out.

The beginning starts out with the local schoolteacher leaving for this neighboring town called Christminister, which is funny because it's a college town and a lot of the surrounding ordained ministers got their degrees there (one of the professions Jude wants throughout the novel). Mr. Philliston, the above named teacher, treats Jude almost like a teacher's pet, and convinces him that he is really smart and should strive to go to Christminister when he gets older. So Jude finally wonders where this magical place of learning is and starts asking around town where this place is. every person he asks tells him that Christminister is not a place that they associate with, and the other way around. As with the other Hardy novels I have read, the political messages are made clear in the very beginning of the tale and elaborated on the further you go.

The first evident political message in Jude the Obscure is that of class separation and discrimination. The towns people of Marygreen don't want anything to do with the people of Christminister because they think them to be a bunch of pompous, hoity-toity intellectuals, the same way that the Christminister people think the Marygreen people to be a ignorant, daft, simple, farmers without the ability to learn. Jude tries to prove both of these groups wrong, but fails eventually.

Because he spent most of his youth with his head in a book, Jude never "discovers" people of the opposite sex, nor the experience of sex, until one day walking down a lane he gest smacked in the face by a slimy vile projectile, that we soon discover is a freshly castrated pigs penis, by a girl (aint that romantic!!). He likes the girl, Arabella, well enough, but she takes his courting way out of context. Persuaded by her girlfriends, Arabella get Jude to have sex with her, out of wedlock, and then feigns pregnancy to get him to marry her as soon as possible so as not to lose as good as a catch as him. This ruins all hope of a degree for Jude, since his small saving were spent on a small house and basic furnishing for him and his new wife.

Afew months later, Arabella tells Jude that she is no really pregnant. after figuring that married life is not really for her, Arabella leaves for Aulstralia with her parents. A few years after, Jude finally move to Christminister, gets a job, meets his cousin Sue and they go to see Jude's old teacher Mr. Philliston. He is actually teaching in another town because he failed out of college ( showing Jude he really isn't college material if his teacher wasn't, but he doesnt let that stop his ambitions) Mr. Philliston offers Sue a job as his student teacher type person. Returning home makes Jude realize that he needs to further pursue his college dreams, but is turned down and told it would be better to stick with his current profession.

Jude still ends up apprenticing, for the third time in his life, and becomes a low level clergy. He and Sue have this really weird relationship at this point. Sometimes he is in trouble and needs her help, and sometimes it is the opposite way around; but each sees the other at their very worst possible moment. Jude of course loves his cousin, but Sue, the smarter of the two, knows it will be a bad idea considering their family history with marriages. This just makes things even weirder for the two of them.

Basically the whole first half of the book is about the multiple failures in, and around, Jude's life and their effect on him. It looks like the second half of the story is setting up to be about persecution involving marriage, or lack thereof, between two people, and how babies just multiply the effects; but we will just have to wait and see.