Hardy’s Sue Bridehead and the Irony of Natural Passion

Over the course of these blog posts, I have emphasized human relationships to the environment as shown through ideas of literature and literary criticism (including film criticism). In the case of my posts on Thomas Hardy, especially the novels The Return of the Native and Jude the Obscure, I have attempted to show how the human individual relates to the natural world, especially in the realms of personal aspirations including both philosophical and physical/sexual goals and passionate expectations. The female protagonists of both novels show ambiguous and contradictory behaviors through their inherent relationship with the rural environments that define their early years and the urban environments to which they aspire. This essay examines the character of Sue Bridehead, the female protagonist of Jude the Obscure, Hardy’s last novel. Sue is a character the reader never sees in the natural environment. Still, she feels out of place and confrontational in the urban environment in which she has moved and meets and interacts with the male protagonist Jude.

Jude first knows Sue through a picture of her in his rural home, as she is his distant cousin. His mother, upon noticing his interest in the picture, warns him to stay away from her (JTO, Part 2. Ch 1. Par. 5). Sue’s intellect and independence have led her to ambivalent moralities of which the mother does not approve. Jude meets Sue only after his own marriage dissolves when his wife runs away to Australia, and he moves into the urban center of Christminster. There he finds she is entering what is to be an unhappy marriage and is struggling to break free of it; indeed, she finds herself as caught between personal aspirations and societal expectations as is Jude in his unfulfilled marriage (JTO Part 4, Ch 6).

Kate Winslet as Sue Bridehead in the 1996 film Jude, directed by Michael Winterbottom

 

Sue Bridehead is as much a proclamation of nature as Eustacia Vye in The Return of the Native who literally breathes in tune with the natural environment around her, or of Hardy’s other heroine who works knee-deep in the mud or the hay, depending on the season, and thus proclaims herself as one with the earth, Tess of the D’Ubervilles. Sue Bridehead comes from rural beginnings, but soon marries into the urban life, though the marriage is abusive. She initially escapes the abuse of her marriage by investigating societal attempts by the female population to overcome oppression. When she meets Jude, she sees a similarly oppressed person, oppressed by a doleful marriage he cannot escape, as well as someone from a similar rural background come into the urban environment to find escape. Sue’s escape to a partnership with Jude is her affirmation of a life more natural than that which society would force upon her.

Sue betrays a preference for emotional connections over societal obligations. She holds a desire to break free from constraints, whether they be imposed by urban or rural human moralities. But the unconventionality of her position aligns her with the wildness of nature. Passion holds a natural element to it, and Sue wants this natural element to dominate over the rules imposed by human society. She admits this to her husband when she visits him on his sickbed (JTO Part 4, Ch 6). The reader sees Sue as a symbol of passion, whether this be a woman’s right to speak freely and passionately, including the right to vote, or her actions regarding the personal realms of the heart.

The couple’s relationship ultimately leads to disillusionment. This disillusionment is one of a series of tragic events, including the cunning return of Jude’s first wife and the death of Jude and Sue’s children, for Hardy shows the bleakest of worldviews in Jude. The reader understands the destructive impact of societal expectations in the face of the tragedies that a wild nature can throw upon the individual. Sue eventually returns to embrace societal norms by going back to her legal husband, disillusioned with the trajectory her relationship with Jude has brought to her. Her personal tragic irony is that she cannot escape the rigid demands of societal norms, no matter how much her passion dictates. Passion fades in the face of continued hard existence, and societal norms overwhelm Sue’s impulse for freedom.

The reader faces many contradictions in Sue Bridehead. By taking these contradictions and ironies in turn, the reader can understand Sue as a passionate thinker, determined not to conform to the societal norms that entrap her. But in the end, she cannot escape them, and she returns to her husband. Even this last ironic act betrays the suddenness of Sue’s decisions and the fatalistic outcomes that result from them.

 

Nick Harris

10/24/2024