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    The Return of the Native
    The Return of the Native
    The Return of the Native
    Audiobook13 hours

    The Return of the Native

    Written by Thomas Hardy

    Narrated by Simon Vance

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    One of Thomas Hardy's classic statements about modern love, courtship, and marriage, The Return of the Native is set in the pastoral village of Egdon Heath. The fiery Eustacia Vye, wishing only for passionate love, believes that her escape from Egdon lies in her marriage to Clym Yeobright, the returning "native," home from Paris and discontented with his work there. Clym wishes to remain in Egdon, however-a desire that sets him in opposition to his wife and brings them both to despair. Surrounding them are Clym's mother, who is strongly opposed to his marriage; Damon Wildeve, who is in love with Eustacia but married to Clym's cousin Thomasin; and the oddly ambiguous observer Diggory Venn, whose frustrated love for Thomasin turns him into either a guardian angel or a jealous manipulator-or perhaps both.

    This stew of curdled love and conflicting emotions can only boil over into tragedy, and the book's darkly ironic ending marks it as both a classically Victorian novel and a forerunner of the modernist fiction that followed it.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJan 18, 2010
    ISBN9781400185078
    Author

    Thomas Hardy

    Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset in 1840, the eldest of four children. At the age of sixteen he became an apprentice architect. With remarkable self discipline he developed his classical education by studying between the hours of four and eight in the morning. With encouragement from Horace Moule of Queens' College Cambridge, he began to write fiction. His first published novel was Desperate Remedies in 1871. Thus began a series of increasingly dark novels all set within the rural landscape of his native Dorset, called Wessex in the novels. Such was the success of his early novels, including A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873) and Far From the Madding Crowd (1874), that he gave up his work as an architect to concentrate on his writing. However he had difficulty in getting Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1889) published and was forced to make changes in order for it to be judged suitable for family readers. This coupled with the stormy reaction to the negative tone of Jude the Obscure (1894) prompted Hardy to abandon novel writing altogether. He concentrated mainly on poetry in his latter years. He died in January 1928 and was buried in Westminster Abbey; but his heart, in a separate casket, was buried in Stinsford, Dorset.

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    Reviews for The Return of the Native

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    • 5/5
      I enjoyed this one tremendously, but I suspect that without Alan Rickman's beautiful reading it would have been a four star, rather than a five star book for me. I found the story very satisfying (though I could have done with rather less about the colors, moisture levels, and textures of Egdon Heath, even if it is, as both Wikipedia and a friend of mine have suggested, the main character, which I'm still not convinced of, btw), and am very pleased with Hardy for being willing to modify his usual doom and gloom ending as a concession to sentimental public taste! Eustacia Vye, superbly loathsome creature that she is, is a memorable character.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This is the 6th book that Thomas Hardy wrote and published. For the reading group we have read all the previous ones and I feel like Hardy finally reached his full capacity in this book. It has all the hallmarks that those persons who have only read one or two of his better-known works would recognize.This book is set entirely in the fictitious (but based upon real moorland) Egdon Heath, a sparsely settled and remote area of Wessex. Many of the inhabitants farm or cut furze for a living. Some are of a more upperclass stratum such as the grandfather of Eustacia, Captain Vye, and the mother of Clym, Mrs. Yeobright. As such they have higher aspirations for their offspring than to marry someone from the Heath. Mrs. Yeobright's inclinations also extend to her niece, Thomasin. However, Thomasin (or Tamsin as she is sometimes called) has fallen in love with the innkeeper Wildeve. Mrs. Yeobright at first protested at the banns but she has finally agreed the marriage can take place. So, on the morning of Guy Fawkes day, Thomasin and Wildeve set off to a nearby church to get married. Much to Thomasin's disappointment the wedding cannot take place because the licence was obtained in another township. She has fled from Wildeve and stumbled upon Diggory Venn, who was a former suitor. Diggory is a reddleman which is a person who sells reddle, a type of red ochre, to sheep farmers. He lives out of a small caravan and it and himself and everything he owns is stained red. They arrive home just as the bonfires from Guy Fawkes are dwindling. Thomasin and her aunt just want to escape back home but first the locals come to sing to the, as they thought, newlyweds.Meanwhile, Eustacia has set her own bonfire burning hoping to attract Wildeve who was her lover before he took up with Thomasin. Eustacia has the reputation as a witch and it does seem that she has bewitched Wildeve. He turns up at the bonfire and it is clear that he cares a great deal for Eustacia. The question then arises will he proceed with his plan to marry Thomasin or will he return to Eustacia?During the rest of the book, which takes place in exactly a year and a day, proposals, betrothals, weddings and even a birth take place but who with whom should probably be left to the next reader. As with most Thomas Hardy there is tragedy but there is also a righting of wrongs.Egdon Heath does sound wild and rugged but some of its inhabitants love it. Hardy is the master of describing places and I wish that I could transport myself back in time to experience this place. I think I would find beauty in the furze and other vegetation. I know that the birds and beasts would be wonderful.Hardy is also a master of characterization. The minor characters like Grandfer Cantle, Susan Nonsuch and Charley add to the story. Of the major characters my favourite is Diggory and that certainly is my favourite name. I suspect he might have been Hardy's favourite as well.
    • 3/5
      Hardy's wife has been quoted as saying that, for all the memorable female characters he created, Hardy knew nothing about real women. I can believe that. Though I enjoyed this book, it plays out like a variation on Far From the Madding Crowd, with another woman, Eustacia Vye, who suffers and causes others to suffer, yet doesn't seem to act in a psychologically consistent or realistic way. As in Madding Crowd, the most sympathetic character gets some happiness in the end, but no one else does. Physical descriptions are gorgeous.
    • 3/5
      Good, but not amazing. I almost couldn't believe the number of misunderstandings and accidents in this novel, to the point that I found it nearly implausible. From the problems with a marriage license at the beginning to Clym losing eyesight due to reading too much by candlelight (I'd be blind by now if this was even remotely possible) to the whole sequence of unanswered knocks on doors and letters not received. I guess I'm just not a Thomas Hardy fan.
    • 4/5
      What　I cannot agree with this novel is most of the important actions in this novel are detemined by the unconfirmed presumptions (by Eustacia, Clym and Mrs Yeobright). No characters in the book or the unconfirmed presumptions (by Eustacia, Clym and Mrs Yeobright). No characters in the book or thE narrator try to rectify this error. This is unacceptable and deprives the basic sympathy narrator try to rectify this error. This is unacceptable and deprives the basic sympathy toward this book from me. On the other hand, I am charmed by the good prose and the right words. In this head, HardThemots just.y is much better than Austin or Forster. I should like to admit that I am rather sympathetic with Wildeve. Although he was not loyal to Eustacia through and through, his indecision was understandable and eventually, he proved to be faithful at heart to Eustacia. That is a comparative feat, and as much as possible for an average man.
    • 5/5
      An amazing work of art, this would be great to do as a tutored read I think (or follow along with a tutored read at any rate). I'll need to re-read it as there's so much I've missed. The sort of book that reminds me how little depth there is to many of the books I read. Audiobook read by Alan Rickman was initially distracting, because Alan Rickman was reading a book to me, but then I was so drawn into the tale (relationship drama! wedding mishaps! old loves! passionate new love! bonfires! the heath! death! love triangle?) that I stopped noticing him. A couple of chapters from the end when people started hurling themselves into the water, I started giggling with the thought that maybe all of the main characters were going to hurl themselves in and drown, and the rest of the novel would just be pleasant descriptions of the heath.
    • 4/5
      Hardy weaves a tale of passion and tragedy on Egdon Heath in his fictional Wessex. Eustacia Vye's desire to lead a life elsewhere is dashed when she marries Clym Yeobright (the Native) upon his return from Paris. The lives of this couple and their friends and families are depicted in detail in Hardy's penetrating portrayal of the community on the heath. The final section provides some hope for the future, tempering the otherwise bleak landscape of the novel.
    • 5/5
      I think this is the best of Hardy's novels. Dark, complicated, with characters who make difficult and not often happy decisions. Eustacia Vye is especially well drawn. Worth reading more than once.
    • 5/5
      Damn this man can write tragedy! In this novel Hardy createsa love triangle (quadrangle?) that is both beautiful and disastrous. Using his incrediblegift for lyrical prose he takes us into the wild land of Egdon Health.Diggory Venn, a local reddleman, is in love with ThomasinYeobright. She in turn is in love with Wildeve, a restless self-centered man.He is torn between his feelings for her and his love for Eustacia Vye. Add Thomasin’scousin Clym Yeobright, the man who catches Eustacia’s eye, to the mix and you’vegot quite the quandary. Each of the characters is wonderfully developed. We feelEustacia’s restlessness and Thomasin’s earnest devotion. We long for Venn tofind love and Clym to find happiness. We watch their lives unfold with a mix ofapprehension and excitement, wondering all the while if the characters arefalling in love purely for the escape they offer each other or if theirfeelings are true. Do they want something because someone else wants it orbecause it’s truly their heart’s desire?“The sentiment which lurks more or less in all animatenature – that of not desiring the undesired of other – was lively as a passionin the supsersublte epicurean heart of Eustacia.”I loved how the health is one of the main characters in thebook and all of the characters are shaped by their reaction to it. Eustaciadesperately wants to leave it and will do anything to get away. Clym returnsfrom Parisaching for the wild health he loved so much in his childhood. Thomasin feelsthat she is a country girl and is comfortable living in the health. Only Hardycould make the background setting of a drama such a definitive character in theaction. He even describes the effect the health has on the women who live there…“An environment which would have made a contented woman apoet, a suffering woman a devotee, a pious woman a psalmist, even a giddy womanthoughtful, made a rebellious woman saturnine.”SPOILERS All of the characters desperately want what they can’t have.Another person, money, success, peace, travel, etc. Even Clym’s mother Mrs.Yeobright longs for different partners for her son and niece. She wants theirhappiness, but when they’ve chosen their lot in life she has such a hard timeaccepting it that she perpetuates unhappiness in their lives. Each character isdestroyed by their own longing except for Venn. Early in the book he comes toterms with the fact that he’ll never have the woman he truly wants. He acceptsthat and decides that he’ll do everything he can to make her happy from adistance. Then, in the end he’s the only one who ends up getting what he wanted.It’s a beautiful picture of selfless love. SPOILERS OVERBOTTOM LINE: This book is so beautiful and poignant I justcan’t get over it. It’s definitely a new favorite of mine. I’d recommend it ifyou enjoy Victorian literature, tragic love stories or just gorgeous prose. “Love was to her theone cordial which could drive away the eating loneliness of her days.” “Humanity appears upon the scene, hand-in-hand withtrouble.” “What a strange sort of love to be entirely free from thatquality of selfishness which is frequently the chief constituent of the passionand sometimes its only one.”  
    • 4/5
      Although this book is set in rural England in the 1800s, the story covers a universal theme of star crossed lovers who lives are doomed due to a few pivotal decisions. The heroine (or villain, depending on your outlook) of the story is Eustacia Vye, a dark haired beauty who longs to escape the rural life on the heath for adventure and culture in Paris or other large city. She is romantically involved with Damon Wildeve, the local inn keeper, but chooses to marry Clym Yeobright, a successful businessman in Paris who has returned to the heath to visit his mother. Although, their marriage starts off strong, Clym wants to leave the big city and settle down in rural Egdon Heath and Eustacia still longs for more excitement. To add to this love triangle, after being rejected by Eustacia, Damon marries Clym's cousin Thomasin, although he still loves and longs for Eustacia. And to add even more to the mix, Diggory Venn has declared his love for Thomasin.

      But Return of the Native is not a convoluted soap opera love story. At several key moments in this book, the characters come to a decision point - sometimes as simple as whether or not to open a door - and the choice they make sets the story - and the tragedy - on its way. Added to this is the beautiful description of Egdon Heath and the lives of the people who work the land. These characters not only add a touch of humor to a pretty bleak story, but also provide wisdom and an interesting perspective on life.

      Beautiful, soothing narration by my favorite - Simon Vance.
    • 5/5
      I hope I am not exaggerating when I say that this is a wonderful story. The most interesting character is the reddleman whose name is Diggory Venn. He is a mysterious and unmistakeable figure who appears at every turning point in the book. His trade is selling the dark red substance that is applied to sheep to distinguish them and he tours with his caravan the tangled web that is Egdon Heath. He becomes a mythical and symbolic figure through his red hue, the red substance covering his clothes and body. Sometimes he seems to be the devil, at others he is omniscient and a power for good. His repeated appearance signals action. Some other characters are unforgettable - the passionate Eustacia Vye with her raven hair, her impulsiveness and her knack of making the wrong decisions in love and poor Clym Yeobright, entrepreneur turned homely furze cutter, the native returned, who somehow comes to terms with the misery and despair that inflict him. There are unexpected incidents: gambling for the 50 guineas, the adder bite, the lost glove, the mummers dance, witchcraft and the drowning in the weir. To reread is to see new things and to understand so much more.
    • 5/5
      Egdon Heath is a sparsely settled wilderness in the southwest of England. It’s dominated by the wind, the sky and the feral vegetation of fern and furze. It is, as the author introduces it in the first chapter, “a face on which time has made but little impression.” To its native inhabitants it’s a quiet county refuge from the bustle and commotion of the mid-nineteenth century, but to young Eustacia Vye it’s a wilderness of exile from civilized life from which she has little hope of escape. Damon Wildeve, her former boyfriend and owner of the local inn is about to marry Tamsin Yeobright, a pleasing and innocent girl from a good family, and Eustacia is suffering bitter pangs of envy and jealousy. Damon wasn’t all that much of a catch, but emotional entanglement with him was her only source of relief from the tedium of county life. And then she hears that Tamsin’s cousin is coming for a visit. He’s a clever and promising young man, a diamond trader who lives in Paris – Paris the heart of civilization, culture and beauty. But how will she manage a visit to the home of her rival? Eustacia begins to scheme. The characters carry their passions, pride and false assumptions about the motives of their fellows with them as they criss-cross the heath, but ultimately human plans are overwhelmed by the geographies of heath, history, and social convention. But in this reading is of the final, 1912, edition of the novel, only one is able to fulfill his desire. Architect turned novelist Hardy constructs from a realistic masterpiece of beautiful and brooding tragedy. And for the listener, the combination of Hardy’s prose and Rickman’s voice is a rich and sensual delight.
    • 4/5
      A sad but interesting story. The story includes several tragic characters of which several die. Thomas Hardy twines an interesting set of relationships and personalities in the story. He is an excellent author and I highly recommend his writings.
    • 4/5
      "Oh, how hard it is of Heaven to devise such tortures for me!",, 29 November 2015This review is from: Thomas Hardy: The Return of the Native (Paperback)Set on the great, bleak expanse of Egdon Heath, this is a gothic tale of love, despair and misunderstandings.Centred on the imperious Eustacia Vye, resentful at having to live in this god-forsaken place, we see her at first carrying on a clandestine romance with the affianced Damon Wildeve. And then into the picture comes the returned native, Clym Yeobright, cousin of Damon's fiancee. He has been carving out a successful career in Paris, and would seem an ideal match for the beautiful Eustacia who yearns to travel...Forming something of a 'Greek chorus' are the local people, with their amusing conversations, folk customs and superstitions. And the omnipresent 'reddleman', Diggory Venn; a seller of sheep dye, and former (unsuccessful) suitor to Thomasin Yeobright, he seems to be always prowling about the heath looking out for his loved one.At times a little over the top in emotion, this comes to an extremely good and touching ending.
    • 4/5
      This novel is a poem to the ancient beauty of the heath. Hardy's descriptions of the way the light falls across it at different hours, the colours that emerge from it, and its ancient invariability and unwillingness to be tamed are beautiful. The characters who live, work, idle and scheme on the heath are among the best, in my opinion, that Hardy created. Eustacia Vye is a wonderful creation, spirited, intelligent, manipulative and yearning for something to lift her from the doldrums in which she perceives herself to be languishing. Clym Yeobright is an idealistic, naïve young man who turns from his life of wealth to seek a sense of usefulness back among his native people. Damon Wildeve is a scurrilous rake in the mould of Pride & Prejudice's Wickham. There is an element of caricature about them, but Hardy is too skilled a writer to bring forth pure exaggerations of human characteristics. Alongside the main personality traits writ large, Hardy includes subtle contradictions, light and shade, that make them seem modern at the same time as being romantic constructs. Hardy is good at acknowledging the restrictions of female existence in his era while at the same time recognising that women are more than society will permit them to be. It is the women in his books that compel. Given that there isn't a single Thomas Hardy novel that is 100% cheerful, it would be too much to expect things to work out well for these three. But the tragedy that befalls them is tempered by a satisfactory joy for the two other, quieter, central characters, Thomasin Yeobright and Diggory Venn.
    • 5/5
      2007, BBC Audiobooks, Read by Alan RickmanThe Return of the Native, set exclusively on Egdon Heath, opens with reddleman Diggory Venn transporting home a naïve, disgraced Thomasin Yeobright, who was to have married innkeeper Damon Wildeve, earlier in the day. Wildeve, we soon learn, is preoccupied with the novel’s heroine, Eustasia Vye, undoubtedly one of literature’s great characters. Eustasia is intelligent, devious, passionate, and a manipulative object of desire – I did not find her likeable, but she was completely enthralling. Believing herself superior, she detests life on the Heath, and in this vein, she sets out in self-serving pursuit of Clym Yeobright, the “native,” who has just returned to Egdon from Paris, where he has been living a prosperous life as a diamond merchant. Twists of fate thwart even the best laid plans, of course, and the characters are inexorably entwined in complex relationships which Eustacia’s ambition has set in motion.Hardy’s language is beautifully mellifluous; the novel’s narrative is richly layered, read in many voices. Themes include the celebration of the pagan, the primitive, and the pastoral. Hardy glorifies the simplicity of life for the working classes and celebrates the pastoral for its superiority. Egdon Heath is a character in its own right; Clym experiences perfect harmony with nature when he goes to work cutting furze:“Bees hummed around his ears with an intimate air, and tugged at the heath and furze-flowers at his side in such numbers as to weigh them down to the sod. The strange amber-coloured butterflies which Egdon produced, and which were never seen elsewhere, quivered in the breath of his lips, alighted upon his bowed back, and sported with the glittering point of his hook as he flourished it up and down. Tribes of emerald-green grasshoppers leaped over his feet, falling awkwardly on their backs, heads, or hips, like unskillful acrobats, as chance might rule; or engaged themselves in noisy flirtations under the fern-fronds with silent ones of homely hue. Huge flies, ignorant of larders and wire-netting, and quite in a savage state, buzzed about him without knowing that he was a man. In and out of the fern-dells snakes glided in their most brilliant blue and yellow guise, it being the season immediately following the shedding of their old skins, when their colours are brightest. Litters of young rabbits came out from their forms to sun themselves upon hillocks, the hot beams blazing through the delicate tissue of each thin-fleshed ear, and firing it to a blood-red transparency in which the veins could be seen.” (Bk 4, Ch 2)The Return of the Native is timeless, the mark of a true classic for me. I cannot say enough about Alan Rickman’s accomplishment as narrator. Sublime! Highly recommended.
    • 2/5
      “A blaze of love and extinction, was better than a lantern glimmer of the same which should last long years.”The novel opens with a reddleman (a seller of red dye used by sheep farmers) riding across Egdon Heath with Thomasin Yeobright in the back of his wagon. Thomasin's marriage to Damon Wildeve was delayed due to an error in the marriage certificate. Wildeve has arranged the error himself because he is infatuated with Eustacia Vye, a beautiful but independently minded young woman, and is uncertain which woman he should marry. Wildeve has fallen down the social scale and sees stability with Thomasin but passion with Eustacia.When Clym Yeobright, Thomasin's cousin and the son of her guardian, returns home from living in Paris he is thrown into this tangled web. Eustacia hates living on Egdon Heath and sees in Clym a means of an escape. Eustacia convinces herself to fall in love Clym even before meeting, breaking off her romance with Wildeve. He in return marries Thomasin. Despite strong objections of his mother Clym marries Eustacia however, this only acts to rekindle Wildeve's desire, despite his marriage.On a stormy rain-swept night, the action comes to a fatal climax.The 'Native' of the title is obviously Clym and no doubt Hardy intended him to be the central character of this novel but in actuality that distinction must fall to Eustacia. Eustacia is not a native of Egdon Heath, she is a native of the fashionable seaside resort of Budmouth who moves into her grandfather's house after the death of her father. She keeps herself apart from the other heath dwellers and is contemptuous for them. They, in turn, look upon her with suspicion. She takes perverse pleasure in being unconventional and is obviously not an easy person to be around. Fate and Destiny are major themes in this novel and Eustacia is central to both. She is an active demonstration of Destiny believing that she can escape Egdon by her will alone. Yet, she displays a readiness to shift the blame for everything that happens to her onto Fate. Eustacia is seen as intense and passionate whereas Wildeve, despite being quick to have his passions aroused is much more shallow. Bonfires are an important feature. Eustacia to the modern reader will seem sexually oppressed yet it is also obvious that a relationship with the slow and steady Clym will never satisfy her yet in contrast a relationship with Wildeve would initially burn fiercely but soon burn itself out.Overall I found this a bit of a slow burner which took a while to really grab me hence the lowish score.
    • 3/5
      In this overdrawn and repetitive novel, Hardy offers up deceitful, tiresome Eustacia Vye in a comedy of errors fraughtwith Thomasin generally being a drag. Reading about artificially tensed gambling is always trying.Mrs. Yeobright, mother of dawdling Clym and aunt to Thomasin, is the bright light, once a reader tires of the inexplicabledevotion of riddleman Venn to Thomasin.As always, Thomas Hardy's nature descriptions soar.
    • 4/5
      The Return of the Native is one of those books you're forced to read in high school. And as such, you're prone to hate it, because high school English teachers make you dissect the creature of literature before you actually get a chance to observe it in action, and you are forced to make observations on the structure of the cold, dead literature, instead of actually observing the living literature in its natural environment.If this is you, please give it a second chance.The story itself is all in the title: someone comes (back) to town. This town, Egdon Heath (one of the few towns in non-genre literature to be widely considered a character in its own right), and its inhabitants receive Clement "Clym" Yeobright back from Paris.It was Thomas Wolfe to whom we attribute the quote "You can never go home again." This is not to mean "We'll lock up behind you, and post sentries," but rather, as time flows, nothing is truly immutable. When you do come back home, it won't be the same. Some furniture will be moved, everybody will be older, and things will be different.But things that are different aren't always bad. You could meet that nice raven-haired lady everyone thinks is a witch, and end up marrying her. You, thinking about settling down, her, thinking about escaping the malevolent town in which she lives.Such is life, especially life in Edgon Heath.This book is recommended for those who have read and enjoyed other works by Hardy, or who enjoy other literary achievements of the time. Also recommended for rereading anybody who was forced to read it in high school.
    • 4/5
      Beautifully descriptive. A book to just curl up an lose yourself in.
    • 5/5
      Jan 16, 1965: As Winston Churchill lies dying, I have finsihed re-reading Hardy's Return of the Native. I last finished reading it Nov 24, 1946, and my sole comment in my diary re the book at that time: "I didn't like it." This is the most astonishing thing, since this time I was tremendously impressed. That I could pass off so negatively such an impassioned impressivel-constructed novel is quite a revelation. I liked Eustacia Vye (Iam always amused by Hardy's women's names: Bathsheba, Lucretia. Eustacia, Thomasin) and regretted her death, altho of course Damon Wildeve was a most non-sympathy-arousing figure, and his death bothered me not at all. And I did like Diggory Venn and was happy to see him marry Thomasin, rather than Clym Yeobright doing so, toward whom i felt nothing, It seemed to me he was wrong to pay so little attention to Eustacia's wishes--he was pig-headed. I reconize the description of Egdon Heath as masterpiecey, altho I was not so impressed as some. How I would like to go to Wessex and especially Egdon Heath, to retrace all these things. But then, I suppose, when and if I get there, I'll have forgotten all of the stories and the scenes and sites will mean much less. However one would think enterprising Wessex-ers would have prepared a guidebook which would contain appropriate selections from Hardy.
    • 4/5
      Hardy is synonymous with 19th century English country landscapes, and never more so than in Return of the Native. Set on the mythical Egdon Heath, this novel is the next best thing to a time machine, so evocative are his descriptions of these bygone Wessex rural scenes. One doesn't just read a Hardy novel - it's a completely immersive virtual reality experience, and for this reason he remains up there as one of my favourite novelists of all time.Although perhaps not so well known as Hardy's greats such as The Mayor of Casterbridge, this is still a very fine novel. In typical Hardy fashion there is heartbreak and tragedy in spades, yet it is the rural landscape that almost becomes the main protagonist. The descriptions are incredibly vivid, yet their conveyance is so deftly subtle that it adds an additional dimension and depth to the story rather than getting in the way of it. Whilst many novels of that era excel at transplanting you as a fly on the wall to the centre of English social history, I can't think of a better way to experience English natural history than through the experience of a Hardy novel. By the end of Return of the Native the heath was as familiar to me as the countryside on my own doorstep. No, on second thoughts, it was significantly more familiar. Our green space has changed in so many ways since that time, but whilst some of the flora and fauna has changed forever (for instance, adders are much rarer in number now in the English countryside than they would have been back then), it is our interaction with it which has changed most acutely. In Hardy's time the average rural dweller had little option but to traverse their local countryside by foot, often travelling many miles in a day to run an errand or visit a neighbour. Imagine, therefore, how much more familiar and in touch with the earth you become when you are literally walking through it's rural midst every day. And that is precisely the experience that Hardy brings with this novel. You feel 19th century England.This was Hardy book number six for me, and thinking I'd already peaked with his best work I was absolutely delighted to be proved wrong with this novel.4 stars - a wonderful sojourn in rural Victorian England.
    • 5/5
      This is my favorite Hardy novel and I love all of Hardy's novels passionately. He's one of my favorite writers, forever. This man understood and dared to write about the lives of women in a time when women didn't count--and he did so without sentimentalizing them. I adore Eustacia, and if she had but lived a hundred years later, all her problems would not be problems.
    • 3/5
      This was my second book by Hardy. Like the first one I read, this is a book about moral dilemmas & the power of misperceptions. Eustacia & Thomasin are tragic heroines who suffer the consequences of rumor & reputation is small town 1800's England. Clym, the one is is the returning native of the title, is a man who fortune treated well in the beginning, but struck down at the end. Wildeve is the romantic hero who is the cause of much of the 2 ladies' problems....It's sad most of the way, with a few clever places throughout, like Eustacia's attempt at disguising herself as a man in the mummer's play so that she could meet Clym to begin with. That evening's work she didn't quite think all the way through, & finds herself in a rather touchy situation :)All in all, I was ok with how the book ended, although the afterword gives us an idea of how the original ending went vice the one that the book gives....
    • 4/5
      Classic Hardy. This book will is definitely a downer, but what did you expect. The portrayal of rural social life and its limitations and the struggles of individuals to find a deep and fulfilling life in an isolated place are beautifully portrayed. The ending is not as tragic as some of Hardy's work, but don't expect to be soothed or uplifted either.
    • 5/5
      “Hurt so good
      Come on baby, make it hurt so good”
      - John Mellencamp

      WUT? Well, reading Thomas Hardy novels always poses this kind of challenge. They hurt, and yet I keep coming back to him because they are indeed good and this kind of hurt is like a good exercise for your EQ. In term of language, I don’t think Hardy’s writing is particularly difficult to access. The more challenging aspects of his books are the initial meticulous scene setting and characters introduction chapters and, of course, the miserable situations that his characters get into.

      “Tragedy
      When the feeling's gone and you can't go on It's tragedy”

      Sorry, I just had a sudden attack of Beegeesitis. Anyway, I am always glad(ish) to be back in Hardyverse, better known as Wessex, a fictional region somewhere in the south of England. A lot of pastoral mayhem seems to take place here so it is probably not an ideal vacation destination (non-existence notwithstanding). In The Return of the Native Hardy again depicts what bad marriages can do. Clym Yeobright, the returning native of the novel’s title, marries the almost preternaturally beautiful Eustacia Vye who is very discontent with her rural surroundings. She yearns for the bright lights, big cities, iStores etc., preferably in Paris. However, she is not a femme fatale, she does her best to be a good, loving wife. Unfortunately her best is of a disastrously low standard and tragedy ensues.

      Much of the tragedy stems from people being unable to speak their minds, to be honest, sincere and – most of all – forgiving. Where this novel really resonates with me is the relationship between Clym and his mother. They have a very close, loving relationship until Eustacia (inadvertently) comes between them. The mother, Mrs. Yeobright, has some very strong prejudices about people of ill repute and is very quick to pass judgment on them, her unyielding mentality eventually leads to her downfall. Eustacia’s inability to settle down, to compromise with her circumstances also leads to a lot of grief and much gnashing of teeth.

      As usual Hardy’s characters are very believable and vivid, and it is interesting that there is no actual villain in this book. Some characters become antagonists of sort merely through very unwise decision making and impropriety. The hero of the book is also not Clym the protagonist, but a sincere, helpful and humble man called Diggory Venn who is a “reddleman” by profession. Basically, he goes around marking flocks of sheep with a red colour (a mineral called "reddle"). Not much call for such services these days I imagine, but it makes him a fair amount of money and also causes his entire body to be red coloured. It plays hell with his attempts at courting a certain young lady, but he eventually finds a way. According to Wikipedia Hardy had a tack on a happy ending for commercial purposes so not all the characters are down in the dumps by the end of the book. Left to his own devices he would rather depress the hell out of his readers.

      Over all this is a typically depressing book by Thomas Hardy. Yet I really like it and recommend it for people who are not overly sensitive or those who are too insensitive and need to emote a little.

      “Life's a piece of shit, when you look at it
      Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true
      You'll see its all a show, keep 'em laughin as you go
      Just remember that the last laugh is on you”
      - Monty Python

      Well, after all that I don’t have any room left to quote an eloquent passage from this book. There are always plenty of those in a Hardy novel (so that’s hardly novel!).
    • 3/5
      I like the overall story of “The Return of the Native” but would’ve liked it more if not for the slow pace that occasionally leads to utter tedium. Hardy was one of those authors capable of genius, yet at the same time he’d digress and waffle to the point of irritation.
    • 3/5
      It took 25 plus years, but after being totally put of Hardy at school, I finally tried again. And it was nothing like as bad as I thought it was going to be. This is the story of two couples who have married and both, for various reasons, are unsuited. The characters are supported by a mass of well drawn characters, pone of which is the landscape itself. The whole of the first chapter is devoted to describing Egdon Heath and it takes on a presence that is more than mere backdrop. There are contrasting opinions on it as well, with Eustacia wanting to get away and Clem feeling he has returned home. It certainly isn't a feel good book, it has an air of melancholy about it, there's a lot of repenting at leisure and the whole tone is nostalgic for a time and tradition that probably never existed. Even the ending seems not to focus on the hope of a marriage (this one seems much more sound) but on the disappointment and lack of emotion of Clem. It was certainly a lot better than my last experience with him, but he's not exactly a cheery bunny. His landscape is excellent, I'm just not sure I bought into his characters entirely, the marriages struck me as a little too far fetched. It may well be less than 25 years before I pick up another.
    • 3/5
      [Return of the Native] by Thomas Hardy was the story of Clym, a native to the heath of Edgeron who became educated in Paris but has returned to the heath, for reasons we never do find out. This is my 4th Hardy read and imho is not nearly as well written or as interesting as the others (i.e. [Far from the Madding Crowd], [Tess of D'Urbervilles], [The Mayor of Castorbridge]). Much time is spent on the description of nature and the seasons on the Heath---almost puts me in mind of Dickens and to sleep! The plot reads like a soap opera or a play from Shakespeare: love lost by folly. I vaguely see some of the themes that Hardy is attempting to portray: family, tradition/custom, pride, and fate vs. free will. I just don't feel it's done as well as in the aforementioned novels. If you haven't read Hardy, and I suggest you do, don't start with this one!
    • 3/5
      [Return of the Native] by Thomas Hardy was the story of Clym, a native to the heath of Edgeron who became educated in Paris but has returned to the heath, for reasons we never do find out. This is my 4th Hardy read and imho is not nearly as well written or as interesting as the others (i.e. [Far from the Madding Crowd], [Tess of D'Urbervilles], [The Mayor of Castorbridge]). Much time is spent on the description of nature and the seasons on the Heath---almost puts me in mind of Dickens and to sleep! The plot reads like a soap opera or a play from Shakespeare: love lost by folly. I vaguely see some of the themes that Hardy is attempting to portray: family, tradition/custom, pride, and fate vs. free will. I just don't feel it's done as well as in the aforementioned novels. If you haven't read Hardy, and I suggest you do, don't start with this one!