The Return of the Native (Twayne's Masterworks Studies) (Thomas Hardy Studies) (Immortal Classic)

by Thomas Hardy

Tony Slade (Notes), Penny Boumelha (Introduction), and Patricia Ingham (Preface)

Thomas Hardy's tragic vision of a love struggling to overcome prejudice and rejection, The Return of the Native is edited in Penguin Classics with an introduction by Penny Bouhmelha.

Against the lowering background of Egdon Heath, fiery Eustacia Vye passes her days, wishing only for passionate love. She believes that her escape from Egdon lies in marriage to Clym Yeobright, home from Paris and discontented with his work there. But Clym wishes to return to the Egdon community; a desire which sets him in opposition to his wife and brings them both to despair.

Based on the first edition of the text, this edition includes detailed notes of later revisions made by Hardy, glossary, bibliography and useful chronology of author's life. In her introduction Penny Bouhmelha identifies the literary and classical allusions in Hardy's text, in particular the parallels with Flaubert's Madame Bovary and with the Oedipus story. In so doing she demonstrates Hardy's claim for tragic status for ordinary human lives and the ways that the characters in the novel - especially the ill-fated lovers and Damon Wildeve - spoil their chances to master their own destinies.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), born Higher Brockhampton, near Dorchester, originally trained as an architect before earning his living as a writer. Though he saw himself primarily as a poet, Hardy was the author of some of the late eighteenth century's major novels: The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), and Jude the Obscure (1895). Amidst the controversy caused by Jude the Obscure, he turned to the poetry he had been writing all his life. In the next thirty years he published over nine hundred poems and his epic drama in verse, The Dynasts.

If you enjoyed The Return of the Native, you might like Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, also available in Penguin Classics.

'The greatest tragic writer among the English novelists'
Virginia Woolf

• ISBN10: 0140435182
• ISBN13: 9780140435184
• Publish Date: 24 June 1999 (first published 2 December 1878)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Imprint: Penguin Classics
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 496
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780140435184

Reviews

[brokentune]

"What depressed you?"
"Life."

This sums up every Thomas Hardy novel I have ever read.

However, and this may shock and surprise you, ... I really liked this one. In contrast to [b:Tess of the D'Urbervilles|32261|Tess of the D'Urbervilles|Thomas Hardy|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1434302708s/32261.jpg|3331021] or [b:Far from the Madding Crowd|31463|Far from the Madding Crowd |Thomas Hardy|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388279695s/31463.jpg|914540], I did not get exasperated with the characters, did not want to slap them or root for the sheep to turn into man-eating overlords - even though I still think that this would have made a better plot than what Far from the Madding Crowd had to offer.

The Return of the Native was quite different - it also had a woman at the centre of the story but the people around her were much more interesting characters, more likable, and some with a great sense of humor, or was it Hardy showing us his own sense of fun?

Anyway, I loved Eustacia Vye.

"Eustacia Vye was the raw material of a divinity. On Olympus she would have done well with a little preparation. She had the passions and instincts which make a model goddess, that is, those which make not quite a model woman."

She had gumption and ambition, even though both made her ostracize herself from the community around her. And being different or an outcast from the community is never a good thing in a Hardy novel.

"An environment which would have made a contented woman a poet, a suffering woman a devotee, a pious woman a psalmist, even a giddy woman thoughtful, made a rebellious woman saturnine."

The themes that Hardy addresses in this book are similar to the ones in Tess and Madding Crowd. I.e. the isolation of individuals who are or want to be different from the crowd (or "flock" in the case of Madding Crowd), the consequences of breaking with social norms, the superstitions that prevent social progress, etc. are all present in The Return of the Native but it is in this book that I found Hardy did not come across as delivering his criticism as a lecture. His use of humor and his patience in drawing up well-rounded, complex characters really helped make me want to invest time in the book.

Of course, having the book narrated by Alan Rickman helped, too, but given my previous experience with Hardy, I was surprised that I did not only enjoy the book but that I actually wanted to find out what happened to the characters.

Who knows, I might now even add Jude the Obscure to the TBR.