The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

First published: 1878

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Tragedy

Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century

Locale: Egdon Heath, in southern England

Principal Characters

• Diggory Venn, a reddleman
• Damon Wildeve, the proprietor of the Quiet Woman Inn
• Thomasin Yeobright, Wildeve’s fiancé
• Mrs. Yeobright, Thomasin’s guardian
• Clym Yeobright, Mrs. Yeobright’s son
• Eustacia Vye, a young woman who wants to escape the heath

The Story

Egdon Heath is a gloomy wasteland in Southern England. Against this majestic but solemn, brooding background, a small group of people are to work out their tragic drama in the impersonal presence of nature.

Guy Fawkes Day bonfires are glowing in the twilight as Diggory Venn, the reddleman, drives his van across the heath. Tired and ill, Thomasin Yeobright, the young girl whom Diggory loves, lies in the rear of his van. She had rejected his marriage proposal in order to marry Damon Wildeve, proprietor of the Quiet Woman Inn. Now, Diggory is carrying the girl to her home at Blooms-End. She had gone to marry Wildeve in a nearby town, but the ceremony did not take place because of an irregularity in the license. Shocked and shamed, Thomasin has asked her old sweetheart, Diggory, to take her home.

Mrs. Yeobright, Thomasin’s aunt and guardian, hears the story from the reddleman. Concerned for the girl’s welfare, she decides that the wedding should take place as soon as possible. Mrs. Yeobright has good cause to worry, for Wildeve’s intentions are not wholly honorable. Later in the evening, after Wildeve has assured the Yeobrights, rather casually, that he intends to go through with his promise, his attention is turned to a bonfire blazing on Mistover Knap. There, old Captain Vye lives with his beautiful granddaughter Eustacia. At dusk, Eustacia has started a fire on the heath as a signal to her lover, Wildeve, to come to her. Although he intends to break with Eustacia, he decides to obey her summons.

Meanwhile, Eustacia is waiting for Wildeve in the company of young Johnny Nunsuch. When Wildeve throws a pebble in the pond to announce his arrival, Eustacia tells Johnny to go home. The meeting between Wildeve and Eustacia is unsatisfactory for both. He complains that she gives him no peace, and she, in turn, resents his desertion. Meanwhile, Johnny Nunsuch, frightened by strange lights he has seen on the heath, returns to Mistover Knap to ask Eustacia to let her servant accompany him home, but he keeps silent when he comes upon Eustacia and Wildeve. Retracing his steps, he stumbles into a sandpit where the reddleman’s van stands. Diggory learns from the boy of the meeting between Eustacia and Wildeve. Later, he overhears Eustacia declare her hatred of the heath to Wildeve, who asks her to run away with him to America. Her reply is vague, but the reddleman decides to see Eustacia without delay to beg her to let Thomasin have Wildeve.

Diggory’s visit to Eustacia is fruitless. He then approaches Mrs. Yeobright, declares again his love for her niece, and offers to marry Thomasin. Mrs. Yeobright refuses the reddleman’s offer because she feels as if the girl should marry Wildeve. She confronts the innkeeper with vague references to another suitor, with the result that Wildeve’s interest in Thomasin is awakened once more.

Shortly afterward, Mrs. Yeobright’s son, Clym, returns from Paris, and a party to welcome him gives Eustacia the chance to view this stranger about whom she has heard so much. Uninvited, she goes to the party disguised as one of the mummers. Clym is fascinated by this interesting and mysterious young woman disguised as a man. Eustacia dreams of marrying Clym and going with him to Paris. She even breaks off with Wildeve, who, stung by her rejection, promptly marries Thomasin to spite Eustacia.

Clym Yeobright decides not to go back to France. Instead, he plans to open a school, although Mrs. Yeobright strongly opposes her son’s decision. When Clym learns that Eustacia had been stabbed in church by a woman who thought that Eustacia was bewitching her children, his decision to educate the people of the heath is strengthened. Much against his mother’s wishes, Clym visits Eustacia’s home to ask her to teach in his school. Eustacia refuses because she hates the heath and the country peasants; as a result of his visit, however, Clym falls completely in love with the beautiful but heartless Eustacia.

Mrs. Yeobright blames Eustacia for Clym’s wish to stay on the heath. When bitter feelings grow between mother and son, he decides to leave home. His marriage to Eustacia makes the break complete. Later, Mrs. Yeobright relents somewhat and gives a neighbor, Christian Cantle, a sum of money to be delivered in equal portions to Clym and Thomasin. Christian foolishly loses the money to Wildeve in a game of dice. Fortunately, Diggory wins the money from Wildeve and, thinking that all of it belongs to Thomasin, he gives it to her. Mrs. Yeobright knows that Wildeve has duped Christian, but she does not know that the reddleman then won the money from the innkeeper, and she mistakenly supposes that Wildeve has given the money to Eustacia. She meets with Eustacia and asks the girl if she has received any money from Wildeve. Eustacia is enraged by the question; in the course of her reply to Mrs. Yeobright’s charge, she says that she would never have condescended to marry Clym had she known that she would have to remain on the heath. The two women part angrily.

Eustacia’s unhappiness is increased by Clym’s near blindness, a condition brought on by too much reading, for she fears that this means she will never get to Paris. When Clym becomes a woodcutter, Eustacia’s feeling of degradation is complete. Bored with her life, she goes by herself one evening to a gypsy dance, where she accidentally meets Wildeve and again feels an attraction to him. The reddleman sees Eustacia and Wildeve together, tells Mrs. Yeobright of the meeting, and begs her to make peace with Eustacia for Clym’s sake. She agrees to try.

Mrs. Yeobright’s walk at noon across the hot, dry heath to see her son and daughter-in-law proves fatal. When she arrives in sight of Clym’s house, she sees her son from a distance as he enters the front door. Then, while she rests on a knoll near the house, she sees another man entering, but she is too far away to recognize Wildeve. After resting for twenty minutes, Mrs. Yeobright walks on to Clym’s cottage and knocks at the front door, but no one answers. Heartbroken by what she considers a rebuff by her own son, Mrs. Yeobright starts for home across the heath. Overcome by exhaustion and grief, she sits down to rest, and a poisonous adder bites her. She dies without knowing that inside her son’s house Clym had been asleep, worn out by his morning’s work. Eustacia did not go to the door because, as she later explains to her husband, she had thought he would answer the knock. The real reason for Eustacia’s failure to go to the door was her fear of the consequences if Mrs. Yeobright found her with Wildeve.

Clym awakes with the decision to visit his mother. Starting out across the heath toward her house, he stumbles over her body. His grief is tempered by his bewilderment over the reason for her being on the heath at that time. When Clym discovers that Eustacia failed to let his mother enter the house and that Wildeve had been in the cottage, he orders Eustacia out of his house. She goes quietly because she feels somewhat responsible for Mrs. Yeobright’s death.

Eustacia takes refuge in her grandfather’s house, where a faithful servant thwarts her in an attempt to commit suicide. In utter despair over her own wretched life and over the misery she has caused others, Eustacia turns to Wildeve, who has unexpectedly inherited eleven thousand pounds and who still wants her to run away with him. One night, she leaves her grandfather’s house for a prearranged meeting with the innkeeper. In doing so, she fails to receive a letter of reconciliation that Thomasin has persuaded Clym to send to her. On her way to keep her rendezvous with Wildeve, she loses her way in the inky blackness of the heath and either falls accidentally or jumps into a small lake and drowns. Wildeve, who happens to be near the lake when she falls in, jumps in to try to save her and also drowns.

Originally, The Return of the Native ended with the deaths of Eustacia and Wildeve; however, in order to satisfy his romantic readers, Hardy made additions to the story in a later edition. In that version, the faithful Diggory marries Thomasin. Clym, unable to abolish ignorance and superstition on the heath by teaching, becomes an itinerant preacher.

Bibliography

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