Jude the Obscure (1895) by Thomas Hardy tells the story of a stonemason, Jude Fawley, whose ambition is to study for a university degree.
In this extract, which occurs early in the novel, Jude’s fantasies about his future life of scholarship are interrupted when he is hit on the ear by a pig’s penis. It has been thrown by one of the country girls who are washing pigs’ intestines in a nearby stream.
One or two pairs of eyes slyly glanced up, and perceiving that his attention had at last been attracted, and that he was watching them, they braced themselves for inspection by putting their mouths demurely into shape and recommencing their rinsing operations with assiduity.
‘Thank you!’ said Jude severely.
‘I didn’t throw it, I tell you!’ asserted one girl to her neighbour as if unconscious of the young man’s presence.
‘Nor I,’ the second answered.
‘Oh, Anny, how can you!’ said the third.
‘If I had thrown anything at all, it shouldn’t have been that!’
‘Pooh! I don’t care for him!’ And they laughed and continued their work, without looking up, still ostentatiously accusing each other.
Jude grew sarcastic, as he wiped his face, and caught their remarks.
‘You didn’t do it – oh no!’ he said to the up-stream one of the three.
She whom he addressed was a fine dark-eyed girl, not exactly handsome but capable of passing as such at a little distance, despite some coarseness of skin and fibre. She had a round and prominent bosom, full lips, perfect teeth, and the rich complexion of a cochin hen’s egg. She was a complete and substantial female animal – no more, no less; and Jude was almost certain that to her was attributable the enterprise of attracting his attention from dreams of the humaner letters to what was simmering in the minds around him.
‘That you’ll never be told,’ said she deedily.
‘Whoever did it was wasteful of other people’s property.’
‘Oh, that’s nothing.’
‘But you want to speak to me, I suppose?’
‘Oh yes; if you like to.’
‘Shall I clamber across; or will you come to the plank above here?’
Perhaps she foresaw an opportunity for somehow or other the eyes of the brown girl rested in his own when he had said the words, and there was a momentary flash of intelligence, a dumb announcement of affinity in posse between herself and him, which, so far as Jude Fawley was concerned, had no sort of premeditation in it. She saw that he had singled her out from the three as a woman is singled out in such cases, for no reasoned purpose of further acquaintance, but in commonplace obedience to conjunctive orders from headquarters, unconsciously received by unfortunate men when the last intention of their lives is to be occupied with the feminine.
Springing to her feet, she said, ‘Bring back what is lying there.’
Jude was now aware that no message on any matter connected with her father’s business had prompted her signal to him. He set down his basket of tools, picked up the scrap of offal, beat a pathway for himself with his stick, and got over the hedge. They walked in parallel lines, one on each bank of the stream, towards the small plank bridge. As the girl drew nearer to it she gave, without Jude perceiving it, an adroit little suck to the interior of each of her cheeks in succession, by which curious and original manoeuvre she brought as by magic upon its smooth and rotund surface a perfect dimple, which she was able to retain there as long as she continued to smile. This production of dimples at will was a not unknown operation, which many attempted but only a few succeeded in accomplishing.
They met in the middle of the plank, and Jude, tossing back her missile, seemed to expect her to explain why she had audaciously stopped him by this novel artillery instead of by hailing him.
But she, slyly looking in another direction, swayed herself backwards and forwards on her hand as it clutched the rail of the bridge; till, moved by amatory curiosity, she turned her eyes critically upon him.
‘You don’t think I would shy things at you?’
‘Oh no.’
‘We are doing this for my father, who naturally doesn’t want anything thrown away. He makes that into dubbin.’ She nodded towards the fragment on the grass.
‘What made either of the others throw it, I wonder?’ Jude asked, politely accepting her assertion, though he had very large doubts as to its truth.
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