Sue, Jude and the Society that Killed Them.

In "Jude the Obscure", Thomas Hardy presents two characters whose dreams and ambitions ultimately end in ignominy and failure. The society around them, and their inability to merge into it, causes this downfall. More specifically, Jude is unable to fulfill his dreams due to his class, and Sue due to her gender. However it can be argued that it is the surmounting these obstacles that is the accurate measurement of success and Jude and Sue …

…because he realizes from personal experience the pain that conformity can cause. In the age of Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure, "It was necessary to act under an acquired and artificial sense of the same, if you wished to enjoy an average share of comfort and honour; and to let loving-kindness take care of itself"(359). Victorian society was defined by its strict principle of conservative thoughts and actions; any deviants from the norm were unacceptable.