Plot
The action is set in England in the late 19th century. Jude Fawley (Robert Powell) is a young stonemason’s apprentice living in the village of Marygreen with his Aunt Drusilla. His former schoolmaster, Richard Phillotson (John Franklyn-Robbins) leaves the village to take up a college appointment in Christminster, a university city based on Oxford. Jude has the ambition to study at Christminster and become a clergyman and is learning Greek and Latin. Meanwhile, he is seduced by Arabella Donn (Alex Marshall), a pig-keeper’s daughter, whom he marries when she claims to be pregnant. Arabella leaves him and emigrates to Australia. Jude then completes his apprenticeship and moves to Christminster, where he works as a mason, hoping to enter the university, but he is turned down for admission by the dean of Cardinal College. He meets and falls in love with his cousin, Sue Bridehead (Fiona Walker), but she marries Phillotson. However, Phillotson later allows Sue to live with Jude.
Arabella returns, and Jude divorces her, and Sue also gets a divorce from Phillotson. But Arabella has brought with her a son of Jude's, born after she left him, and sends Young Jude to live with his father. Jude and Sue have two small children of their own and are expecting a third, but are being ostracised for living together unmarried. Jude is sacked, and the family moves from town to town in search of work. Young Jude believes the children are the source of these troubles, murders Sue's two children, and hangs himself, leaving a suicide note. Sue then has a miscarriage. She comes to believe she is being punished by God for leaving her husband, so she returns to him. Jude, heartbroken, remarries Arabella, but he makes a final visit to Sue in freezing weather, is taken ill, and dies, aged only thirty. Sue is left to an unhappy life with Phillotson.
Reception
The serial was first broadcast in Britain on BBC Two between 6 February and 13 March 1971, in six 45-minute episodes, and then in the US on Masterpiece Theatre from 3 October to 7 November 1971. [1] In Britain, it appeared on Saturday evenings from 9:35 to 10:20 p.m., thus timed to be kept away from younger children. [3] The production was well received in Britain and the US and according to one critic "helped promulgate the British miniseries on PBS". [4]
One reviewer described the serial as a dark production and especially pertinent in the context of recent reforms to divorce law. [5]
John Leonard, writing in Life magazine as "Cyclops", noted "a surprising amount of sex, lots of bells, and bad weather". He considered that “an absorbing if not enthralling several hours of drama ... falls completely apart into silliness”, and that Alex Marshall as Arabella "steals the series". [6]
Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain such as those from his native South West England.
Jude the Obscure is a novel by Thomas Hardy, which began as a magazine serial in December 1894 and was first published in book form in 1895. It is Hardy's last completed novel. The protagonist, Jude Fawley, is a working-class young man; he is a stonemason who dreams of becoming a scholar. The other main character is his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is also his central love interest. The novel is concerned in particular with issues of class, education, religion, morality and marriage.
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The Woodlanders is a novel by Thomas Hardy. The novel is set between 1856 and 1858. It was serialised from 15 May 1886 to 9 April 1887 in Macmillan's Magazine and published in three volumes in 1887. It is one of his series of Wessex novels.
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Gwyneth Leith, better known by her stage name Gwyneth Powell, was an English actress. She was best known for her portrayal of headmistress Bridget McClusky in the BBC television series Grange Hill for eleven series between 1981 and 1991.
Emilia Rose Elizabeth Fox is an English actress and presenter whose career is primarily in British television. Her feature film debut was in Roman Polanski's film The Pianist (2002). Her other motion pictures include the Italian–French–British romance-drama The Soul Keeper (2002), for which she won the Flaiano Film Award for Best Actress; the drama The Republic of Love (2003); the comedy-drama Things to Do Before You're 30 (2005); the black comedy Keeping Mum (2005); the romantic comedy-drama Cashback (2006); the drama Flashbacks of a Fool (2008); the drama Ways to Live Forever (2010); the drama-thriller A Thousand Kisses Deep (2011); and the fantasy-horror drama Dorian Gray (2009).
Delia Phyllis Daphne Heard was an English actress and acting teacher. She was born in Plymouth, Devon. She appeared in numerous made-for-TV movies and TV series. She was perhaps best known in latter years as Richard's elderly mother Mrs. Polouvicka in To the Manor Born.
Fawley is a village and civil parish in West Berkshire, England. The hub of the village is centred 3.5 miles (5.6 km) east of Lambourn and has a sub-community within its bounds, Little or South Fawley. It includes the depopulated small hill settlement of Whatcombe. Fawley is the inspiration for "Marygreen" in Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure.
Mary Jean Heriot Powell, better known by her stage name Jean Anderson, was an English actress best remembered for her television roles as hard-faced matriarch Mary Hammond in the BBC drama The Brothers (1972–1976) and as rebellious aristocrat Lady Jocelyn "Joss" Holbrook in the Second World War series Tenko (1982–1985). She also had a distinguished career on stage and appeared in 46 films.
Nicola Jane Walker is an English actress, known for her starring roles in various British television programmes from the 1990s onwards, including that of Ruth Evershed in the spy drama Spooks and DCI Cassie Stuart in Unforgotten (2015–2021). She has also worked in theatre, radio and film. She won the 2013 Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress for the play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and was twice nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Supporting Actress for the BBC drama Last Tango in Halifax.
Fiona Walker is an English actress, known for numerous theatre and television roles between the 1960s and 1990s.
Tryphena Sparks, born in Puddletown, Dorset as the youngest child of a cabinet-making journeyman James Sparks and his wife Maria, overcame the barriers of her modest rural background to achieve professional success, becoming headteacher of one of the largest schools outside London. She was a cousin of Thomas Hardy and was romantically involved with him, inspiring a number of his well-known poems.
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John Franklyn-Robbins was an English character and voice actor.
Robert Woodrow Langbaum was an American author. He was University of Virginia James Branch Cabell professor of English and American literature (1967–99) and professor emeritus from 1999.
Alex Marshall is an English actress and director, who was most active from the 1960s to the 1980s.
