e reluctant to take them in. One woman rents them a room for the week, though when she discovers that there are not only 2 adults and a small child but two babies as well, she informs her husband, and her husband orders her to send them away. Jude’s son is told by Sue that because there are “too many of them”, they are to be forced to leave the next morning. Jude and Sue return the next morning to find all three children dead - Jude’s son having murdered the two babies and then hanging himself and leaving a note reading "done because we are too menny." The tragic conclusion of the film arises as the inevitable result of the difficulties faced by the two cousins. Sue sees Young Jude’s terrible murder-suicide as a result of her transgressions against the institution of marriage and what is deemed appropriate by society. She feels her only solution is to return to her ex-husband, Phillotson. She sees all of the “forces of nature” working against her and comes to regard her love for Jude as a sin in itself. Sue tells Jude that she feels that in order to make amends for her sins against the institution of marriage - what is believed at the time to be “proper” - she must return to the man she first married in the eyes of God. On another level, she might feel that she needs to punish herself for the suffering her children endured by forcing herself into a life of unhappiness. This film stressed how the two main characters were bound by societal standards. Sue believes that the only way she can live a “true life” is to accept that by living with Jude she would be defying God. Her only recourse was to return to her ex-husband. In a society unwilling to accept their “rejection of convention”, they are ostracized. The children are also victims of society’s unwillingness to accept Jude and Sue as husband and wife. This rejection by society, coupled with Sue’...
