l not be happy. "...he was the sort of man who was born to ache a good deal before the fall of the curtain upon his unnecessary life." (Hardy 17) Jude's failures illustrate the problems inherent in a "Romantic" approach to actual life. (Hassett 432) His Romanticism is destructive because it distorts his vision of reality, ensuring that he acts neither rationally or practically. (Davis) Jude's undoing is his insistence on acting on Romantic attachments, of making Romantic notions practical realities. (Rogers)
             Jude's transfixion with Christminster is another evidence of his Romantic character. It is not something intrinsic in Christminster that make Jude see it in the way he does. Because of the Romantic quality in his character, he needs to find beauty and hope. Since there are neither of these in his post-Romantic society, Jude fabricates them in Christminster. (Davis) Upon first seeing Christminster, Jude runs home with thoughts of giants "Herne the Hunter, Apollyon lying in wait for the Christian..." (Hardy 21-22) This experience recalls other Romantic epiphanies, "spots of time" in which the stubborn world yields to a vision of ideal spiritual truth. (Hassett 433) Jude thinks of Christminster as a place of beauty, a paradisiacal
             "city of light." (Hassett 433) Hardy says that Jude becomes "romantically attached to Christminster." (Hardy 24) "It had been the yearning of his heart to find something to anchor on, to cling to; for some place which he could call admirable." (Hardy 25) Christminster in inhabited by people and ghosts. The ghosts are literary figures who have so shaped the image
             of the place for Jude, that it becomes an "elusive fabrication of intertextuality." (Draper 243) Christminster is the first of many of Jude's fantasies that offer an alternative to reality. (Hassett 433)
             Despite the rea...