In Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, Jude Fawley is born in the village of Marygreen. The fictional village is the setting for the novel’s opening section, where Jude is raised by his great-aunt Drusilla after becoming an orphan.
Marygreen represents Jude’s rural, working-class origins and stands in sharp contrast to Christminster, the university city he dreams of reaching. Inspired by his schoolmaster Richard Phillotson, Jude teaches himself Latin and Greek while working in his aunt’s bakery. His ambition is to study at the university and become a scholar, but social class, limited money and personal misfortune repeatedly obstruct him.
Hardy set the novel in Wessex, his fictional version of southwestern England. Marygreen is not the same place as Christminster, which is generally understood as Hardy’s fictional counterpart to Oxford. Mellstock belongs primarily to Hardy’s other fiction, while Aldbrickham is another Wessex location. Marygreen’s name also echoes the real village of Fawley in Berkshire, a place associated with the family history that helped inspire elements of Jude’s story.