Jude the Obscure Ch. 42: Tracts in the Hedge

Summary

In the afternoon the fair can hear singing inside the hoarding. Arabella's voice rises and falls with the rest, her bosom doing likewise. Two hours later, on the high road to Alfredston, she tells Anny she has seen them. She sang the hymns with all her strength and still thought of him. Anny offers a mourning brooch and a dusk visit to a grave. Arabella has no lock of Cartlett's hair, and says it would be no good. After all the comforts of this religion, she wishes she had Jude back. Passing the lonely house of the pig-killing she can control herself no longer. He is more mine than hers. She flings the remaining tracts into the hedge. She has tried that physic and failed. She must be as she was born.

They overtake a spare elderly man with a basket who is his own housekeeper. It is Phillotson, back at Marygreen on sufferance, fifty pounds after two hundred, because a vicar who knew him before the scandal will still have him. Arabella names herself as the scholar from Cresscombe who married Jude Fawley. She tells him Sue was innocent of what obtained his freedom. He grasped the cart-edge. She wanted to go, he says. You shouldn't have let her. Custom does it. Bondage and a stone-deaf taskmaster. Moses knew. Cruelty is the law pervading all nature and society, Phillotson answers, and they cannot get out of it if they would.

Sue sells every arcade and east window, then meets Mrs. Edlin in a lane with the two little ones. Jude sits in an armchair, expectant and delicate after the long illness. She tells him Arabella is a widow at Alfredston, a dozen miles across the country, and has taken to chapel. His countenance remains clouded. He feels well enough to leave in a week or two. Then he confesses what is in his mind. He would like to go back to Christminster, perhaps to die there, and to be there by a particular day in June. Christminster cares nothing for you, she says. Well, I do, I can't help it. In three weeks they are treading its pavements, taking the sunshine from its wasting walls.

In this chapter:Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Writing the Wish the Hymns Could Not Hold

A new creed can fill an afternoon of singing and still lose to the first road that remembers who you wanted. Arabella flings the leftover tracts into the hedge by the pig-killing house and says she must be as she was born.

If a belief fails at a familiar turning, write the wish that survived the singing before you call the singing finished.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: Arabella

She sings the hymns with all her strength and still wants him. "I must be as I was born" is her ripping off a Sunday self the way she once put grease on a book. The tracts go in the hedge by the pig house. Conversion was another costume. "I’d take him from her" is the first hunger keeping the road.

Continue this thoughtThe Pig That Interrupts the Greek

Coming Up in Chapter 43

The station will be lively with straw hats and bright dresses. Sue will see that it is Remembrance Day and say he came on purpose. He did. She will want lodgings first. His soul will be full of the anniversary.

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Chapter 42

Tracts in the Hedge

In the afternoon Sue and the other people bustling about Kennetbridge fair could hear singing inside the placarded hoarding farther down the street. Those who peeped through the opening saw a crowd of persons in broadcloth, with hymn-books in their hands, standing round the excavations for the new chapel-walls. Arabella Cartlett and her weeds stood among them. She had a clear, powerful voice, which could be distinctly heard with the rest, rising and falling to the tune, her inflated bosom being also seen doing likewise. It was two hours later on the same day that Anny and Mrs. Cartlett, having…

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Tracts in the Hedge

Summary

Why This Matters