Thomas Hardy's "Jude the Obscure" Quiz

Answer: scholar; stonemason

After Jude's teacher leaves for Christminster on the path towards scholastic study, Jude decides that he wants to attend the university himself and acquire a Doctorate of Divinity. Societal circumstances, including his poverty and his early marriage to Arabella, prevent Jude's study at the University. Instead, Jude earns a living as an itinerant stone-cutter.

Answer: she feigns pregnancy

Hardy's treatment of the unhappy marriage of Jude and Arabella exemplifies an important theme in the novel: marriage as a trap. Hardy critiques the permanency of a contract negotiated due to a fleeting lust between two individuals. Soon after their marriage, Jude realizes that although the "transitory instinct" of sexual attraction had passed, "the marriage remained."

Answer: her hair

Jude learns that Arabella wears a hairpiece when she removes it in preparation for bed. He does not discover Arabella's ability to produce false dimples or her feigned pregnancy until later.

Answer: in a portrait owned by his aunt Drusilla

When Jude moves to Christminster, he asks his aunt to send the portrait to him. He later spies Sue at her place of employment and at church, and she comes to see him at the stonemason's yard. However, they do not actually converse until their arranged meeting on a street in Christminster.

Answer: Venus and Apollo

Sue's purchase of these figures significantly shows her appreciation of antiquity and her veneration of classical values rather than Christian teachings. To conceal the identities of the statues from her landlady, Sue lies that they are representations of Peter and Mary Magdalen. The opposition of philosophy and reason with Christian morality is a major theme of the novel.

Answer: they are cousins

Jude and Sue both mention society's disapproval of cousins getting married.

Answer: Jude

Phillotson was Jude's teacher in Marygreen. When Jude discovers Sue's desire to teach, he introduces her to Phillotson in Christminster.

Answer: at a bar in Christminster

Jude finds Arabella working as a barmaid in Christminster when he accompanies an old friend to the bar for a drink. Depressed by the advent of Sue's recent marriage, Jude is tempted to drink at the bar, and is later seduced by Arabella.

Answer: Sue jumps out of a window to escape Phillotson

When Sue first asks Phillotson if he will allow her to leave him, her husband refuses. It is only after Sue jumps out of her bedroom window when Phillotson accidentally enters the room that he lets her go to be with her lover.

Answer: she wants to marry another man

While she is in Australia, Arabella meets another man. Believing Jude is dead, she and the Australian marry. She realizes a divorce will make her second marriage legal.

Answer: he was hanged

The Widow Edlin recounts the story of Jude's and Sue's ancestor whose wife ran away from him, taking their child with her. The child died, and the husband attempted to steal the child's coffin from his wife's house. He was caught and hanged for burglary. Mrs. Edlin tells this story to illustrate why Sue's and Jude's family has always had bad luck with marriage.

Answer: she feels it will destroy their happiness

Sue believes, based partly on previous experience, that once two people are married their passion for each other dissolves: "'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.'" She thinks that marriage "'is destructive to a passion whose essence is its gratuitousness.'"

Answer: because their family has bad luck with marriage

Drusilla spends her entire life unmarried, and advises against any member of her family marrying because none who have married have found happiness.

Answer: Jude and Arabella

Little Father Time is a product of their marriage, although Arabella does not tell Jude about their son for many years. The child spends the first years of his life in Australia with Arabella's family.

Answer: they never marry

Although Jude and Sue comes close to legally marrying several times in the novel, Sue always changes her mind shortly before they go through the ceremony. Finally, the couple begin to tell people that they are legally married, even though they are not.

Answer: Jude and Arabella marry, Sue and Phillotson marry, Jude and Arabella divorce, Sue and Phillotson divorce, Sue and Phillotson marry, Jude and Arabella marry

Jude and Arabella marry before Jude ever meets Sue. Jude is still legally married to Arabella when Sue and Phillotson marry. Jude's divorce from Arabella becomes final shortly before Sue's and Phillotson's divorce is made official. Years later, Sue returns to Phillotson and becomes his wife again, and urges Jude to remarry Arabella. Jude and Sue never marry, nor do Phillotson and Arabella.

Answer: Remembrance Day

Remembrance Day, held at the University, honors graduating scholars. Hardy models the University at Christminster on Oxford University. The following year, Jude dies on Remembrance Day, after remembering his own failed ambitions.

Answer: they commit suicide

After Sue reveals to Little Father Time that so many children make it difficult for the family to survive, he and the other two children hang themselves.

Answer: she renounces her ties to Jude

The deaths of the three oldest children, shortly followed by Sue's delivery of a stillborn, convince Sue that her life with Jude is immoral and cursed. She decides that she is still bound to Phillotson, and resolves to return to him.

Answer: women and alcohol

Jude tells Sue that she is the only one who can keep him from his two "arch enemies."

Answer: not to marry Phillotson

Mrs. Edlin tells Sue that she is making a mistake by marrying Phillotson, and that she should not marry him because she is still in love with Jude. However, she does not specifically tell Sue to go back to Jude.

Answer: she gets him drunk

Arabella manages to keep Jude so intoxicated that he is not thinking clearly. She then tells him that he promised to marry her, and believing her, he feels obligated to fulfill his word.

Answer: she consummates her marriage with Phillotson

Although Sue's and Phillotson's marriage is only nominal at first, Sue ultimately decides that the moral thing to do is to submit fully to her husband, even though he repulses her.

Answer: she goes to see the boat races

Arabella's selfish desire to see the boat races with her friends surpasses her duties toward her dead husband.

Answer: Arabella

Arabella's final assessment of Sue's fate, spoken as she and the Widow Edlin view Jude's body: "She's never found peace since she left his arms, and never will again till she's as he is now!"