Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

Jude the Obscure
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information that he had married a wife some years earlier, and that
his wife was living still. Almost before her countenance had time to
change she hurried out the words,
‘Why didn’t you tell me before!’
‘I couldn’t. It seemed so cruel to tell it.’
‘To yourself, Jude. So it was better to be cruel to me!’
‘No dear darling!’ cried Jude passionately. He tried to take her
hand, but she withdrew it. Their old relations of con
fidence seemed
suddenly to have ended, and the antagonisms of sex to sex were left
without any counterpoising predilections. She was his comrade,
friend, unconscious sweetheart no longer, and her eyes regarded him
in estranged silence.
‘I was ashamed of the episode in my life which brought about the
marriage,’ he continued. ‘I can’t explain it precisely now. I could
have done it if you had taken it di
fferently!’
‘But how can I?’ she burst out. ‘Here I have been saying, or writ-
ing, that––that you might love me, or something of the sort––just
out of charity––and all the time––O it is perfectly damnable how
things are!’ she said stamping her foot in a nervous quiver.
‘You take me wrong, Sue! I never thought you cared for me at all,
till quite lately; so I felt it did not matter! Do you care for me, Sue?––
you know how I mean––I don’t like “out of charity” at all!’
It was a question which in the circumstances Sue did not choose
to answer.
‘I suppose she––your wife––is––a very pretty woman, even if
she’s wicked?’ she asked quickly.
‘She’s pretty enough, as far as that goes.’
‘Prettier than I am, no doubt.’
‘You are not the least alike. And I have never seen her for years.
But she’s sure to come back––they always do!’
‘How strange of you to stay apart from her like this!’ said Sue, her
trembling lip and lumpy throat belying her irony. ‘You, such a
religious man. How will the demi-gods in your Pantheon––I mean
those legendary persons you call saints––intercede for you after this?
Now if I had done such a thing it would have been di
fferent, and not
remarkable, for I at least don’t regard marriage as a Sacrament. Your
theories are not so advanced as your practice.’
‘Sue, you are terribly cutting, when you like to be––a perfect
Voltaire. But you must treat me as you will!’
At Melchester
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When she saw how wretched he was she softened, and trying to
blink away her sympathetic tears said with all the winning reproach-
fulness of a heart-hurt woman: ‘Ah––you should have told me before
you gave me that idea that you wanted to be allowed to love me! I had
no feeling before that moment at the railway-station, except––’ For
once Sue was as miserable as he, in her attempts to keep herself free
from emotion and her less than half-success.
‘Don’t cry, dear!’ he implored.
‘I am––not crying–– because I meant to––love you;* but because of
your want of––con
fidence!’
They were quite screened from the Market-square without, and
he could not help putting out his arm towards her waist. His
momentary desire was the means of her rallying. ‘No, no!’ she said,
drawing back stringently, and wiping her eyes. ‘Of course not! It
would be hypocrisy to pretend that it would be meant as from my
cousin; and it can’t be in any other way.’
They moved on a dozen paces, and she showed herself recovered.
It was distracting to Jude, and his heart would have ached less had
she appeared anyhow but as she did appear; essentially large-minded
and generous on re
flection, despite a previous exercise of those
narrow womanly humours on impulse that were necessary to give
her sex.
‘I don’t blame you for what you couldn’t help,’ she said smiling.
‘How should I be so foolish! I do blame you a little bit for not telling
me before. But after all it doesn’t matter. We should have had to keep
apart, you see, even if this had not been in your life.’
‘No, we shouldn’t Sue. This is the only obstacle!’
‘You forget that I must have loved you, and wanted to be your
wife, even if there had been no obstacle,’ said Sue, with a gentle
seriousness which did not reveal her mind. ‘And then we are cousins,
and it is bad for cousins to marry. And––I am engaged to somebody
else. As to our going on together as we were going, in a sort of
friendly way, the people round us would have made it unable to
continue. Their views of the relations of man and woman are
limited, as is proved by their expelling me from the school. Their
philosophy only recognizes relations based on animal desire. The
wide 
field of strong attachment where desire plays, at least, only a
secondary part, is ignored by them––the part of––who is it?–– Venus
Urania.’*
Jude the Obscure
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Her being able to talk learnedly showed that she was mistress of
herself again; and before they parted she had almost regained her
vivacious glance, her reciprocity of tone, her gay manner, and her
second-thought attitude of critical largeness towards others of
her age and sex.*
He could speak more freely now. ‘There were several reasons
against my telling you rashly. One was what I have said; another, that
it was always impressed upon me that I ought not to marry––that I
belonged to an odd and peculiar family––the wrong breed for
marriage.’
‘Ah––who used to say that to you?’
‘My great-aunt. She said it always ended badly with us Fawleys.’
‘That’s strange. My father used to say the same to me!’
They stood possessed by the same thought, ugly enough, even as
an assumption: that a union between them, had such been possible,
would have meant a terrible intensi
fication of unfitness––two bitters
in one dish.
‘O but there can’t be anything in it,’ she said with nervous light-
ness. ‘Our family have been unlucky of late years in choosing
mates––that’s all.’
And then they pretended to persuade themselves that all that had
happened was of no consequence, and that they could still be cousins
and friends and warm correspondents, and have happy genial times
when they met, even if they met less frequently than before. Their