Jude the Obscure is the last completed novel by English novelist Thomas Hardy. The story follows Jude Fawley’s tragic life of experiencing the shattering of dreams, the loss of love, and the scepticism of religion. Hardy questions the Victorian era, a vigorous epoch, of its great promise—its noble striving.

Jude, son of a stonemason, aspires to be a classic scholar at Christminster. The class difference between stonemason and classic scholar forbids Jude from pursuing his dream while his romantic life centres around the reserve-minded Arabella and the liberated Sue. Despite devoting his life to theology and becoming a clergy, Jude still maintains an indecisive relationship between the two. He realizes that the sexual impulse from Arabella and the romantic impulse from Sue has prevented him from reaching the love of God. Jude dies before 30.

While the story happens almost 100 years ago, Hardy’s message is still prevalent today: the great promise of the era may have failed us but the fact that there is the striving proves the life of its purpose. The novel ends with the death of Jude with a “smile of marble” and draws the reader’s attention to the classics Jude once read “Virgil and Horace.”