The Return of the Native

About the book

Clym Yeobright returns from Paris to Egdon Heath with hopes very different from those his experience abroad might suggest. Eustacia Vye, restless in the place he wants to embrace, sees possibilities in him that do not necessarily match his intentions. Their lives intersect with Thomasin, Damon Wildeve, Diggory Venn, and the expectations of Clym's mother. Hardy establishes the heath as a powerful continuing presence, shaping labour, journeys, gatherings, and the characters' sense of what surrounds them. Misunderstandings acquire weight because each person interprets an event through a different desired future. The novel's drama grows from the difficulty of making love resolve an incompatible relationship to place, while chance and incomplete knowledge make it harder to distinguish a deliberate rejection from a missed opportunity for understanding.

• Belonging and escape
• Misunderstanding
• Desire and place

Why read it

For a novel whose landscape gives physical form to the conflicting futures its characters imagine.

English text