Two women ruined Jude in two different ways. **spoiler**

Yeah, I don't think you can say the women "ruined" Jude. The restrictive and elitist society didn't gibe with his idealized vision of the world he wanted to live in, and Sue was a woman he idealized from the start and was human after all.

"I think that more blame might be put on the restrictive, judgmental society that they had to live in."

Couldn't have put it better myself. When you think about it, 100 years on, Jude and Sue's living arrangements wouldn't have been considered unusual at all. There's that whole thing about Phillotson trying to defend her against the gossip at college that leads Jude to say, "She stayed with me, but as a cousin" after that rainy night. Today, nobody would be very bothered if, say, two platonic adult friends who happened to be male and female stayed in the same house together after a night out but then it was potentially scandalous.

(Also perhaps I am misinterpreting, but I sensed that Sue was going out of her way to avoid any chance of having to have sex with her husband - like the scene where Jude finds her in the kitchen and she said, "What's wrong with me, Jude?". I don't know for sure but I suspect that in the 1880s/1890s it was still considered "unnatural" for a woman to avoid having sex with her husband. It must have been quite a bold move for her to do that in that time and I suppose she was lucky in some ways that Phillotson was too nice to her to force her to. Other men in his position might have done.)

But, also, as you say Jude didn't make great decisions. (I know Arabella tricked him into getting married, but on the other hand he did put himself in that position by having sex with her.) And maybe Sue was a bit too honest about hers - she didn't want to hide the fact that they were unmarried, which got awkward once the children started coming along and I think was a big factor in Jude being asked to leave his various jobs.


"If we go on like this, you're going to turn into an Alsatian again."

I didn't even think of his last name that way until now!! that is definitely interesting...
And I agree that while both of these women definitely contributed to his decline (gargh I wanted to smack Arabella in the face) he had some responsibility too. Yeah, his heart would have been broken by Sue either way, but what he did about that was his choice ultimately, and absolutely the choices they all made in this were reflections of their society, whether it was going with the common beliefs or fighting against them.