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 November 1895 (though the title page says 1896). 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. It was Hardy's 14th and last published novel.

The novel tells the story of Jude Fawley, who lives in a village in southern England (part of Hardy's fictional county of Wessex). He yearns to be a scholar at "Christminster", a city modelled on Oxford. As a youth, Jude teaches himself Classical Greek and Latin in his spare time, while working first in his great-aunt's bakery, with the hope of entering university. But before he can try to do this, the naive Jude is seduced by Arabella Donn, a rather coarse, morally lax, and superficial local girl who traps him into marriage by pretending to be pregnant. The marriage is a failure, and Arabella leaves Jude and later emigrates to Australia, where she enters into a bigamous marriage.

After Arabella leaves him, Jude moves to Christminster and supports himself as a mason while studying alone, hoping to be able to enter the university later. There, he meets and falls in love with his free-spirited cousin, Sue Bridehead. But, shortly after this, Jude introduces Sue to his former schoolteacher, Mr. Phillotson, who helps train her to be a schoolteacher herself and persuades her to marry him, despite being some 20 years her senior. She soon regrets this, because, in addition to being in love with Jude, she is horrified by the notion of sex with her husband. Sue soon asks Phillotson for permission to leave him for Jude, which he grants, once he realizes how unwilling she is to fulfill what he believes are her marital duties to him. Because of this scandal—the fact that Phillotson willingly allows his wife to leave for another man—Phillotson has to give up his career as a schoolmaster.

Sue and Jude spend some time living together without any sexual relationship. This is because of Sue's dislike for both sex and the institution of marriage. Soon after, Arabella reappears having fled her Australian husband, who managed a hotel in Sydney, and this complicates matters. Arabella and Jude divorce and she legally marries her bigamous husband, while Sue gets a divorce from Phillotson. However, following this, Arabella reveals that she had a child of Jude's, eight months after they separated, and subsequently sends this child to his father. He is named Jude and nicknamed "Little Father Time" because of his intense seriousness.

Jude eventually convinces Sue to sleep with him and, over the years, they have two children together and expect a third. But Jude and Sue are socially ostracised for living together unmarried, especially after the children are born. Jude's employers dismiss him because of the illicit relationship, and the family is forced into a nomadic lifestyle, moving from town to town across Wessex seeking employment and housing before eventually returning to Christminster. Their socially troubled boy, "Little Father Time", comes to believe that he and his half-siblings are the source of the family's woes. The morning after their arrival in Christminster, he kills Sue's two children and himself by hanging. He leaves behind a note that simply reads, "Done because we are too menny [sic]." Shortly thereafter, Sue has a miscarriage.

Overwhelmed with grief and blaming herself for "Little Father Time"'s actions, Sue turns to the church, against which she has rebelled. She comes to believe that the children's deaths were divine retribution for her relationship with Jude. Although horrified at the thought of resuming her marriage with Phillotson, she becomes convinced that, for religious reasons, she should never have left him. Arabella discovers Sue's feelings and informs Phillotson, who soon proposes they remarry. This results in Sue leaving Jude once again for Phillotson, and she punishes herself by allowing her husband sex. Jude is devastated and remarries Arabella, whose husband has died, after she plies him with alcohol to once again trick him into marriage.

After one final, desperate visit to Sue in freezing weather, Jude becomes seriously ill and dies within the year in Christminster, thwarted in his ambitions both in love and in achieving fame in scholarship. It is revealed that Sue has grown "staid and worn" with Phillotson. Arabella does not mourn Jude's passing, instead setting the stage to ensnare her next husband.

The novel explores several social problems in Victorian England, especially those relating to the institutions of marriage, the Church, and education. These themes are developed in particular through Hardy's use of contrast. For example, at the beginning of their relationship, Jude's Christian faith contrasts with Sue's religious scepticism, a contrast which is heightened even further by their later role-reversal. Although the central characters represent both perspectives, the novel as a whole is firmly critical of Christianity and social institutions in general.^{[citation needed]}