The Return of the Native, by Thomas Hardy
The Return of the Native, by Thomas Hardy
It was a spot which returned upon the memory of those who loved it with an aspect of peculiar and kindly congruity. Smiling champaigns of flowers and fruit hardly do this, for they are permanently harmonious only with an existence of better reputation as to its issues than the present. Twilight combined with the scenery of Egdon Heath to evolve a thing majestic without severity, impressive without showiness, emphatic in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity. The qualifications which frequently invest the facade of a prison with far more dignity than is found in the facade of a palace double its size lent to this heath a sublimity in which spots renowned for beauty of the accepted kind are utterly wanting. Fair prospects wed happily with fair times; but alas, if times be not fair! Men have oftener suffered from, the mockery of a place too smiling for their reason than from the oppression of surroundings oversadly tinged. Haggard Egdon appealed to a subtler and scarcer instinct, to a more recently learnt emotion, than that whichresponds to the sort of beauty called charming and fair.
This is a story with three morals:
1. Marriages made to spite one’s ex tend not to do well. When the bride sings “I Will Survive” at her wedding party, it does not bode well.
2. When contemplating marriage, talk to one another about your long term plans. You may avoid beaucoup tears and disappointment.
3. This above all: If you’re too frail to walk long distances, or you like to run headlong into the night bellowing for Heathcliff or Stella or whoever, do not make your home in a heath a million miles from nowhere!
Hardy wrote five major novels, and this is my least favorite. The best one, The Mayor of Casterbridge backs up the coincidences in a truck and dumps them; yet they are always at least individually plausible, and you get the sense that heroic, larger than life figures are being struck down by a cruel God who not only plays at dice, but cheats. The characters in The Return of the Native do more to bring about their own misery than any others in Hardy, and with the exception of Angel in Tess of the Baskervilles, they’re the characters I most wanted to throttle.
Here’s Eustacia Vye, who in our century would listen to a lot of Tori Amos music and ply boys with drinks until she could have her way with them, itching to get away from the gloomy, oppressive wasteland she lives in and see the big wonderful world out there. Here’s Clym Yeobright, recently returned from (gasp) Paris, disgusted with the corrupt awful world out there and longing to settle down in the country. Will they get married on impulse without talking first about their respective goals and dreams? Is a castrated boar disgruntled?
And here’s Clym’s sister, the shy, polite, pure, virginal Thomasin, courted by two suitors: the noble, stolid, faithful rustic Diggory and an impulsive, worldly, irresponsible bar owner named Damon. Who do you think she picks? Hint: Bad Things will happen!
There is also the Yeobright’s mother, a puritanical busybody who makes matters worse through her constant meddling and jumping to conclusions. But the main antagonist to them all is Egdon Heath itself, hanging over all of them like a pall, stifling any hint of a joyous cry from any of them, and in the end, taking lives for sport.
Yes, the story is bigger than life. Yes there are Fates written in stone that cannot and will not be denied. Yes, the simple, faithful, salt of the earth one (Diggory, in this case) turns out to be worth ten of any of the others. But Good God, the gloominess is hard to bear! Read The Mayor of Casterbridge. If that one intrigues you, go on to Far from the Madding Crowd (a bit less gloomy) and Jude the Obscure (much more so, but on an epic scale). If you’re still hungry for more Hardy, then and only then is Return of the Native the book for you.
It was a spot which returned upon the memory of those who loved it with an aspect of peculiar and kindly congruity. Smiling champaigns of flowers and fruit hardly do this, for they are permanently harmonious only with an existence of better reputation as to its issues than the present. Twilight combined with the scenery of Egdon Heath to evolve a thing majestic without severity, impressive without showiness, emphatic in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity. The qualifications which frequently invest the facade of a prison with far more dignity than is found in the facade of a palace double its size lent to this heath a sublimity in which spots renowned for beauty of the accepted kind are utterly wanting. Fair prospects wed happily with fair times; but alas, if times be not fair! Men have oftener suffered from, the mockery of a place too smiling for their reason than from the oppression of surroundings oversadly tinged. Haggard Egdon appealed to a subtler and scarcer instinct, to a more recently learnt emotion, than that whichresponds to the sort of beauty called charming and fair.
This is a story with three morals:
1. Marriages made to spite one’s ex tend not to do well. When the bride sings “I Will Survive” at her wedding party, it does not bode well.
2. When contemplating marriage, talk to one another about your long term plans. You may avoid beaucoup tears and disappointment.
3. This above all: If you’re too frail to walk long distances, or you like to run headlong into the night bellowing for Heathcliff or Stella or whoever, do not make your home in a heath a million miles from nowhere!
Hardy wrote five major novels, and this is my least favorite. The best one, The Mayor of Casterbridge backs up the coincidences in a truck and dumps them; yet they are always at least individually plausible, and you get the sense that heroic, larger than life figures are being struck down by a cruel God who not only plays at dice, but cheats. The characters in The Return of the Native do more to bring about their own misery than any others in Hardy, and with the exception of Angel in Tess of the Baskervilles, they’re the characters I most wanted to throttle.
Here’s Eustacia Vye, who in our century would listen to a lot of Tori Amos music and ply boys with drinks until she could have her way with them, itching to get away from the gloomy, oppressive wasteland she lives in and see the big wonderful world out there. Here’s Clym Yeobright, recently returned from (gasp) Paris, disgusted with the corrupt awful world out there and longing to settle down in the country. Will they get married on impulse without talking first about their respective goals and dreams? Is a castrated boar disgruntled?
And here’s Clym’s sister, the shy, polite, pure, virginal Thomasin, courted by two suitors: the noble, stolid, faithful rustic Diggory and an impulsive, worldly, irresponsible bar owner named Damon. Who do you think she picks? Hint: Bad Things will happen!
There is also the Yeobright’s mother, a puritanical busybody who makes matters worse through her constant meddling and jumping to conclusions. But the main antagonist to them all is Egdon Heath itself, hanging over all of them like a pall, stifling any hint of a joyous cry from any of them, and in the end, taking lives for sport.
Yes, the story is bigger than life. Yes there are Fates written in stone that cannot and will not be denied. Yes, the simple, faithful, salt of the earth one (Diggory, in this case) turns out to be worth ten of any of the others. But Good God, the gloominess is hard to bear! Read The Mayor of Casterbridge. If that one intrigues you, go on to Far from the Madding Crowd (a bit less gloomy) and Jude the Obscure (much more so, but on an epic scale). If you’re still hungry for more Hardy, then and only then is Return of the Native the book for you.