The novel tells the story of Jude Fawley, who lives in a village in southern England (part of Thomas Hardy's fictional Wessex), who yearns to be a scholar at 'Christminster', a city modelled on Oxford. As a youth, Jude teaches himself Classical Greek and Latin in his spare time, while working first in his great-aunt's bakery, with the hope of entering university. But before he can try to do this the naïve Jude is seduced by Arabella Donn, a rather coarse and superficial local girl and, because s