Jude the Obscure: Similes 6 key examples

Compared to Arabella, Jude practically is a lamb. Arabella's sexual and social experience makes Jude seem like a baby animal in comparison to her. She is quite literally leading him on, as if by a leash. Hardy implies even at this early stage in the novel that Arabella is more grown-up and more associated with experienced sexuality than Jude. The young protagonist has never kissed a girl and is gangly and awkward in his body. Arabella, however, is so lush and mature that when Jude first meets her she is in the process of incubating a bird’s egg between her breasts.

This simile, in which Jude is imagined as a lamb, comes alongside Hardy's regular association of Arabella with pigs. This happens both within their courtship and in her life writ large. For example, Arabella throws a pig penis at Jude before they even speak, in order to get his attention. Pigs are dirty in the diction of this book, especially in contrast with the clean, white visual language normally associated with lambs. Arabella’s approach is coarse and unsophisticated, but Jude is so innocent that it still works on him.

Hardy’s “lamb” is also religiously symbolic here, as Christ is referred to as the "lamb of God” in the Christian tradition. Jude's relationship with Arabella follows the Christian tradition of sexual fidelity and monogamous marriage at its outset, but that doesn't mean it's good—it's just considered correct. Instead of pursuing his career as a priest or a student, Jude settles for marrying Arabella when she successfully (and not very cleverly) takes advantage of his innocence to trick him.

It is unsurprising that bad news from Sue would rock Jude like a gale, since Sue Bridehead is so often associated with the sensory language of air in this novel. Sue’s body is small, thin, and fine, often referred to as birdlike or ghostlike. There is nothing substantial about her, like the wind. But, like a “withering blast,” her invisible presence can shake Jude Fawley’s foundations. As the physical sensory language of such strength “passes” over Jude, the reader gets a real sense of the shock and trauma of this news. Even though Sue is now "gone," he is still battered around by an invisible, spiritual force. Jude and Sue are so connected that even the air invokes her presence for him.

The "blast" literally withers Jude's hopes of making Sue love him at this point in the book. It also “withers” and shrivels his dream of exceeding his circumstances. This is especially evident in this moment, as this passage immediately follows one that discusses Jude's increased understanding of his own desires and of Sue’s character. Although he knows that they might be bad together, “two bitters in one dish,” as Hardy describes it, Jude wants her so much that he's still “withered” by her upcoming nuptials.

In life, Aunt Drusilla saw things (especially Jude and Sue's relationship ) too clearly for Jude's comfort. She represented the peering and interested eyes of their social environment, and she was always quick with a judgmental comment even without prompting. Though she can no longer remark on the suitability of other people’s choices or on the Fawley family curse of unhappy marriages, she still manages to make one more strong impression on Jude.

After her death, her penetrating eyes are still open and staring, although they see nothing. Hardy leans into the Gothic, frightening picture this simile paints, noting that her eyes are like "glass.” This is a frightening simile in any case, but especially because the glass of a doll's eyes is always reflective. They show a warped and distorted version whatever surrounds them. As Hardy describes here, a version of Drusilla’s surroundings is still being "reflected" for those close enough to see it, even if she wouldn't have known Jude by sight if he'd arrived before she died.

Hardy’s use of the word “hanging” and the unusual word order in this first sentence is clever wordplay. The “little frock” that is “hanging” echoes the vision of Sue's children’s bodies hung to death from objects in the room. The "string" of Sue’s grieving body is also grimly referential to the dead children, who were hung with "box-cords” by her oldest, adopted child.

Furthermore, Sue's body is almost vibrating out of existence as she "quivers," "neither good for earth nor heaven." She has always been ethereal, but now she has ascended to another level of thinness and tension, pulled absolutely taut by the "wrath" of the "Ancient Power above."

Sue is already—as Jude says later in the same chapter—the "most ethereal and least sensual woman he knows." This event seems to snap the string of her "spiritual," progressive, and free-thinking presence. She's done rebelling: it has made her want to "conform" and to stop fighting immediately. The thin strings that killed her children don't snap under their weight, but Sue does snap.

Jude believes that he and Sue should help each other through their grief. He thinks that their love can remain even though the children are gone. He can't comprehend why Sue has changed her mind about him and about their relationship, why “two and two made four when we were happy together” and not afterward. Before their children died, Sue didn't feel bound to Phillotson. However, afterward she believes she is being punished by God for leaving her "true husband," and that she has to go back to her "real" marriage. In her response to Jude's incredulity, Sue says that she knows he cannot understand why she must punish herself by returning to Phillotson. However, she must do it anyway. She cannot explain her feelings and her new religious fervor to him, only that she has them.

To her, Jude in this situation is like a deaf person “observing people listening to music.” He can see something is happening to her, but he has no concept of what it might be. He can't understand why she has changed her mind, but it's so evident to Sue that acting on it is as involuntary as hearing loud music when it plays. She still loves him, but she cannot stay with him. Hardy uses this simile to show how "totally" Jude doesn't understand what is happening to Sue. Their marriage of the "spirit" is broken by the deaths of their children and Sue's religious renaissance. Even if Jude thinks there is "nothing there," something is.

Jude acknowledges that he is essentially less bright and less naturally "good" than Sue. He is a soft, dim light, and she is a scintillating star. When the death of her children devastates her, however, her light goes out. Her turn away from Jude back to her original marriage to Phillotson is—in Jude's eyes—similar to her giving in to "darkness." This sudden plunge into “darkness” is completed in earnest for Jude when he finds out that she is a wife in more than “name” to Phillotson. This is a euphemistic way of saying that Sue and Phillotson having begun a sexual relationship.