Jude the Obscure

Details the story of Jude Fawley, a poor stonemason who longs to be a minister, and how the brutal deaths of his children and his inability to please the two women in his life hinder his dreams and threaten his existence. Moving to Christminster to work as a stonemason, Jude meets and falls in love with his cousin Sue Bridehead, a sensitive, freethinking "New Woman". Refusing to marry merely for the sake of religious convention, Jude and Sue decide instead to live together, but they are shunned by society, and poverty soon threatens to ruin them.