Jude the Obscure Ch. 16: The Umbrella Moment

Summary

Phillotson watches Sue cross the road in a light hat and finds a new interest that has nothing to do with her skill. Evening arithmetic under Mrs Hawes's sewing grows charged; he is not thinking of the sums. On a dusty outing to a model of Jerusalem she calls the display imaginary and prefers Athens. Jude is already there in a white jacket, bent over the Valley of Jehoshaphat. She seizes his hand, tells him he believes in her, and does not see what the tremor builds in both men.

The next day Phillotson finds a chalk perspective of the city on her blackboard, every building in its place, though she claimed she hardly looked. An inspector's surprise visit makes her cry out; he catches her, gives her brandy, and holds her hand. You are the best teacher ever I had, he says. Jude dresses for Friday and walks the wet road eager to see her.

The first sight in the village is two figures under one umbrella coming out of the vicarage gate. Phillotson puts his arm around her waist. She removes it. He replaces it, and she lets it remain. Jude sinks into the hedge, sick that he is still Arabella's and that the intimacy excluding him was brought about entirely by himself.

In this chapter:Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Spotting Engineered Triangles

Fear of losing someone can make you arrange the closeness that later shuts you out. Jude hides in a wet hedge and watches Phillotson keep an arm at Sue's waist under an umbrella the teaching post made possible.

Before you introduce two people so you can stay in the room, write the scene if they keep each other and not you, and stop if you cannot bear that picture.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: Sue

At the model of Jerusalem she seizes a hand and says "I know you believe in me". Belief is the drug she needs. She does not see that the same sentence writes Phillotson out and Jude in. Later she calls him the "best teacher ever I had". Gratitude and selection arrive in one breath, and only the men keep both names.

Continue this thoughtThe Kindest Slap

Coming Up in Chapter 17

Jude wins a Sunday fight with himself and goes to Marygreen instead of Lumsdon. His dying aunt warns him off Sue as a townish girl who will scorn a working man. Villagers will ask if the City of Light was all he expected, and a letter from a college head is already on its way.

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Chapter 16

The Umbrella Moment

The schoolmaster sat in his homely dwelling attached to the school, both being modern erections; and he looked across the way at the old house in which his teacher Sue had a lodging. The arrangement had been concluded very quickly. A pupil-teacher who was to have been transferred to Mr. Phillotson’s school had failed him, and Sue had been taken as stop-gap. All such provisional arrangements as these could only last till the next annual visit of H.M. Inspector, whose approval was necessary to make them permanent. Having taught for some two years in London, though she had abandoned that…

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The Umbrella Moment

Summary

Why This Matters