Who are you?

I Will Survive:[1] Jude the Obscure’s Arabella

At first glance, Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure appears as a tragic story of Jude’s failed relationships and achievements, but in the background of the novel is the rational character, Arabella, whose thoughts and ideas are suppressed by Hardy and Jude. They portray the down-to-earth Arabella as a heartless seductress, and many read her as such, but that does not mean she is not a survivor. Arabella encompasses the archetype of the Mother Earth who lives off of her fertility and sexuality. Arabella is just that, a sexual creature that understands the cycle of life and death, and what must be done in order to accomplish that cycle. She does everything in her power to survive as a Victorian woman while also fulfilling the duties of the Mother Earth, which consequently depicts her as being a vile, selfish, and promiscuous person. Hardy describes Arabella’s natural instincts as animalistic, “a complete and substantial female animal—no more, no less.”[2] Jude tells his story from a biased view, a very sensitive, emotional, and ideal perspective that tends to ignore practicality or reality. Because he is a dreamer in a Victorian world, he does not belong and is unable to survive because of the Victorians’ intolerance to the idealistic. Most men in literature are terribly afraid of the Mother Earth, but Jude’s daydreaming prevents him from seeing the power and importance she holds. She has a power he cannot possess nor understand—the power of life and death. Arabella is the Earth Mother, the survivor, and the hero of Jude the Obscure.

[3]

Arabella’s actions are animalistic and overt, but only because the Mother Earth must conform to the standards of the Victorian woman in order to accomplish her goals. Arabella marries in order to survive in the Victorian society, and she goes about it in a direct manner:

On a sudden something smacked him sharply in the ear, and he became aware that a soft cold substance had been flung at him and had fallen at his feet. A glance told him what it was—a piece of flesh, the characteristic part of a barrow-pig, which the country-men used for greasing their boots, as it was useless for any other purpose.[4]

Arabella uses the pig penis as her missile to portray to Jude what she wants from him. She does not want a sentimental relationship, she wants a sexual relationship. The goddess of fertility simply wants to have sex, not engage in an emotional affair, but Jude sees the penis and says, “used for greasing their boots, as it was useless for any other purpose.” Jude does not understand the gesture, which results in mixed communication. He does not see that he is dispensable, just as the pig’s penis. All Arabella needs is a man to help her reproduce, she can easily throw him away like the pig. Her action of throwing the penis was a sign for Jude. That is all he is to her, that is all she wants from him, and it is easy for her to throw away. Jude assumes that all love is the same; he is unable to open his mind to different concepts of the feeling. His love is a courtly love, where secrecy and passion motivate the pursuit. Arabella’s idea of love is a more practical sense of the feeling. What she wants from Jude is his body–his social status, prestige, future, and goals hold no importance to her. Even with these conflicting ideas of love, Arabella and Jude marry.

After the marriage, Jude is appalled to learn that Arabella’s relationship with him is purely sexual and that she did not shared the same feelings as he did. Her fake hair, her fake dimples, her fake pregnancy, and her fake innocence disgusted him. Even though he is aware that he is repulsed by her deceit, he still clings on to his fantasies, “For his own soothing he kept up a factitious belief in her. His idea of her was the thing of most consequence, not Arabella herself.”[5] These fake elements of Arabella that Jude detests are the only survival tools Arabella is given. For a pig-farmer’s daughter in the Victorian era, she overcomes great obstacles in order to achieve her goals. She climbs the social ladder and marries against all odds. Her reputation and social status are enough to keep anyone from marrying her, but Arabella chooses her husband wisely. She chooses someone that she knows will not care about these things. Her goal is not to find someone that understands her, cares for her, or even loves her. She wants someone that will have sex with her. While her friends call Jude simple-minded, she knows he has his head in the clouds. Jude is different from ordinary Victorian men, therefore, Arabella feels safe in pursuing him for her sexual needs. But because he is not an ordinary Victorian, their marriage fails.

The idea of life and death between Jude and Arabella stands as the major disagreement between the two characters. When Jude must kill a pig, he chooses to do so quickly and mercifully, but Arabella wants the pig killed slowly for the blackpot. Jude is reluctant to kill the pig, and while doing so says, “It is a hateful business!” Arabella shortly retorts, “Pigs must be killed”. Once the pig is dead, Jude exclaims with relief, “Thank God! … He’s dead.” Arabella scorns him, “What’s God got to do with such a messy job as pig-killing, I should like to know! … Poor folks must live.”[6] Jude’s focus on the pig’s pain averts him from the reality of the situation—they survive by killing pigs. Arabella understands that by killing the pig, they are supporting life; things are born and things die, there is no avoiding the situation. Arabella’s idea of the circle of life[7] is commonly disregarded as her insensitivity to other creatures, but on the contrary, it shows her acute appreciation of life by accentuating her understanding of the cycle. Differing ideas of life and death are what spark many of their conflicts in the novel.

Arabella and Jude separate from their marriage after the pig incident. Arabella travels to Australia with her family while Jude moves to Christminster to pursue his dreams. Jude returns to Marygreen when he hears his Aunt Drucilla is ill. By chance, he encounters Arabella, who is working as a barmaid. He tells her of his aunt, and she offers to accompany him the next day. Jude does not trust her intentions, suspecting her actions, “There was something particularly uncongenial in the idea of Arabella, who had no more sympathy than a tigress with his relations or him, coming to the bedside of his dying aunt, and meeting Sue.”[8] Arabella is not the unsympathetic animal Jude depicts her as. Her second marriage to Cartlett has turned stale and lacks the sexual attention that she desires. This supports the belief that Arabella is the Mother Earth figure of the novel because if she would stay in the unfruitful marriage, then she would die. She needs a productive sexual relationship in order to live. She is searching for a new companion in order to fulfill her sexual desires. She uses the opportunity to try and reunite with Jude, but he sees her pursuit as lack of sympathy, and this repulses him. But the situation is like the pig: Arabella understands that Drucilla’s death is inevitable because she is ill and old. Mother Earth is not sympathetic towards the dying because she knows that fertility and life will always follow.

Arabella’s lack of grief and remorse over the deaths of Little Father Time, Carlett, and Jude seem to have earned the disdain of Hardy and readers, but her reactions were not callous and heartless. There is no visible sorrow with the deaths, but only because she knows she must continue on with her life. She does not crumble like Sue at the death of Little Father Time, and she continues to survive even after the death of her two husbands. Her actions are not selfish; they are survival tactics. After the death of Cartlett and the argument with her father, Arabella is homeless and penniless, so she returns to Jude. As Jude grew ill and towards death, Arabella explained, “Weak women must provide for a rainy day. And if my poor fellow upstairs do go off—as I suppose he will soon—it’s well to keep chances open. And I can’t pick and choose now as I could when I was younger. And one must take the old if one can’t get the young.”[9] Understandably, this reaction to Jude’s death is seen as ruthless, but her circumstance would not have called for anything else. The options for a single, lower-class woman of that time were discussed in class: living with the family, prostitution, or suicide. She recognizes the dilemma she is in, and that in order to survive, she must find a new husband.

Arabella is the only character in Jude the Obscure that is able to survive after the novel’s end. Arabella was able to continue to exist as the Mother Earth in the Victorian world although her lifestyle was looked down upon, she lost her child, and she was widowed twice. She is a sexually-driven female that is perceived as innocent and angelic to society in order to live without ill repute. Arabella had to outwit, outlast, and outplay in order to survive through the hardships she faced. Her strong will and understanding of the cycle of life helped her survive through daily tasks, the pressures of society, and the death of her family. Arabella is able to rise above from a position of weakness and live successfully in the Victorian world. If she had given into emotions like Jude, Sue, and Phillotson, she would have failed just as they had.

[10]

Total WC: 1,645
Quotes: 223
WC: 1,422