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The plate accompanying the sixth instalment (May 1895) of Hearts Insurgent in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, is the second outdoor night scene, the first being plate number three (February, 1895), in which Jude introduces Sue and Phillotson to one another. The intense darkness of the scene which engulfs both Sue and Jude in the sixth plate is symbolically connected to their having fallen under the Fawley "marriage curse" after Sue's marriage (whose wedding journey is the subject of the fifth plate).

Summoned by Jude to Marygreen for their Aunt Drusilla's funeral on a Friday afternoon, Sue cannot readily return to Shaston by train that evening, and so accedes to Jude's suggestion that she stay the night at the Widow Edlin's cottage. Married to Richard Phillotson for just eight weeks, Sue confesses to her cousin that, although she respects the school-master, she experiences a physical aversion to him and cannot bring herself to love him. A contributing factor may be the great difference in their ages, for he is eighteen years her senior. In essence, Jude had committed himself to Arabella for the sake of passion, while Sue had committed heself to Richard for the sake of reason since the two of them could pursue their profession more successfully if married. Both Sue and Jude are in the metaphorical darkness of depression, and do not know how to direct their lives after marrying precisely the wrong sort of spouse. Jude has, in fact, confessed to having seen Arabella again, and Sue has (erroneously) assumed that they intend to live together again as man and wife.

The nocturnal scene posted at the beginning of the May instalment is actually realized on the second-to-the-last page. Having been awakened at two in the morning by the cry of a rabbit caught in a gin in the Widow Edlin's hedge, Jude is plagued for half-an-hour by thoughts of the creature's suffering before he dresses and crosses the road the road to put the cony out of its misery. At the casement window of the cottage Sue calls out to Jude in the darkness, and, safely separated from him by the waist-high ledge, begs Jude not to love her, even though she admits that she cannot feel happy living with Richard Phillotson. Just after the moment depicted in the plate, Jude grabs Sue's hand and professes his love for her, even though each of them has married the wrong person.

In the text, the whole scene plays out in bright moonlight--their faces are sufficiently well lit that Jude and Sue can read the nuances of each other's expressions. The casement-stay is not in evidence in Hatherell's plate, and the only available light emanates from within the cottage, enshrouding the faces of both figures. The artist's choice of scene for the sixth serial instalment is particularly apt since it underscores a moment of crisis in Jude and Sue's relationship, and leads the serial reader to anticipate that the plot may turn bigamous (the Bigamy Novel being a subdivision of the popular Sensation Novel). Indeed, many of Hardy's novels have introduced the element of bigamy and marital infidelity, whether it be Tess's extra-marital live-in relationship at the close of Tess of the D'Urbervilles or Henchard's unconscious bigamy with Lucetta prior to Susan's return in The Mayor of Casterbridge.

Bibliography

Hardy, Thomas. Jude the Obscure, ed. Dennis Taylor. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998.

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Last modified 16 February 2003