The Return of the Native

The Return of the Native is a novel by Thomas Hardy, first serialized and published in book form in 1878. Egdon Heath becomes a landscape shaping human desire.

Eustacia Vye dreams of escaping the heath and first looks to Damon Wildeve as a possible route outward. Wildeve's delayed marriage to Thomasin Yeobright, and the reddleman Diggory Venn's efforts on Thomasin's behalf, create a web of divided attachments.

The return of Clym Yeobright from Paris seems to answer Eustacia's hopes, but he wants to educate the people of Egdon rather than leave it. Their marriage, his failing eyesight, and conflict with his mother turn opposed futures into domestic tragedy.

Hardy's changing viewpoints give personal mistakes the force of accident without erasing responsibility. Bonfires, paths, weather, and the heath's deep time place brief lives against enduring place, while later editions preserve alternative possibilities around the ending.

"A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment. Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor."