Hardy positions Sue Bridehead, Jude’s cousin and the love of his life, and Arabella Donn, his first wife, as foils to each other throughout the novel. The two women—in addition to being important characters—also represent the struggle between Jude's intellectual, spiritual life and his everyday life.
Jude’s first real sexual encounter is with Arabella, whom he is morally obliged to marry when she lies to him about being pregnant. Arabella is not very intelligent but good at scheming, uninterested in life beyond the flesh, and obsessed with money. She has a bad reputation in Marygreen and the surrounding area for a reason. It’s apparently even visible to those who don't know her, as strangers often react to her poorly. When Sue sees her coming to meet Jude in Part 5, Chapter 2, she protests that:
'She is such a low-passioned woman, I can see it in her shape, and hear it in her voice!’
All the sensory language Hardy weaves around Arabella is solid and embodied. Her badness and her “low passioned” nature are, according to Sue, all evident “in her shape” and “her voice.” When Arabella and Jude first touch each other in Part 1, Chapter 8, they have a physical altercation that’s almost a fight:
Then there was a little struggle [...]. Her face flushed; and becoming suddenly conscious he flushed also. They looked at each other, panting; till he rose and said: ‘One kiss, now I can do it without damage to property; and I’ll go!’
Jude and Arabella’s relationship is only one of the body. When they are together, their bodies react, with “flushed” faces “panting” from exertion, but their minds have very little in common. Arabella does not support Jude’s ambition or his wish to leave Marygreen, nor does she understand his aversion to physical labor and his desire to learn.
By contrast, Sue Bridehead is ethereal, intellectual, spiritual, timid, and delicate—Jude says in Part 5 that she is ghostly, “sexless,” and cold, as if she's hardly flesh at all:
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 [...]
In contrast to Arabella, who is all “animal passion” and pragmatism, Sue is (at least initially) a free-spirited thinker, detached from the reality of her life and the feelings of her body. She makes Jude want to be better and to study so he can be worthy of her, but she also interrupts his work and prevents him from concentrating. Though she isn't really interested in sex, Jude still is. The fact that it’s her personality that captivates him and not her physical body is the opposite of Arabella’s effect on Jude. Nonetheless, it amounts to the same problem. Both women affect him in the same way, but through different means.
Hardy positions Sue Bridehead, Jude’s cousin and the love of his life, and Arabella Donn, his first wife, as foils to each other throughout the novel. The two women—in addition to being important characters—also represent the struggle between Jude's intellectual, spiritual life and his everyday life.
Jude’s first real sexual encounter is with Arabella, whom he is morally obliged to marry when she lies to him about being pregnant. Arabella is not very intelligent but good at scheming, uninterested in life beyond the flesh, and obsessed with money. She has a bad reputation in Marygreen and the surrounding area for a reason. It’s apparently even visible to those who don't know her, as strangers often react to her poorly. When Sue sees her coming to meet Jude in Part 5, Chapter 2, she protests that:
'She is such a low-passioned woman, I can see it in her shape, and hear it in her voice!’
All the sensory language Hardy weaves around Arabella is solid and embodied. Her badness and her “low passioned” nature are, according to Sue, all evident “in her shape” and “her voice.” When Arabella and Jude first touch each other in Part 1, Chapter 8, they have a physical altercation that’s almost a fight:
Then there was a little struggle [...]. Her face flushed; and becoming suddenly conscious he flushed also. They looked at each other, panting; till he rose and said: ‘One kiss, now I can do it without damage to property; and I’ll go!’
Jude and Arabella’s relationship is only one of the body. When they are together, their bodies react, with “flushed” faces “panting” from exertion, but their minds have very little in common. Arabella does not support Jude’s ambition or his wish to leave Marygreen, nor does she understand his aversion to physical labor and his desire to learn.
By contrast, Sue Bridehead is ethereal, intellectual, spiritual, timid, and delicate—Jude says in Part 5 that she is ghostly, “sexless,” and cold, as if she's hardly flesh at all:
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 [...]
In contrast to Arabella, who is all “animal passion” and pragmatism, Sue is (at least initially) a free-spirited thinker, detached from the reality of her life and the feelings of her body. She makes Jude want to be better and to study so he can be worthy of her, but she also interrupts his work and prevents him from concentrating. Though she isn't really interested in sex, Jude still is. The fact that it’s her personality that captivates him and not her physical body is the opposite of Arabella’s effect on Jude. Nonetheless, it amounts to the same problem. Both women affect him in the same way, but through different means.
Hardy positions Sue Bridehead, Jude’s cousin and the love of his life, and Arabella Donn, his first wife, as foils to each other throughout the novel. The two women—in addition to being important characters—also represent the struggle between Jude's intellectual, spiritual life and his everyday life.
Jude’s first real sexual encounter is with Arabella, whom he is morally obliged to marry when she lies to him about being pregnant. Arabella is not very intelligent but good at scheming, uninterested in life beyond the flesh, and obsessed with money. She has a bad reputation in Marygreen and the surrounding area for a reason. It’s apparently even visible to those who don't know her, as strangers often react to her poorly. When Sue sees her coming to meet Jude in Part 5, Chapter 2, she protests that:
'She is such a low-passioned woman, I can see it in her shape, and hear it in her voice!’
All the sensory language Hardy weaves around Arabella is solid and embodied. Her badness and her “low passioned” nature are, according to Sue, all evident “in her shape” and “her voice.” When Arabella and Jude first touch each other in Part 1, Chapter 8, they have a physical altercation that’s almost a fight:
Then there was a little struggle [...]. Her face flushed; and becoming suddenly conscious he flushed also. They looked at each other, panting; till he rose and said: ‘One kiss, now I can do it without damage to property; and I’ll go!’
Jude and Arabella’s relationship is only one of the body. When they are together, their bodies react, with “flushed” faces “panting” from exertion, but their minds have very little in common. Arabella does not support Jude’s ambition or his wish to leave Marygreen, nor does she understand his aversion to physical labor and his desire to learn.
By contrast, Sue Bridehead is ethereal, intellectual, spiritual, timid, and delicate—Jude says in Part 5 that she is ghostly, “sexless,” and cold, as if she's hardly flesh at all:
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 [...]
In contrast to Arabella, who is all “animal passion” and pragmatism, Sue is (at least initially) a free-spirited thinker, detached from the reality of her life and the feelings of her body. She makes Jude want to be better and to study so he can be worthy of her, but she also interrupts his work and prevents him from concentrating. Though she isn't really interested in sex, Jude still is. The fact that it’s her personality that captivates him and not her physical body is the opposite of Arabella’s effect on Jude. Nonetheless, it amounts to the same problem. Both women affect him in the same way, but through different means.
