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Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 13, 2025

Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native moves at a slow pace that drives some readers to distraction. His narrative pace mirrors that of country life, very much a topic in his novel, featured in his setting of Egdon Heath. Natives of Egdon for the most part appreciate its laconic lifestyle; some, however, such as Eustacia Vye, do not. Eustacia revolts against a life that lacks romance and adventure, risking all to escape that existence, with tragic results. Hardy uses landscape as symbol, causing later critics to proclaim Egdon Heath as the novel’s most important character. He adopted his native region as the setting for many novels, using its historic label of Wessex, adding to an illusion of reality in his fiction.

As the novel opens, readers enjoy a description of the heath with no humans present. Imagery suggests an enormous living entity, unaffected by time’s passing. The novel’s plot spans exactly one year and one day, adjusted to the growing cycle of the heath with its suggestions of life and death. The land offers no placid surface beneath which dangers lie. Nothing is hidden, except to those individuals who refuse to acknowledge life’s harsh potential. In strong foreshadowing, the narrator warns early on that the Heath is not “friendly to women.”

Hardy introduces his traditional large cast of characters with multiple love interests as his subject. The appropriately named innkeeper, Damon Wildeve, has returned to the heath to operate The Quiet Woman following a failed attempt to leave the heath that he hates. Not an evil man, he will nevertheless cause multiple problems. He is engaged to Thomasin Yeobright, whose surname identifies her with the work ethic employed by those yoked to the earth for their sustenance. A gentle creature, she eventually marries Wildeve, although he has enjoyed a sexual affair with Eustacia Vye.

Eustacia detests her surroundings and, in the scene in which she is introduced, listens to the November wind across the heath, described in further foreshadowing as resembling “the ruins of human song.” Living with her grandfather, Eustacia desires nothing more than a wild romance but is deceived by Wildeve, who declares that his reason for marrying Thomasin is to drive Eustacia to distraction.

Thomasin’s cousin, Clym Yeobright, another native who has lived abroad as a jeweler in Paris, returns to his roots where he hopes to teach, but immediately falls in love with Eustacia, although others warn him of potential danger. Eustacia assumes that as Clym’s wife, she will enjoy the delights of Paris, and the two marry. At that point Hardy allows fate to intervene, striking Clym blind, forcing him to change his plans. He must cut furze in order to support his family, and Eustacia is driven nearly insane with her lot in life. Foreshadowing of a grim climax includes the melting of a wax doll representing Eustacia, symbolic of the universal practice of assigning a black magic curse.

Eustacia renews a relationship with Wildeve and accidentally helps cause the death of Mrs. Yeobright, mother of Clym and Thomasin. When Mrs. Yeobright arrives at their cottage in an effort to end the conflict in the family, Eustacia mistakenly believes that Clym hears her knock and will admit his mother. When no one opens the door, Mrs. Yeobright sits down to wait outside next to a poisonous snake, that traditional symbol of temptation and discord, which ends her life. The coincidental presence of a boy to witness the scene leads Clym to believe that Eustacia ignored her mother-in-law.

Eustacia quarrels with Clym, leaves home, and drowns in Shadwater Weir. Ironically, Hardy employs a traditional symbol of rebirth, water, as one of death, further emphasized when Wildeve also drowns in an attempt to rescue Eustacia. Eustacia represents the folly of human struggle against fate, demonstrating that such resistance leads to disaster not only for the individual who challenges destiny, but for others as well. The use of water as the instrument of death serves to mock the traditional religious ceremony of baptism, while also emphasizing the power of nature and its elements.

Critics have suggested plot weakness in Eustacia’s death following so closely the melting of her wax model. However, Hardy’s belief in the power of coincidence made this an acceptable event. Clym will eventually become a preacher, adopting religion simply as an escape from grief, allowing Hardy to emphasize the futility of spirituality to improve the human lot, but also the inner strength inherent to a stoic acceptance of fate.

The widowed Thomasin abandons all hope for love but still believes in the ritual of marriage, as she takes the strange but loyal Diggory Venn as her second husband. Her compliant acceptance of her fate is rewarded with a modicum of happiness.

The novel remains popular, is available in electronic and print versions, and was made into at least one film version, a vehicle for a young Catherine Zeta-Jones and that also starred Joan Plowright. It continues as a subject for critical study, with Hardy’s characterization of women always interesting to feminist critics, his heavy-handed use of symbolism to practitioners of formalism, its use as a vehicle for Hardy’s personal philosophy to new historicist critics, and its implied sexuality to psychoanalytic critics.

Bibliography
Mallet, Phillip V., and Ronald P. Draper, eds. A Spacious Vision: Essays on Hardy. Newmill: Patton, 1994.
Malton, Sara A. “‘The Woman Shall Bear her Iniquity’: Death as Social Discipline in Hardy’s The Return of the Native.” Studies in the Novel 32, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 147. Expanded Academic ASAP. Infotrac. Triton Col Library. Available online. URL: http://web4.infotrac.galegroup.com. Downloaded March 14, 2024.