Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure
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‘Yes; I suppose we can,’ said Sue, without enthusiasm.
‘And aren’t we going to?’
‘I don’t like to say no, dear Jude. But I feel just the same about it
now as I have done all along. I have just the same dread lest an iron
contract should extinguish your tenderness for me, and mine for
you, as it did between our unfortunate parents.’
‘Still, what can we do? I do love you, as you know, Sue.’
‘I know it abundantly. But I think I would much rather go on
living always as lovers, as we are living now, and only meeting by day.
It is so much sweeter––for the woman at least, and when she is sure
of the man. And henceforward we needn’t be so particular as we have
been about appearances.’
‘Our experiences of matrimony with others have not been
encouraging, I own,’ said he with some gloom; ‘either owing to our
own dissatis
fied, unpractical natures, or by our misfortune. But we
two——’
‘Should be two dissatis
fied ones linked together, which would be
twice as bad as before. . . . I think I should begin to be afraid of
you, Jude, the moment you had contracted to cherish me under a
Government stamp and I was licensed to be loved on the premises by
you––Ugh, how horrible and sordid! Although, as you are, free, I
trust you more than any other man in the world.’
‘No, no––don’t say I should change!’ he expostulated; yet there
was misgiving in his own voice also.
‘Apart from ourselves, and our unhappy peculiarities, it is foreign
to a man’s nature to go on loving a person when he is told that he
must and shall be that person’s lover. There would be a much likelier
chance of his doing it if he were told not to love. If the marriage
ceremony consisted in an oath and signed contract between the par-
ties to cease loving from that day forward, in consideration of per-
sonal possession being given, and to avoid each other’s society as
much as possible in public there would be more loving couples than
there are now. Fancy the secret meetings between the perjuring hus-
band and wife, the denials of having seen each other, the clambering
in at bedroom windows, and the hiding in closets! There’d be little
cooling then.’
‘Yes; but admitting this, or something like it to be true, you are not
the only one in the world to see it, dear little Sue. People go on
marrying because they can’t resist natural forces, although many of
At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere
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them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a
month’s pleasure with a life’s discomfort. No doubt my father and
mother, and your father and mother, saw it, if they at all resembled
us in habits of observation. But then they went and married just the
same, because they had ordinary passions. But you, Sue, are such a
phantasmal, bodiless creature,* one who––if you’ll allow me to say
it––has so little animal passion in you, that you can act upon reason
in the matter, when we poor unfortunate wretches of grosser
substance can’t.’
‘Well,’ she sighed, ‘you’ve owned that it would probably end in
misery for us. And I am not so exceptional a woman as you think.
Fewer women like marriage than you suppose, only they enter into it
for the dignity it is assumed to confer, and the social advantages it
gains them sometimes––a dignity and an advantage that I am quite
willing to do without.’
Jude fell back upon his old complaint––that, intimate as they
were, he had never once had from her an honest, candid declaration
that she loved or could love him.* ‘I really fear sometimes that you
cannot,’ he said, with a dubiousness approaching anger. ‘And you are
so reticent. I know that women are taught by other women that they
must never admit the full truth to a man. But the highest form of
a
ffection is based on full sincerity on both sides. Not being men,
these women don’t know that in looking back on those he has had
tender relations with, a man’s heart returns closest to her who was
the soul of truth in her conduct. The better class of man, even if
caught by airy a
ffectations* of dodging and parrying, is not retained
by them. A Nemesis attends the woman who plays the game of
elusiveness too often, in the utter contempt for her that, sooner or
later, her old admirers feel; under which they allow her to go
unlamented to her grave.’
Sue, who was regarding the distance, had acquired a guilty look;
and she suddenly replied in a tragic voice: ‘I don’t think I like you
to-day so well as I did, Jude!’
‘Don’t you? Why?’
‘O, well––You are not nice––too sermony. Though I suppose I am
so bad and worthless that I deserve the utmost rigour of lecturing!’
‘No, you are not bad. You are a dear. But as slippery as an eel when
I want to get a confession from you.’
‘O yes I am bad, and obstinate, and all sorts! It is no use your