Jude the Obscure

In Thomas Hardy's final novel, Jude the Obscure, Jude Fawley longs to change his life as a stonemason and become a scholar. He desperately wants to study at Christminster, a respected university which Hardy modelled on Oxford. Instead he finds himself in a bad marriage, judged by his peers and in love with another woman. Incredibly controversial upon its publication, the novel questions social institutions, particularly marriage and the Church. Hardy was judged harshly for the book's contentious themes, and never wrote fiction again after it was published.