Temporal Janus: Retrospects and Prospects in Jude the Obscure

Abstract

In these few paragraphs near the end of the novel, Jude Fawley revisits for the last time his childhood home and parts from Sue Bridehead, cousin and mother of his children, before returning to Christminster and the sensual Arabella, whom he has recently remarried. His painfully slow journey, evoked elegiacally, involves three object-symbols, and underlines the value of Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of chronotope:² the Brown House, scene of his parents’ parting; his chiselled inscription on the milestone,³ now virtually erased but a concrete reminder of early aspirations; and the absent gibbet, recalling a grim family legend further back in the past.

He turned and looked back, once, at the building which still contained Sue; and then went on, knowing that his eyes would light on that scene no more.

There are cold spots up and down Wessex in autumn and winter weather; but the coldest of all when a north or east wind is blowing is the crest of the down by the Brown House, where the road to Alfredston crosses the old Ridgeway… He came to the milestone, and, raining as it was, spread his blanket and lay down there to rest. Before moving on he went and felt at the back of the stone for his own carving. It was still there; but nearly obliterated by moss. He passed the spot where the gibbet of his ancestor and Sue’s had stood, and descended the hill.

…To get home he had to travel by a steam tramcar, and two branches of railway, with much waiting at a junction. He did not reach Christminster till ten o’clock.

VI. – ix

On the platform stood Arabella. She looked him up and down.

‘You’ve been to see her?’ she asked.

‘I have,’ said Jude, literally tottering with cold and lassitude.

‘Well, now you’d best march along home.’ The water ran out of him as he went, and he was compelled to lean against the wall to support himself while coughing.¹