What’s So Different?

From an outside view, Sue Bridehead and Arabella Donn are complete opposites, when they are actually very much alike. Robert B. Heilman insists that they are on complete opposite sides of the spectrum. Sue and Arabella have different personalities, but they are still alike when it comes to Jude. This means that even though Jude compared them and saw that they were poles apart, both of them still had a similar effect on him. Both Arabella and Sue in their respective ways interrupt Jude’s life from the path he was on. Jude’s initial opinion of each of the girls was very different. While he looked at Arabella as common and pitied her, he placed Sue on a pedestal and fell in love with her before he even met her. The manner in which he first interacted with each of them was also very contradictory. He met Arabella because she threw a pig member at him hitting him in the face with it while Jude and Sue meet at a place of martyrdom. Here the reader is shown that Arabella is unmannerly and Sue well-bred.

When Jude and Arabella spent the day together, Jude went only because he felt sorry for her. He told himself that he would go out with her for a short time and come back to read his book. He ended up spending the whole day with her and did not get a chance to look at his books as he had planned. He loses sight of his goal of getting an education at Christminster because he cannot resist Arabella. Jude’s inexperience with women is a disadvantage when he meets Arabella. Even though he knows better than to give into Arabella, Jude cannot help himself. He is intrigued by her and she knows it and uses this to her advantage. Arabella wanted Jude and she plotted with her friends on how she would get him to marry her. Jude married Arabella because she told him that she was pregnant; this was her way of trapping Jude and keeping him. Jude is burdened with the responsibility of taking care of a wife and child and is forced to make a living raising pigs, leaving no time for his dreams of being a scholar. When Jude finds the note from Arabella telling him that she is leaving him, Jude gets a second chance at living out his dream. He decides to go to Christminster with his hopes renewed after ridding himself of all obstacles, primarily consisting of Arabella. She sends him a note saying that she will be going to Australia. While Jude and Sue are in Aldbrickham, Arabella comes with some news for Jude. She returns to Cartlett who has agreed to marry her before she has a chance to talk to Jude. She sends a note saying she will be sending Jude’s son whom she gave birth to eight months after they separated.

Arabella comes back later in the novel and thinks of ways she can go about getting Jude back. She is able to get Phillotson back into the picture and she lets him know that Sue was innocent of adultery at the time he divorced her. She is able to get Jude back after the death of the children, and she is happy about it only for a short time.

Jude finishes his apprenticeship as a stone mason three years after Arabella leaves him and begins his mission for a better life. Before he leaves, he sees a picture of his cousin Sue who lives in Christminster but his aunt refuses to give it to him. When he arrives in Christminster he immediately