In the Victorian period, Jude Fawley is a bright young working-class man who dares to dream of a university education. Circumstances marshal themselves against him, and he is forced into a hard life as a stonemason while tangled in an unhappy marriage to a country girl named Arabella. He clings to his dream with quiet persistence, and when his wife suddenly departs, he heads for the city determined to prove that education is within reach for any man willing to work hard. Yet his hopes are dashed when the university rejects him, chiefly on the grounds of his class rather than his intellect.
During these trying years, he meets his cousin, Sue Bridehead, a woman of beauty and intellect who shares his impatience with rigid social conventions. Although both are deeply drawn to each other, Sue becomes entangled in a different union, marrying Jude’s former schoolteacher, Phillotson, after Jude reveals that he is already married to Arabella. The arrangement soon reveals its flaws: Sue resists physical and romantic commitment to Phillotson, and the marriage fails to provide the solace or partnership she seeks.
Sue’s decision to leave Phillotson to accompany Jude plunges them into a precarious, nomadic existence. Jude continues to work sporadically as a stonemason, while Sue remains a constant, if controversial, partner in his life. Their unconventional family grows as Arabella bears a son named Jude (“Juey”), whom the father Jude raises alongside Sue. Sue bears two more children, and she remains staunchly agnostic and fiercely independent, choosing not to formalize their living arrangement through marriage.
The couple’s lack of stable lodging becomes a social flashpoint: their shared life without wedlock is deemed scandalous, and they find themselves unable to secure a permanent home. Sue tells Juey that they cannot stay long in their current lodging because there are too many of them to be discreetly accommodated.
Tragedy strikes when the young Juey, living with Jude and Sue, kills his half-siblings and then takes his own life, leaving behind a note that reads, “Becos we were to menny.” The weight of this loss drives Jude and Sue into deep, shared grief, and they struggle to navigate a world that seems to condemn their choices.
In the wake of their children’s deaths, both fall into a profound melancholia. Sue, returning to the religion she had once rejected, comes to believe that God has judged and punished the pair for not having married. She resolves to return to Phillotson, despite finding him sexually repugnant, because he remains, in her view, the true husband in God’s eyes.
A year after the tragedy, Jude and Sue cross paths again while visiting the graves of their children. Both look worn and haunted by hardship. Jude asks whether she still loves him, and she answers, “You've always known.”
> You've always known
Their reunion is brief and charged with longing, and after a passionate kiss, Sue turns away to rejoin Phillotson. As she walks off, Jude shouts a final, defiant declaration:
> We are man and wife, if ever two people were on this earth!
