Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Shaston


---

caring whether she breaks her neck or no, she’s not to be mistaken;
and this being the case I have come to a conclusion: that it is wrong
to so torture a fellow-creature any longer; and I won’t be the
inhuman wretch to do it, cost what it may!’
‘What––you’ll let her go? And with her lover?’
‘Whom with is her matter. I shall let her go; with him certainly, if
she wishes. I know I may be wrong––I know I can’t logically, or
religiously, defend my concession to such a wish of hers; or harmon-
ize it with the doctrines I was brought up in. Only I know one thing:
something within me tells me* I am doing wrong in refusing her. I,
like other men, profess to hold that if a husband gets such a so-called
preposterous request from his wife, the only course that can possibly
be regarded as right and proper and honourable in him is to refuse it,
and put her virtuously under lock and key, and murder her lover
perhaps. But is that essentially right, and proper, and honourable, or
is it contemptibly mean and sel
fish? I don’t profess to decide. I
simply am going to act by instinct, and let principles take care of
themselves. If a person who has blindly walked into a quagmire cries
for help, I am inclined to give it, if possible.’
‘But––you see, there’s the question of neighbours and society––
what will happen if everybody——’
‘O I am not going to be a philosopher any longer. I only see what’s
under my eyes.’
‘Well––I don’t agree with your instinct, Dick,’ said Gillingham
gravely. ‘I am quite amazed, to tell the truth, that such a sedate,
plodding fellow as you should have entertained such a craze for a
moment. You said when I called that she was puzzling and peculiar: I
think you are!’
‘Have you ever stood before a woman whom you know to be
intrinsically a good woman, while she has pleaded for release––been
the man she has knelt to and implored indulgence of ?’
‘I am thankful to say I haven’t.’
‘Then I don’t think you are in a position to give an opinion. I have
been that man, and it makes all the di
fference in the world, if one has
any manliness or chivalry in him. I had not the remotest idea––living
apart from women as I have done for so many years––that merely
taking a woman to church and putting a ring upon her 
finger could
by any possibility involve one in such a daily, continuous tragedy as
that now shared by her and me!’
Jude the Obscure


---

‘Well, I could admit some excuse for letting her leave you, pro-
vided she kept to herself. But to go attended by a cavalier––that
makes a di
fference.’
‘Not a bit. Suppose, as I believe, she would rather endure her
present misery than be made to promise to keep apart from him? All
that is a question for herself. It is not the same thing at all as the
treachery of living on with a husband and playing him false. . . .
However, she has not distinctly implied living with him as wife,
though I think she means to. . . . And to the best of my understand-
ing it is not an ignoble, merely animal, feeling between the two: that
is the worst of it; because it makes me think their a
ffection will be
enduring. I did not mean to confess to you that in the 
first jealous
weeks of my marriage, before I had come to my right mind, I hid
myself in the school one evening when they were together there, and
I heard what they said. I am ashamed of it now, though I suppose I
was only exercising a legal right. I found from their manner that an
extraordinary a
ffinity, or sympathy, entered into their attachment,
which somehow took away all 
flavour of grossness. Their supreme
desire is to be together––to share each other’s emotions, and fancies,
and dreams.’
‘Platonic!’
‘Well no. Shelleyan would be nearer to it. They remind me of––
what are their names–– Laon and Cythna.* Also of Paul and Virginia* a
little. The more I re
flect, the more entirely I am on their side!’
‘But if people did as you want to do, there’d be a general domestic
disintegration. The family would no longer be the social unit.’
‘Yes––I am all abroad, I suppose!’ said Phillotson sadly. ‘I was
never a very bright reasoner, you remember. . . . And yet, I don’t see
why the woman and the children should not be the unit without the
man.’
‘By the Lord Harry!––Matriarchy! . . . Does she say all this too?’
‘O no. She little thinks I have out-Sued Sue in this––all in the last
twelve hours!’
‘It will upset all received opinion hereabout. Good God––what
will Shaston say!’
‘I don’t say that it won’t. I don’t know––I don’t know! . . . As I
say, I am only a feeler, not a reasoner.’
‘Now,’ said Gillingham, ‘let us take it quietly, and have something
to drink over it.’ He went under the stairs, and produced a bottle of