The most sorrowful of all Hardy protagonists: Jude (the Obscure)

The hapless Jude (the Obscure) gets led, tricked rather, into marriage with Arabella Donn, a woman who in every way seems to be his opposite - earthy, sexual, crude - she, w/ complicity of her parents, overwhelms and seduces a very oblivious Jude and shortly after that tells him she's pregnant. Jude, always trying to do the right thing, offers to marry her right away. Done. Obviously the the marriage doesn't last - although I was surprised that it ended in the first section of the novel; obviously, knowing Hardy, Arabella will come back to play a key role in Jude's life and fate. After the break-up - precipitated by a squabble over the butchering of a family pig (Jude wants to kill it with mercy while Arabella wants the hog to bleed to death slowly, increasing the value of the meat) - we move forward about 10 years as Jude fulfills his dream of moving to the university town of Christminster (aka Oxford) where he hopes to pursue his classical studies. But he's such an outsider and has no idea how the university system works, or the class system: he's a stone-mason, and it's almost inconceivable that the university would offer him any kind of admission or instruction. Moving there, he will be even more of an outsider and an alien - in his native village he was the eccentric intellectual, but in Christminster he will be ignored, overlooked. As he enters the town and looks for lodging, we have to anticipate: will he manage to find his childhood teacher, who had inspired him to think about reading the classics, and how will his teacher receive him? And - what about his cousin who lives in Christminster, an attractive young woman and possibly a well-suited partner for Jude? Knowing the world of Hardy, we suspect Jude will want to marry this young woman - but his marriage to Arabella will oppress and torment him. He may be the most sorrowful of all of the Hardy protagonists.