Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

PART FOURTH
 ‘Whoso prefers . . . Pharisee’: John Milton (–), The Doctrine and
Discipline of Divorce
(
).
 S

: Shaftesbury. The description is based on John Hutchin’s The
History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset
(
). The quotation is
from Polyolbion by Michael Drayton (
–), a guide book in verse.
The description of Shaston occurs in MS not here but at the beginning
of Chapter 
 (. vi), where Phillotson discovers Sue’s expulsion from
the Training School.
King
Edward ‘the Martyr’: king of England 
–, assassinated at Corfe,
Dorset.
 Cowper’s Apocryphal Gospels: this version of those gospels not included
in the accepted canon was published in 
 by B. H. Cowper.
The
Gospel of Nicodemus: a composite apocryphal work in two parts
dealing with Christ’s trial and Cruci
fixion and with his Descent into
Hell. It is a vivid and intense work which is presumably why Sue admires
it as literature.
Apologetica
: early works written in defence of Christianity.
 the tragic contralto note . . . old: not in MS; inserted in . See note to
p. 
 above.
I can’t tell you the truth
: Sue’s original ‘truth’, deleted in MS, is not a
neurotically ‘insatiable love of being loved’ but only her simpler ‘conclu-
sion that there is no harm in a person rectifying a mistake made in
ignorance or carelessness or bumptiousness, by loving another if she is
not living with her husband [originally: he . . . his wife] and I think
a woman might do the same. I don’t like to say it, for I feel I am shaking
your faith in the venerable ceremony of Christian or other nation . . .’.
 Joseph: Genesis : –. Joseph was also cast out by his brothers.
Don
Quixote: Cervantes’ Don Quixote is a type of impractical chivalry.
St
. Stephen: Acts 
: –. Sue, like Jude, sees him as a martyr.
 elusiveness of her curious double nature: an elaboration from  onwards
of MS ‘natural elusiveness’. See note to p. 
 above.
 before I married him I had never thought out fully what marriage meant:
this echoes the views Hardy expressed in a symposium on marriage and
sexual morality, written while Jude was in composition. ‘A girl should
certainly not be allowed to enter into matrimony without a full know-
ledge of her probable future in that holy estate . . . I have not much faith
in an innocent girl’s “discovery of the great mysteries of life” by means
of “the ordinary intercourse of society” ’ (New Review, June 
,
p. 
).
 Sue’s distressful confession: in MS chapter begins emphatically: ‘She
disliked her husband.’ This was mu
ffled from  on into a ‘distressful
confession’.
Explanatory Notes


---

kissed close and long
: replaces (in 
) earlier ‘kissed each other’ (,
)––a rare change in the direction of reciprocal passion. See similar
alterations on pp. 
, , , . Thus after changes from MS to
 (listed in note to p. ), making Sue less spontaneous and more
‘elusive’, Hardy in the last revised edition reverses direction in character-
izing Sue.
though his kiss
. . . damnation: Jude’s recognition of his inconsistency as
a Christian is 
first added in .
 Jeremy Taylor . . . Newman: theological writers from the seventeenth to
the nineteenth centuries. Jeremy Taylor (
–); Joseph Butler (–
); Philip Doddridge (–); William Paley (–); Edward
Pusey (
–); John Henry Newman (–).
 possibly with scarce any man: Sue was originally said to be unfit for mar-
riage ‘possibly with any man’ (MS 
, ). This is weakened to
‘possibly with scarce any man’ in 
, in the small group of late changes
which hint at more warmth in Sue. See note to p. 
 above.
 committing no sin (also , ): MS adds ‘There is only one law on
this subject in Nature, or in God’s eye––whichever expression you like
best for the same thing––and that is, for a man . . . ’. Also in serial.