The Return of the Native

"This is a great one. It’s set on Egdon Heath, which almost has a character of its own in the novel. And it concerns Eustacia Vye, a young woman who has come to live on the heath with her family. The heath becomes very suffocating for Eustacia. She meets Clym Yeobright, an educated man who has returned from Paris. This is the ‘return of the native.’ But, things are not good. Mrs Yeobright, Clym Yeobright’s mother, doesn’t agree with their relationship. And of course: tragedy ensues. Eustacia is very much an example of the ‘New Woman,’ that Hardy’s society could not accept, both socially and psychologically. Thus, Eustacia has to drown. That drowned woman motif represents both punishment and cleansing; she represents this new type of female sexuality and independent identity. And it also shows how somewhere like Egdon Heath can suffocate someone like Eustacia. She dreams of going to Paris, to the Louvre, of being out in the world. And of course, sadly, she has to perish. The Return of the Native is a great read, if you want to learn more about the landscape. It’s very artistic in its descriptions. I would totally agree. Hardy was right of his time. And he was looking, very much, at class, at the rich versus the poor. If you take Under the Greenwood Tree , for instance, one of his first novels, which is set in ‘Mellstock’—Stinsford in Dorset—it’s all about the gallery musicians, the choir in the local church, things like that. He looks at music, customs, rituals, routines they had in relation to the church. I think what I’m trying to say is that, with Hardy, the context is so important. He was really, really worried about the coming of mechanisation in agriculture. Because Dorset was completely agricultural. His work is all to do with the land, working the land, and not with factories or anything like that. I think he was a great advocate for the poor. I don’t think his rustic characters were intended to in any way mock the poor. I think he was giving a voice to the way that rural Dorset was, what life was like there, and the position of women within a very male-dominated, patriarchal culture. His women—fictional women—are strong, there’s no doubt about it. Tess is educated to sixth form level. Bathsheba hates to be thought of as men’s property. Eustacia remains defiant against a society that cannot accept her sexuality."