Jude Fawley, a stone-mason, has already suffered. His academic ambitions were thwarted by his poverty and class: trapped into a loveless marriage, he is now alone but not free. He comes to love his cousin Sue who, seemingly emancipated, is herself miserably married. Sue’s words to Jude are prophetic, fo although together they defy conventional morality to seize a chance of happiness, they are ultimately defeated by both circumstance and the flaws within their own nature.

Thomas Hardy’s last novel is focused on the themes of sex and marriage. The tragedy of Jude’s struggle for happiness is intensified by the lack of opportunity for the ordinary man to improve his lot, despite the changes and developments of Victorian society.

THE history of this novel (whose birth in its present shape has been much retarded by the necessities of periodical publication) is briefly as follows. The scheme was jotted down in 189o, from notes made in 1887 and onwards, some of the circumstances being suggested by the death of a woman in the former year. The scenes were revisited in October 1892 ; the narrative was written in outline in 1892 and the spring of x893, and at full length, as it now appears, from August x893 onwards into the next year ; the whole, with the exception of a few chapters, being in the hands of the publisher by the end of x894. It was begun as a serial story in Harper’s Magazine at the end of November 1894, and was continued in monthly parts.

PART FIRST

AT MARYGREEN, I-XI

PART SECOND

AT CHRISTMINSTER, I-VII

PART THIRD

AT MELCHESTER, I-X        

PART FOURTH

AT SHASTON, I-VI

PART FIFTH

AT ALDBRICKHAM AND ELSEWHERE, I-VIII

PART SIXTH

AT CHRISTMINSTER AGAIN, I-XI