The extract is taken from Jude  the Obscure’s chapter 2, written by Thomas Hardy.  Jude Fawley, who has been abandoned by his wife Arabella, lives with Sue Bridehead, their two children and the son he had from Arabella. They are an illegal couple and have troubles finding a place where to stay. Under the pressure of poverty and social disapproval their relationship deteriorates until tragedy overtakes them.

Comprehension

-          What has happened to the children? What is the meaning of the message left by the boy?

One children committed suicides and he kills the others. On the floor Jude and Sue find a note, written by little Jude, that reads "Done because we are too menny”. The message means the children are dead because they didn’t want to hang over the family, because they were very poor.

-          How do Sue and Jude explain the tragedy?

Jude and Sue decide, when they think about it later, that Little Father Time awakened to find Sue gone, hanged the two younger children first and then hanged himself. The note he left seems to confirm this.

Interpretation

-          What do you think “the events and information of the evening before” are (line 33)?

I think that Sue talks to little Jude about the family’s troubles the evening before. The boy is sure the family's plight is caused by the children and can't understand why children are born at all, though Sue explains to him it is a law of nature. When she tells him she is pregnant with another child, he says she has done it on purpose to bring the family to further ruin.

-          What kind of narrator does Hardy use?

Hardy uses an unobtrusive narrator, who shows and describes in minute details what happened in the story.

-          Where in the passage is the narrator’s comment on the tragic event most explicit? What is his concluding remark?

I think the most explicit narrator’s comment on the tragic event is when he said “half-paralyzed by the strange and consummated horror of the scene he let Sue lie..”. I think the concluding remark is “the boy’s face expressed the whole tale of their situation”.

-          What view of late Victorian society can you detect in Jude’s attempt to comfort Sue?

To comfort Sue, Jude repeats the doctor's observation that Little Father Time is one of a new generation of children with a preternatural wisdom and sense of defeat.

Hardy explores the transition from the age of traditional values and religious certainties to the age of godlessness and modern tragedy, and reveals the indifference or wickedness for those unable to control the demands of their own natures.

-          What can you say of Hardy’s attitude to life?

Hardy’s vision of life is tragic and the bleak fate of his characters is the evidence of his own pessimistic “philosophy”.

-          What do you think will happen to Jude and Sue?

I think that Sue will return from her previous husband, while Jude will commit suicide because he will stay alone.