Jude the Obscure Marriage Quotes

Apparently, according to Jude and Sue's Aunt Drusilla, there is a kind of old family curse (cue lighting and scary violin sounds) on the Fawleys: they are somehow just not cut out for marriage. Aunt Drusilla remains opposed to marriage for members of her family until her dying day, because she had seen all of the horrible things these husbands and wives have done to each other over the years. If taken a bit more seriously, this anti-marriage family marriage curse could be the plot for some terrible B horror movie—any takers?

Hey, Phillotson might be old and kind of boring, but he's pretty enlightened at times in the book. This is one of those times. He knows that it's wrong to force Sue to stay with him if she doesn't love him and if she is unhappy. This was a revolutionary thought for the time. Remember, allowing Sue to leave costs Phillotson his livelihood.

Gillingham tells Phillotson that breaking apart a marriage is a social danger. If people just did whatever they wanted to do, in spite of the legal bonds of marriage, there would be "general domestic disintegration." And in fact, we've seen a lot of similar kinds of debates around the issue of gay marriage today—clearly, the place of marriage as a spiritual and social structure is still something people disagree on, even though it's over a century since Hardy published Jude the Obscure.