The Return of the Native is a traditional 19th century novel by one of the great English novelists, Thomas Hardy. You’ll find that it’s kind of slow-paced for our tastes. But stick with it. The characters are interesting, and the situations they find themselves in are compelling. Hardy liked to subject his characters to the vagaries of fate, and that is certainly in evidence in The Return of the Native.
Warning: this book starts off slow. Real slow. It's a loving description of Egdon Heath, the setting for this novel. (The chapter gives you some idea of what it feels like for Eustacia to have to live there.)
Try to get through it. The heath is an important character in the novel. But, rest assured, the whole book is not like this. Once we start getting into characters, and especially plot, you'll like it. However, if -- and only if -- you would find yourself giving up on Hardy, (or starting to consider alternative paths), you have my permission to skip ahead. Try a paragraph or two, or to the end of the chapter if need be. But then start in again. Stick with it. You'll be glad you did.
Looking into my crystal ball, I foresee that this will be the least popular of the summer reading books. Well, tough. I believe that a lot of AP teachers create their summer reading lists for their colleagues rather than their students ("See what my students are reading!"). I don't do that. This is the most traditional of the summer reading books. It's a good novel, historically important, and something you should be capable of at least bulling your way through, if not enjoying.
For what it's worth, I read it first when I was a senior in high school, and I loved it. (Holden Caulfield even likes Eustacia, and he hates everything!)
You can find the text online here. Kindle has several editions, some for free, some for only 99 cents. I'd still go with a good old-fashioned book.
So far, I've gotten to chapter 3. I find that I enjoy descriptive imagery and colorful words, but with The Return of the Native, I feel everything gets all jumbled up and the meaning gets lost along the way. I hope that it gets easier to read as I go on, but so far, things are pretty confusing. My favorite scene out of all the chapters yet is of the woman standing on the hill, a perfect silhouette against the sky. It's very poetic. Perhaps that's our protagonist contemplating life? Who knows, on to reading more!
ReplyDeleteEmma P. says:
DeleteI felt the same way about the beginning. It was hard for me to really get into the book at first because the description was so in depth. It definitely picked up as I kept reading though. I'm really interested on how all of the characters view "love". I feel like Damon likes the idea of possessing/collecting people, and he confuses that with love. I'm interested on how he will develop throughout the book.
I agree on the possession aspect of Wildeve's affections. When Eustacia showered her love on him, he wasn't interested, but after she got married, he desired her because she loved and was loved by someone else. He wanted what he couldn't have, and I believe you're right, he confuses that desire for what is out of his reach as love.
DeleteThis plot is very relatable back to reality in my opinion. I often recognize this pattern in the world around me such as people coveting their neighbors house or a best friend coveting their friend's girl but in this its a much more complicated web of affection, infatuation, cunning deceit, and misplaced love. All ending in tragedy as such stories tend to do. I wonder if here it ties back to insecurity like is so often does in this time of ours. On a different topic, I along with many others it seems appreciate the desolate beginning and despise it at the same time. Yes it was a very difficult topic to begin to read about, but soon becomes very interesting. we so often hear about the oh-so-common love triangle but not usually including so many hearts to potentially be broken. Lastly, i love the deviation from the standard "and so they lived happily ever after" instead the beauty of the tragedy should be acknowledged and admired.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteI really enjoyed Hardy's writing style. He seemed to have chosen a point of view of the land rather than that of a human in the beginning of the book in particular. I think this is a very interesting take and is hard to choose since it isn't common. People nowadays seem to focus on how people have made an impact on the world and many don't even take into consider what the land had to offer before people came. Page fourteen showed Hardy's take very well talking about fire, "' It indicates a spontaneous, Promethean rebelliousness against the fiat that this recurrent season shall bring foul times, cold darkness, misery and death.'" This statement showed that the land has its circle of life and when people stepped in, this all changed.
ReplyDeleteI agree, I like how Hardy personifies the land to being barren and desolate. It later helped me to understand the positions characters are in within their small town. Eustacia seemed so depressed much of her time alone in the heath, which confused me at first for she seems to have a pretty easy life. However, Hardy's vivid description of the landscape clarified why she felt so down and bored in her life.
DeleteNot going to lie, this book is kicking my butt. Its so difficult to stay engaged in. But, the scene is clearly important to Hardy. He discusses the scene alone, with no people in it, for almost 20 pages! It makes me curious what his purpose is in doing so. Its apparent the setting is a big part in this story, and means a lot to the different characters. I like your idea about taking the view point of the land. That really helps to illustrate the characters individual ideas of what the heath is in their life. It makes it seem as if each character has a different interaction with the "character" of the heath.
DeleteUsing the land to understand characters positions in their town helped me gain a better understanding of the characters and the book. It actually helped a lot because now I understand why the first part of the book was about the land and nothing more. If it wasn't for you blogging this I probably wouldn't have picked up on it until the very end of the book. So thanks for that!
DeleteWhen I first read this part of the book, I felt that it dragged on and I didn't really see any point in it. But now, after reading your comment, I started thinking about the beginning of the book again. I realized that Hardy wanted to start the story of simply, with no trace of human life, and then he gradually increased the complexity of the story as he introduced more characters. By starting the story off with just the land, Hardy wanted his readers to pay close attention to how the characters interact with the setting, as the setting itself has a great impact on the decisions that the characters make. One of the most obvious examples of this is Eustacia wanting to marry Clym partly in hopes of getting away from this setting. After reading the entire book and looking back at the beginning, I now understand the importance and role that this part of the book plays on later parts of the story.
DeleteAt first this book challenged me on all different levels, it was very difficult for me to stay focused. I felt that the beginning was a little slow for me, however, as Hardy went more into detail with the characters I got more attatched. The book felt slow because I was not used to the language so I had to look up many words. I love how in the beginning of the book Eustacia is this mysterious character. It has really drawn me to read on and find out what is next. The different relationships are interesting, a little hard to keep up with, but really intruge me to keep reading to find out who ends up with who.
ReplyDeleteI had a really similar first impression to this book. It started off very slow and dry and as it picked up and more and more characters were introduced, I got all everyone confused. It helped me to find a character list online that briefly stated who was who so that I could keep them all straight at the beginning.
DeleteI definitely had the same reaction as both of you to the beginning of this novel. It was so difficult for me to stay focused I often had to reread to discover what was happening. However, for me the different relationships left me confused and caused me to dislike the book rather than pull me in to continue reading. Similar to Katherine the mysterious nature of Eustacia finally drew me in to continue reading to find out more about who she is and what she had to do with the story line.
DeleteI completely agree with all of you. When I first started reading the book it was hard to stay focused on it because of how descriptive everything was. However, just as Kat said, once Hardy got more into the characters and all the different relationships that were happening it was hard to want to put the book down. Especially the part where Eustacia and Wildeve were going to run away together and Thomasin and Clym had found out about it. The scandal was so interesting i wanted to figure out what was going to happen next.
DeleteI agree! In the beginning of the book I had almost no interest in the seemingly never-ending description of the heath… it’s just not the type of literary style we are used to today. I was getting impatient with Hardy and wanted him to just stop with the description already! But aside from that, once the characters became more developed, the book became less painful to read. Most characters are so dynamic that they could be unpredictable. Once the love triangle-type events unfolded the book was a little easier to follow.
DeleteI had the exact same reaction when reading this novel. Its overly descriptive beginning bored me into not wanting to continue reading, but as I continued I found a lot of interesting relationships between the characters. Although I am having a lot of trouble keeping up with the vast amount of characters and how they are intertwined.
DeleteI must agree as well with everyone. The book was extremely difficult for me at first, for I simply couldn't get into the mass descriptions and such. In order to make myself continue, I had to change my personal perspective a bit. I began to view the book as more of a piece of poetry, where it made it significantly more interesting since I could delve into ideas that I would not necessarily think of as I typically read a novel. It helped me appreciate the beginning of the novel a bit more until I reached the more interesting plot and character driven portions.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteI fully agree with all of you. Due to the lengthy discriptions that included unknown words, it was very challenging to fully involve yourself in the reading. The only way I could begin to understand who was who, I also had to focus on one main charector then read it that way, it made it much easier to follow.
DeleteAs i'm reading this book I find myself being easily distracted. I'm confused and very lost making it very hard to stay engaged. I'm hoping that as I read deeper into the story everything becomes more clear and draws my attention in instead of away.
ReplyDeleteI was the same way as Cassidy but once I got about halfway done with the book and the long descriptions became shorter, it was easier to read and comprehend and i was able to actually understand what was happening
DeleteFor me, the dialogue was easiest to read. It went by fast, and was much simpler to understand despite the old English way of speaking. That's what really helped me follow what was going on in the book.
DeleteI found myself understanding the book after I got past the first quarter. Like Alli said the long descriptions became shorter. I also liked the old English. At times I was a little confused on what was being said, but as I kept reading it all came together to form a big bicture and made a lot more sense.
DeleteIt took me days to get through the first 100 pages of the book. The long descriptions only confused me and kept me disengaged. As the story went on and the long descriptions were replaced by dialogue, everything became much clearer and more enjoyable to read. I was able to stay interested enough to read longer sections each day.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteIt was the same thing for me. I barely made it through the beginning of the book. All the descriptions made it hard to keep track of what was happening, but when there was dialogue it was easier to read.
DeleteI couldn't agree with you more! That was not a book I could get into but as I grasped the story more, the more I was understanding it. Not every book is enjoyable to the reader! Haha
DeleteWhile reading this novel I kept comparing Eustacia to Hedda Gabler once Eustacia ended her relationship with Damon Wildeve. After Eustacia married Clym and Clym became a furze cutter, she was stuck living in the boring town with no hopes of moving to an exciting city such as Paris. They weren't wealthy and her life was monotonous and boring. Eustacia soon fell out of love with Clym because the image of a wealthy man from the bustling streets of Paris she once attached to her husband faded away. Like Hedda in her depressing marriage and boring life, Eustacia struggled to find an escape. The two women wanted more than the life they married into, perhaps due to them marrying for reasons other than love.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything you said. The whole time I was reading the novel I could not believe how similar Hedda and Eustacia were. This really came evident to me on page 282 when Eustacia was questioning if she hoped too much in wishing for "what is called life-music, poetry, passion, war, and all the beating and pulsing". Eustacia then recalls that she married Clym because of love but definitely believed she saw "a promise of that life in him"(282). This statement shows although some love may have been evident in their relationship the final straw in deciding to marry Clym was the hope for an extravagant life.This is similar to Hedda because Hedda continued to demand more extravagances in her life with her husband to try to blur the fact that she was unsatisfied of where she was in her life.
DeleteI agree. Both Hedda and Eustacia’s marriages are superficial. Hedda’s marriage with Tesman isn’t genuine at all; it is only the shell of a marriage and only seems real on the surface. I feel that Tesman was just another one of Hedda’s victims that she realized she could manipulate without detection. Also, Eustacia only jumped to marry Clym due to the glimmer of hope that she had of them moving to Paris together. She even said that she wouldn’t have married Clym if she knew they would be living in a little cottage in the heath. Her affections for Clym were all too superficial as well. Once she learned he sold diamonds in Paris and was returning to the heath, she quickly “fell in love” with him without even meeting him! Ironic…
DeleteIt is really ironic, because Eustacia knows that's what her personality is like. She admitted to Clym that in Budmouth, she had once seen a man and had fallen in love with his appearance and nothing more, but it nearly drove her mad with the passion she felt for this man she'd never talked to, and never would. This is another perfect example of how superficial and shallow her affections are for all the men she's "loved" in her life.
DeleteI agree with you, Alex, that Eustacia never showed a true love for her husbands or even those she admired. Even though she dedicated her time to meeting Clym at the play, when she had him, she didn't seem as passionate. She seemed to just accept that she had what she wanted while still wanting more. She felt that he was the only one for her, but when they got married, she quickly faded away from him. I think the detail about the bonfire being built up once again near the end of the novel was important because although Eustacia didn't build this one, she had hoped to see Wildeve. She was constantly searching for the correct way to lead her life, but her life was never set in stone. She isn't the type of person to trust because she just kept moving from lover to lover. She wasn't committed to any man even when it seemed that she had grown so close to them.
DeleteI agree with you Michaela. I also kept comparing Eustacia and Hedda to each other. They both seemed to want to get out of the boring lives to the point they would do anything.
DeleteEustasia and Hedda were very much the same person in literature; the self antagonist who marries the wrong man. Both women marry for reasons other than love and it is discovered that this does not work to bring them happiness. Hedda is stuck with a baby and cannot wrap her mind around her new life, Eustasia cannot believe she is going to be stuck after she had seen Clym as an escape. Eustasia never really loved Clym, and so suffered the same fate as Hedda where both she and her love died. It's tragic to say the least that these stories both show how life can be spent doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons and when you're too far into it, there's no way out but death; accidental or purposely.
DeleteI wouldn't go as far as saying Eustacia didn't love Clym at all. She definitely loved Clym to an extent, although even after Clym told her he would never return to Paris, Eustacia continued to be entranced with the idea that maybe he could return to Paris. But had Eustacia not loved Clym at all, she probably would have seen his tirade toward her as a chance to escape her marriage, which tied her down to the heath. Instead, she contemplated suicide with a pistol, and when she was finally going to run away with Wildeve, she committed suicide by jumping into the weir.
DeleteWithin the first few chapters it was evident that the characters lived in a typical small town in which people have little to do outside of work except talk about each other. At the beginning of the novel, there was even a large group around a fire at night, with people like Grandfather and Christian. All they talked about was Thomasin's wedding and whose fire was lit in the distance. I didn't think much of the way of life and extremely nosy, judging neighbors at the time but after reading the remained of the novel, I realized that this played a big role in the book. It explained why Thomasin felt she had to marry Damon after the first wedding fiasco to preserve her image looked at by her neighbors. It also is the cause of why characters like Mrs. Yeobright and Clym were in such a great conflict over his marriage to Eustacia, because Mrs. Yeobright was very concerned about what was proper and well thought of by the town, and her neighbors were convinced Eustacia was a witch.
ReplyDeleteI agree completely. I think this is also why Eustacia became so enchanted by Clym. Here was a man from Paris who lacked the judgmental behavior of her neighbors. He did not view her as a lonely, supercilious young woman as they did. It was her actions that would create his opinion on her without any preconceived notions. This was another factor that led Eustacia to romanticize him in many scenes of her mind because to her he was the pure and noble knight which she dreamed of him on that first night.
DeleteGoing off from what Jeanna said, I found it very humorous how Eustacia became so obsessed with the idea of being with Clym before she even knew him. I found this to resemble how nowadays, people often have crushes on celebrities, as they fantasize about being with these people because of how the press portrays them as being beautiful, near-perfect creatures. Instead of the press, Eustacia had heard people around her town talk about Clym. She was entranced with the fact that he had spent the past years in Paris, a romantic and busy city, unlike her humble home on the heath. This, in addition to what Jeanna had said about him being an outsider, is what sparked Eustacia’s interest in this man she did not know.
DeleteGoing off this topic of the small town and the neighbors, I was surprised at how fast news spread throughout the town, as the book is set in the mid-1800s. If the book were set later in more modern times when technology is greater and people are more connected with each other through the technology, I would have found the speed at which the local news spread to be more natural, and I would have accepted it without question. But since the book is set in earlier times with less technology, I realized that these characters entire ways of life are completely different from those of us in more modern times, and that talking about the local news and rumors must have been one of their favorite forms of entertainment.
DeleteSamantha, I agree with you and Jeanna about the humor of Eustacia's immediate love for Clym. I think this had to deal with the idea that she didn't like the Heath. When she heard about Clym being in Paris, she could fantasize with this idea and wish it to be true. Meeting with him was as you said, like meeting a celebrity. She hoped he would be able to improve her life. I also liked the mention of Clym being an outsider because I think Eustacia felt that she was like him. She had lived with her grandfather and Charley for so long and was away from most other parts of society, that she believed herself to be like Clym.
DeleteAs the story continues, I am constantly reminded of Thomas Hardy's stunning descriptive skills. That being said, I find his literary style overwhelming. Many lengthy discussions seem unnecessary for the development of the plot and characters. Simply put, I feel that Hardy's story could have been told in a much more engaging manner.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the table setting is excellent but the main course is bland. My main problems is how, I guess, upper class these problems. "She wants to leave!" "He wants to socially reform his town." It's just not very relate able, and as a result, I can't really connect or be interested in the story. And that's why, honestly, I can't say I like the story. Again, good description for a plot I don't like.
DeleteI totally agree with you Ethan, but he continues to describe the heath to an extreme. I don't know why yet, I only have ideas. My point is, he does this for a reason, he isn't trying to fill up space. I guess we all just have to push through it and try to enjoy the unfolding drama. It definitely gets better by the way.
DeleteI agree as well. Hardy’s style makes this book hard to stay engaged in, and I know to all of us that the length of his descriptions seems unnecessary. The plot does get interesting though, and I think if it was only plot that Hardy was focused on, this book could probably be half the original length.
DeleteI agree with you all, and feel as though he would have gotten the point across about the importance of the Heath with half the discription and it would have had the same effect on us all, instead his writing style was challenging to stay engaged with. You have to look beyond the extreme descriptions and just try to simplify the boom for yourself.
Delete(Thoughts on when I was halfway through Book 1) Yeesh and I thought I disliked Gabbler. The description is good so far, with nice language, but as a reader, I can't stand it. For me, there's too much description. Down to every detail, especially in the first 2 chapters. You get a bigger picture but it's a pain to read. Same too for the dialect and slang. It's difficult to get by for me. Paints a bigger picture but less fun.
ReplyDeleteI do have to give credit to that big picture. The main character is the Heath, and it's well described. As the symbol of Nature, it's stalwart and unchanging, rooted in a "Pagan" but harmonous society. Good description, but the language is not my favorite.
I agree with Griffin. The book is difficult to read. The Heath is described so much that it's hard for me to take it all in. The same thing goes for the dialect. I can't read it all at once for some reason.
DeleteThis setting is so much like Tolland it isn't even funny. Not the land specifically, but the town dynamics. Everyone knows everything about everyone. When Wildeve doesn't marry Thomasin, everyone knows and talks about it. Then when Clym comes home, everyone talks about it. Eustachia is so curious, she goes as far as essentially stalking him when she waits out at his house. The characters are so wound up in each other, they barely have time to do things for themselves! I can't make out what characters are like from their interactions with each other because the whole town does the same thing, gossip. I'm currently relying on what the author tells us to characterize the people in town.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Amy. Although where this book takes place is vastly different from today’s world, it contains multitudes of universal messages on human nature. As she mentioned, the tightness and gossip portrayed in this small town could easily be seen in any other close-knit community throughout the world. Another universal aspect of human nature in this book is in the parent-child relationship between Mrs Yeobright and Clym. After Clym moves home upon returning from Paris, he gets wrapped up in pursuing both his new career possibility as a school teacher and his budding relationship with Eustacia. He now has less in common with his mother, which is evident in their numerous, conversation-less dinners. Therefore, as they are growing apart, this causes great tension between the two. This resembles how many young adults, around late teens to early twenties, often have a distant relationship with their parents, as the young adults are becoming more preoccupied with their new-found opportunities to even bother with what is going on with their parents.
DeleteSPOILER ALERT:
ReplyDeleteBook 2 Chapter 7 is a heartbreaker. When Eustachian and Diggory's plan unfolds to essentially blacklist Wildeve, Diggory is so excited he may finally have a chance with Thomasin. He has a fairytale, pure, romantic love for her. Its enchanting to hear how he really feels about her. But then Wildeve, who doesn't truly love Thomasin, decides if he can't have Eustachia then he has to have Thomasin to get back at Eustacia. So poor Diggory gets left out in the cold. This chapter seriously broke my heart. His pure love is shattered! The ending scene when he puts back on his reddlemens clothing is so symbolic. He originally became a reddleman to escape society and be secluded, he is once again doing so. Its heartbreaking.
Jacob Wasserstein says:
Delete"I'm surprised more people are not mirroring this idea. I agree with you wholeheartedly. Diggory is one of the most unfairly treated characters in the novel, not by the other characters alone, but primarily through fate. While he is not wholly innocent, as he attempts some manipulation throughout the book, one can only be expected to act in their own interests, no? Well, Diggory not only acts in his own interests in some isolated incidents, but he also attempts to act in a mature, responsible throughout the novel. He tries to do the right thing multiple times, such as return the money that Wildeve won from Christian (even though Diggory incorrectly distributes the money, he at least tried) and take Thomasin back to Egdon Heath when she is in need. Wildeve is one of the more despicable, selfish, and self-centered characters. It's a true shame he gets to marry Thomasin instead of Diggory, who not only deserves it more through sheer quality of character, but also by virtue of the fact that he actually loves Thomasin, unlike Wildeve."
After reading this chapter, I had the same heartbreaking feelings. Diggory who is extremely selfless thus far in the book seems to be treated so poorly. He chose this "lower class" life after being rejected by Thomasin the first time and when he finally thinks he has a chance again his heart is shattered because Damon won back Thomasin and is going to marry her. This is so sad because Diggory truly has a pure love for her and Damon just wants her because he can't have Eustacia. He consistently does the right thing despite what others think which is very rare in there town all about image. AT the begging he gets the coin back for johnny after he rolls down a hill and loses it and up to this point in the book he wants the best for Thomasin even if it's not in the best interest for himself.
DeleteOlivia Finnegan says:
ReplyDelete1. I like how Hardy uses the Heath as a medium through which he characterizes Eustacia. I believe that Eustacia's hatred for the Heath can be paralleled to her hatred of herself. She is desperate to escape the dull landscape she has been trapped in all her life, and I can connect his to her trying to simply run away from herself, which has become fused with the Heath over time. Hardy never comes out and says "Eustacia is insecure and wants to run away from herself", but I have thought this much through the way she is described.
2. I find that the description of the Heath is similar to the description of Eustatia- both physically and emotionally. She is referred to as " the 'Queen of Night' " and "embodies a darkness" (xvi) which matches "the Heath exhaling darkness" (12). Also, emotionally, Eustacia is seen as "the embodiment of contradiction" (xiv). The contrasts being within herself and how her manner and dreams are so different from others around her. And on page 11 there is such a close comparison when talking about the Heath, and how "darkness had to a great extent arrived heron, while day stood distinct in the sky."
3. When looking at the timeline of Hardy's life in the introduction, it is striking how many events in his life he carefully wove into his book. How his wife Emma's father refused to let Thomas marry her, like how Clym's mother refused to let her son marry Eustacia. And in 1893, Thomas meets Florence, which causes marital issues between him and Emma. This can also be seen as similar to Eustacia's affair with Wildeve which causes issues with her and Clym. If Hardy was alive, what character do you think he would say he most identifies with in this book and why?
I find it really ironic that Eustacia is actually quite similar to the Heath in many ways. The Heath is practically a character itself with the way that Hardy lovingly describes it, and it does have a pull on all the characters, whether they like it or not. The Heath is described as a cruel mistress, desolate and harsh, and always coming back despite the hard work the furze-cutters do when trying to tame the land. Eustacia is similar; she burns hotly with love for a brief period, but can be as cold as Egdons winters when scorned. Described as a tiger-beetle on page 89, she seems plain and neutral, but under light, she "blazes with dazzling splendour," and makes me think of the land. It is plain and flat to those who do not have trained eyes, but to those who are more attentive, they see the beauty in the land where others do not. It's ironic, because Eustacia is trying to escape a place that is so similar in many ways to herself, but I don't think it's because she hates herself. It's unlikely that she even notices the resemblance, but it's almost sad, like she's rejected herself along with the land. The one thing that makes sense is that she stagnates at Egdon, and that's why she wants to run away. The land is too plain for her, and while she can see her own loveliness, she cannot see the wonder in the heath so it bores her. She feels that she belongs better in a place that is filled with only loveliness, but doesn't realize that no matter where she goes, there will always be hard times and not everything will dazzle her all the time or forever.
DeleteI felt that this book was similar to Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. I found that the writing style that they used both grabbed my attention. Martel and Tom Hardy both described nature in such a creative way. Though these descriptions of certain scenes could last for many pages, they presented us with a clear picture of the setting(s). Both novels started slow, but grew to become more interesting. The start of Life of Pi described Pi’s life within the zoo, and how he got to where he was-on a boat. The book started to get interesting here, 90 pages in. I found that the same thing happened with The Return of the Native. The start of the book had plenty of setting description, but limited dialogue and action. This ended when we met more characters.
ReplyDeleteI also found this part of the book confusing, due to the great number of characters. The novel was written in third person, but the view switched between numerous protagonists, and even some antagonists.
I have already sided with the Yeobright family in the love triangle that occurs for much of this part. I think that Eustacia and Damon are in the wrong with their affair, though Eustacia seems to have some sense in thinking over her love with Damon in the end.
I think that Eustacia is similar to Hedda Gabler. They both seem out of place in their society-they are high class women, full of themselves, and capable of marrying the best man available. Everyone in the town respects them, though they go through major difficulties in their lives.
I find myself enjoying the new words the author uses, but I do hope more action appears during the next part of the novel.
I had never thought about how this book was similar to Life of Pie but I now see a lot of similarities. Like you already said, both start out very slow with no a lot of action. They both describe the setting in great detail leaving out nothing. I think that there are similarities between the main characters in all three books, The Life of Pie, Return of the Native, and Hedda Gabler. The main characters in all three of these books seemed to be a little lost whether literally or mentally. All three went through life changing struggles which greatly impacted them.
DeleteDevin, I really like your connection to The Life of Pi. I agree that this book had great nature descriptions. I feel like the author gave great insight into Egdon Heath. The explanation of the Heath made me realize that this place was better left untouched than when people came to take it over. "'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,'" (Hardy 4). I think this is also portrayed throughout the whole novel because the whole struggle of who to marry happened on the Heath and Eustacia constantly complained about the Heath. If they hadn't chosen to live in this magical place, things could've worked out different especially since even Clym knew that towns-people lived a very different life than those on the Heath. Also, since time wasn't the same for everyone and people chose what time to go by on their own, this shows that the Heath was meant to be a timeless place and be a mystery to people.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI was shocked when Devin said that The Return of the Native was similar to Life of Pi, almost insulted, in fact. I loved Life of Pi so much, it's still one of my favorites to read and The Return of the Native is certainly not my favorite book (sorry Mr. MacArthur) and having them compared was really weird. But as you connect dots between them, I can't help but agree that they are similar in some ways. The beginnings are slow, but they develop to become great dramas in which the main characters must struggle with themselves and find their paths on a cruel stage set by nature.
DeleteI can 100% agree with how much both books describe nature in a really cool way. Although I did not really enjoy Life of Pi and The Return of the Native, I can see the similarities between them.
DeleteWhen I first started reading this book, I was very confused. In the first chapter where Hardy is describing the heath, I believed he was writing about a person. Especially with all the references which I did not understand but referred to the 1800s when this book was written. Upon doing some research I discovered that the heath was a landscape much like that of a prairie's. After rereading the first chapter I was still slightly confused because I still did not fully understand the reference but I was now impressed by how beautifully Hardy sculpted the reader's image of the heath. Not only does the reader get an idea of what it physically looks like, they also get the mood of the whole village, the mentality of those who live there and the type of people who live there. This creates a full effect of Egdon Heath because as we know it's the people who make the place what it is. With this image of the heath, we can get more of a personality out of the characters based on their opinion of their surroundings. For example, Eustacia despises the natural beauty of the heath and prefers the more modern allure of Paris. Eustacia has never visited Paris but has only heard and perhaps heard of its appearance. This shows how Eustacia makes her opinions based off ideas in her head. The same is true with her marriage. She forged romances between him and herself in her dreams where she imagined him being a passionate knight which is what led to her becoming so involved in seeking him. Hardy's description of the heath is truly powerful and important to remember throughout the story.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree. Everyone is complaining about how the description, especially in this first section of the book, is extraneous and overall unnecessary, but no one seems to think that there could be a purpose behind it! Many novels use setting to add to the culture of the characters, and to give the reader a good idea as to where we are in time and space. But Hardy takes it one step further, breathing life into Egdon Heath. For a large portion of the beginning of the book, it's the dead of night. Without the aid of vision, Hardy has to rely on other ways to convey the setting to us, and he does so through emotion. As a landscape that's notoriously rough and untamable agriculturally, the author personifies its irrepressible terrain into a stubborn and strong-minded soldier, fighting off all human attempts to dominate it or break free from its grip. This potentially adds a twist to the plot, especially if you make the heath into a character as Jeanna suggested. Eustacia tries so desperately to break from the undeveloped prairies of Egdon Heath and escape to a great civilized city like Paris. When she first tries with Clym, he goes blind and his mother passes away. Then when she tries again with Damon, a freak storm drowns the pair and they're forever immortalized as prisoners, examples of what happens to those who try to break free from Egdon Heath. Even the name of the town gives a sense that it's a real person with a first and last name. I believe Egdon Heath is much more alive than we may want to believe, and that Hardy intended for the notorious landscape to be just as much a character as Eustacia, Clym, or Damon.
DeleteI just finished Book 2, and I feel that the novel is getting interesting. There was much more action in this part of the story.
ReplyDeleteWe start by listening to the conversation between workers who are building a pile of firewood outside of Eustacia's house. They say that she and Clym Yeobright, Thomasin's cousin, would make a lovely couple. This sparks something inside Eustacia's pretty little head. At this time, the Yeobrights' are prepping for Clym's return. As they go to meet him, Eustacia decides to spy. This leads her into forcing Charley, and actor in a play that will be put on at the Yeobright's party, to give up his acting position to her. Clym notices her, and the fact that she is a woman. Though this is the only interaction between the two, Eustacia cannot help but obsess over him.
Later, Thomasin again decides to marry Wildeve. He is rejected by Eustacia for her new love, so turns to the Yeobrights' once again. This wedding is small and private-everyone is worried about what will happen.
During this book in the novel, Hardy decides to introduce the "native"-this being Clym. Eustacia devotes herself to him during the chapter entitled "The Arrival". We do not find out much about him during this book, but I am sure we will later.
Joshua Northrup says:
ReplyDeleteThe book most definitely has imagery and descriptions to the point you can picture almost every detail of an area, but most of the main plot consists of a lot of irony as well, spoilers, how we see Wildeve skirting around choosing between yeobright and vye, until thomasin is able to get another suitor and he is kicked out at one point by the aunt, so he comes crawling to eustacia for love and she no longer has any interest in him.
Mr. Mac says:
DeleteCapitals, young man. Capitals!
Jacob Wasserstein says:
ReplyDelete"As many others have pointed out, this book was a real pain to get through, especially in the first few chapters. There are so many archaic word choices, obscure references, and unnecessary elaborations that make the book difficult to enjoy. For example, I understand Eustacia is beautiful. Several pages describing each hue or curve in her lips is really unnecessary. I understand Hardy was trying to make magic happen through his creation of lifelike characters, but after a certain point (which Hardy passes in the first chapter alone), description doesn't excuse excessive wordiness. Apart from that issue, I found the characters and plot much more interesting than either those in Hedda Gabler or any presented in the packet of poems. One of the main comparisons many will make between The Return of the Native and Hedda Gabler are the two main female characters, Eustacia and Hedda. They both seem to be unlikable characters, each with delusions of grandeur far exceeding reality. However, I feel Hardy has managed to create Eustacia in such a way that the reader can better understand and sympathize with her situation than Ibsen did with Hedda. At least, I, personally, found myself understanding why Eustacia feels the way she feels better than with Hedda, which makes me much more open to actually investing myself and my attention into the plot."
I disagree. I personally found myself understanding Hedda better then Eustacia! We have a lot more background on where Hedda comes from and her situation in life. While with Eustacia, all we know is she's dramatic, manipulative, and kind of annoying to follow. I was able to personalize with Hedda more so that Eustacia.
DeleteI agree with you Jacob. While Hardy's word choice is well intended, I often find myself being so caught up in description that I can't really follow the plot. However, as annoying as it is, I definitely think it helps with Eustacia's characterization. I don't know if it's because Return of the Native is longer than Hedda Gabler, but I feel like I know the characters much better in this story than I did in Hedda.
DeleteI agree with Amy because I found Hedda a character that I could understand more clearly than Eustacia. I found it hard to truly understand Eustacia and her character as a whole because of Hardy's ongoing elaborate descriptions. I found his descriptions more distracting towards the character's true colors rather than helping me get to know each character better. In Hedda Gabler, I was able to understand Hedda so much better. I believe Ibsen put more emphasis on only including the key events that allowed the audience to learn about the full character.
DeleteAshley I agree with you- just the fact that Hedda Gabler was a play made the whole entire thing way more direct and to the point. Basically plot and scenery are the only things that mattered in Hedda, in contrast to the never-ending descriptions in The Return of the Native. The descriptions led me to lose interest and distract me from the actual plot and characters in the book. During reading a description I realized that I actually wasn’t even reading or processing it at all, just moving my eyes back and forth across the page. In Hedda, there was always something new happening in the emotional dialogue that made the play exciting.
DeleteI have to agree with Rachel - I find that plays are significantly easier to follow since they're so much more direct and mostly involve dialogue rather than description. I personally felt that I was able to understand Hedda more than I could Eustacia because I felt that Eustacia was almost clouded by the absurd amount of description. I almost felt that because she was described so thoroughly from another perspective, it almost concealed her true self. On the contrary, Hedda appeared very clear to me because I could make direct connections from her dialogue and how she acted towards others.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteOnce again, SPOILER ALERTS:
ReplyDeleteFor lack of a better term, the ending sucked. It was such a bad way to end such an elaborate and complex story. Through out the story we follow Clym and other characters who weave through the main plot, side plots, lovers, and other conflicts. Then to end the complicated, entrancing story Clym does nothing with his life. Brilliant, driven Clym! Hardy made him be consumed by his own guilt. And Thomasin, she sends Diggory off because she has to marry Wildeve. But when Diggory comes back and has money, a house, and still wants her, she marries him. I feel as if a real person in Diggory's position would move on, but Hardy had to tie things up nicely. I didn't love the story as a whole, but the ending made me dislike this book even more.
While this certainly is not my favorite book and and I would have loved a happier ending, I understand why Hardy ended it the way he did. I think that by turning a brilliant and driven man like Clym into someone who is consumed with guilt further developed him as a character. It showed how much he cared about his wife and mother when on the other hand his wife was truly in love with a different man. Eustacia did not love him, she just liked that he was respectable and had money. When he no longer had this she was not as happy. So, with Clym being overwhelmed with guilt it shows that his feelings were genuine. As for Thomasin finally accepting Diggory, I think Hardy put it in to show how the time period works. Even with Diggory no longer being a reddleman he was still poor which almost stopped the marriage. So while I would have loved a different ending I think that there was thought put into it and that Hardy had reasons for everything that he did.
DeleteIt is a bit of an exaggeration to say that Clym does nothing with his life at the end of the book. Maybe he never accomplished his goal of becoming a successful school master, but this would have been impossible with his impaired eyesight. Instead, using the lessons he learned throughout the story, he became a public preacher. This fulfilled his goal to help the world, the goal which inspired him to become a school master, and while he probably did not earn very much money with this occupation it is clear from his negative experience at his diamond business that Clym does not place very much value on money.
DeleteThis is a book I am really something struggling to get through! However, I just finished book one and an observation I have made, is how Grandfather Cantle is so social and personable at the bonfire gathering, but his youngest son Christian, from my understanding, is a little more reserved and he isn't the type of person to strike up a conversation with. With that being said I do feel badly for him that he can't get a woman to like him and also how harshly women have spoken to him in the past. It's interesting how Christian's father is singing and dancing and so happy with his life, at the gathering, and his poor son can't even find it in himself to get up an dance or sing along. What really threw me off was when Timothy tried to make Christian feel better, but he continued to have a pity party for himself and make the job not so easy for his friend.
ReplyDeletePS. if anyone has any tips or tricks on how to not get characters mixed up please share them! I haven't even gotten to the heart of the book and I'm getting people mixed up left and right
Leah I totally agree with what you're saying! And for remembering the characters, I find that writing down a list with something brief about each character really seems to help me.
DeleteGood observation, I noticed the same thing. I do what Amanda does as well as I make a "family tree" type thing where I write how each character is connected to each other which might help with the which characters love who aspect of the book.
DeleteAs most people have already said, I too found it difficult to stay engaged while reading the first chapters of Return of the Native. There were some points when I did not understand what Hardy was saying, and had to read sentences multiple times to grasp what point he was trying to make. That being said, I also think that the beginning chapters are very important in setting the tone for the rest of the story. The very in- depth description of Egdon Heath was initially challenging for me to understand, but it seems the characters have almost formed their personalities around the setting of the Heath. In the very beginning, I didn’t understand why the old man and the other traveler were not speaking to each other very much, but that’s just how things work at this place. It is murky, sullen, and almost depressing, which doesn’t really create happy characters who are friendly to everyone.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I did not really understand the meaning of a lot of the events and descriptions that Hardy used in the beginning of the book. I think that we were introduced to a lot of characters before we actually knew anything about them which made it confusing. I found myself wondering who characters were and not really knowing which characters were going to have a big influence on the story and which ones we were only going to hear about once or twice. As the story continued Hardy developed the characters and the reasons for many of the things that he did became clear
DeleteI agree with Jessica. After the very long winded description of the setting alone, the first few chapters of Book First seemed to really jump around, introducing all the characters at random. Also, many of the characters, such as Eustacia, Diggory Venn, and Thomasin, where not formally introduced as their character's name to begin with. Diggory was referred to as simply the reddlemen, Thomasin was just known to the reader as the girl in the back of his van ( VERY specific), and Eustacia just kept reappearing as almost a supernatural being in the distance. Therefore, it was hard to keep in mind all these characters when we didn’t even know their names yet! In hindsight, I guess it made the beginning more suspenseful, but it is odd that characters that became very essential to the plot of the story were handled so unspecifically in the beginning
DeleteI just finished the second "book" in the novel. I do have to confess that I did skip some of the Heath, because Hardy is just a little wordy for my taste. So far, I strongly identify with Eustacia. I think she's and incredibly relatable character struggling to establish herself in an unfamiliar place where she is seen and treated as an outsider. However, the love triangle plot that seems to be emerging between Damon, Thomasin, and Eustacia is incredibly overused in my opinion. I understand that this novel was written way before most young adult novels we read today, but it seems anytime there's a book with a woman as a main character, she's caught in some type of complicated romance. I was hoping that Hardy would've avoided this route and had Eustacia take a path that didn't involve men. When I read this book, I feel as though I've read it before. I'll have to keep reading to see if my feelings change.
ReplyDeleteI had that feeling too! It almost seems like Hardy is following a template, but reluctantly, so adds and changes little things here and there. I'm a little disappointed, but it's still a good work of literature--and I think the trite love triangle plot system may have had something to do with Hardy needing to cater to an audience. I'm not calling Hardy a sellout, but it is likely that he was aware that his subject matter would have a big impact on his sales. The introduction of my edition of this book mentioned that Hardy grew very unpopular after releasing one of his works (though I don't recall which). Being a starving artist is cool and poetic and all that, but one can't survive on stubbornness alone.
DeleteSide note: This is not unlike the story of F. Scott Fitzgerald: he had hits, and then a miss that sent him spiraling out of fame and wealth.
Julia Freeman says:
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this book, I found that one of the most important elements was the setting. The book even started off with a long, in depth description of the heath, and as a few people have said already, it seems to take on a mind of its own. The author personifies the heath in such detail that it almost seems like a person. It is common to see the world as simply a place that holds people and things. However, this book sees the earth in an entirely new way. The heath, rather than being formed, changed, and developed by man, seems to do the exact opposite. While the characters grow and change around it, the heath remains the same. “The man who had discovered that it could be broken up died of the labour: the man who succeeded him in possession ruined himself in fertilising it” (39). It’s as if nature has created this land, and nature is the only thing that can change it. The harsh, rugged terrain of the land almost seems at war with its inhabitants. Mrs. Yeobright dies when she is bitten by a snake, and both Eustacia and Damon drown in the weir. Even as civilization forms, the heath remains wild and free. Although I found it very difficult to read and initially thought it was an unnecessary length of description in excruciating detail, Hardy’s words really brought this beautiful land to life. This central location is where the entire plot takes place, and it’s almost as if the characters are stuck there. Some try to leave, like Eustacia Vye, while others are determined to stay, like Clym Yeobright, but all have some sort of connection to this place that determines their contribution to the novel. Ironically, Eustacia, who clearly wants to rid herself of the heath and all of its “ugliness” the most, is the one who seems to have the deepest and most spiritual connection to the land. I think that the setting is very important to the plot because it determines how the characters behave and react with each other. Hardy made a very specific and interesting choice with this setting, and it becomes more clear as the book goes on how well executed this choice is.
And Julia also says:
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite elements of the book was the point-of-view. It seemed to be third person omniscient, which allowed the reader to know what every character was thinking in any situation. This element added a lot of suspense to the book, especially in the form of dramatic irony, because the reader knew what was happening the whole time, but the characters had no idea. For example, when Eustacia and Damon would consistently go see each other in secret, even after both had been married, neither Clym nor Thomasin knew that their spouses were being unfaithful to them. Another example is when the reader knew that Mrs. Yeobright had come to see Clym right before she died, but Eustacia had turned her away which led to her death on the journey home. As Clym lay depressed believing that his mother’s death was his fault and that she had died feeling abandoned and unloved by her son, we knew the truth, but Eustacia was keeping it from him. As I got more and more invested into the book, I found it very frustrating when, given all the details, we knew the answer to a problem or the truth behind a marriage, yet characters remained clueless only to be ambushed a few chapters later. These kinds of moments almost make you want to reach into the book, shake the characters by the shoulders, and wake them up from the oblivion they are living in, completely unaware of the horrible truths hovering right outside their realization. However, I did like this point-of-view very much. In a book where so many characters have so many relationships with each other, some good, some bad, some secret, it made it so much easier to track any progression or regression. It also made it so the book was about a variety of different people and how they all connected to each other, rather than a book about one character and his/her relationships with other people. I liked knowing what all the characters were thinking at all times because it helped me to figure out what kind of character they are and even make predictions about their outcome. The way that Mrs. Yeobright was thinking about her son and the horrible way she (thought she) had been treated by him, I found her death very predictable. Not that that made the scene any less emotional or intriguing, but this point-of-view allowed me to form opinions about the characters and therefore predict what the rest of the book had in store for them. Even though this book was a difficult read at times, I found it to be a pretty good book with a very interesting plot line. I definitely feel that if it had been a different point-of-view, the book wouldn’t have been nearly as good and would have been much more difficult to read.
I definitely agree with you! I noticed that the book was in third person omniscient as well pretty early on and I definitely saw the big difference this point of view made in the development and suspense of the plot. While I sometimes got confused as to who's point of view Hardy was speaking from, I thought that overall Hardy's choice in point of view made the story much more interesting. For example, if the story had been in just Clym's point of view, we wouldn't have known of the struggle that his mother went through to get to his house to forgive him, and we wouldn't have felt Eustacia's emotions when she saw Clym's mother at the door, as Clym was asleep during this time. Eventually we would have found out the truth, but I think it would have been less satisfying and entertaining than knowing what happened as it happened.
DeleteAnd she wants to finish by saying:
ReplyDeleteEustacia Vye was my favorite character in the entire book, even though I found myself disliking her a lot. She was the stereotypical “rich girl” who grew up in a family with money and therefore had never lived a life without it. She wanted to be spoiled and was used to getting what she wanted without much of a fight. When she fell in love with Clym, she was under the impression that he would bring her back to Paris with him and that they would live a long, happy, sophisticated life together while he worked in some profession that allowed him to spoil her into eternity. Upon realizing he had no intentions of returning to Paris or returning to his previous line of work, she began to step back from the relationship. Therefore, I feel that she was never really in love in the first place, but rather “lusting” after him and what he could offer her. If the word “love” had to be used, I’d say she was in love with the life she imagined for herself with Clym. We are clued in very early on in the book to the fact that Eustacia wants to get out of the heath more than anything else in the world. The second she heard of a man coming to the heath who had returned from Paris to visit family for the holidays, she was immediately intrigued. Her infatuation wasn’t based on his personality or the way he treated her or even his appearance. It was simply based on a rumor she heard about a man from Paris. She hadn’t even met the guy and she was jumping hoops just to meet him! Early on in their relationship, it had seemed obvious that they were in love, and an unrealistic, optimistic reader might have even believed that they would live the rest of their lives together just as happy as they were at the start. However, knowing Eustacia and the reputation she had, we could definitely predict trouble in the future, especially knowing of Clym’s wanting to stay in the heath. Meanwhile, Eustacia is meeting up with Wildeve again, and confessing that she isn’t happy with Clym and expected a different life than she is now living. Although she tries to maintain some sort of façade that she still loves her husband and wouldn’t give that up for whatever Wildeve was offering her, she failed to do so and was slowing drawn in by his promises to spoil her and make her happy, as Clym was clearly incapable of doing. Her need for, not love, but wealth and success makes her one of the most frustrating, yet interesting characters in the book. She knows what she wants, and watching her attempts to get there were fascinating, even comical at times.
Hardy set out when writing this book to make coincidence the enemy because coincidence is the only reason anything happens in this book. The book begins with using complete coincidence to deliver its first exposition, which is entirely unnecessary. It's coincidence that Diggory and Vyeand encounter each other, and we learn about Thomasin in the back of the van. Then, it's coincidence that Diggory sees Eustacia on the hill so we can get that the environment symbolizes Eustacia. None of that coincidence is at all necessary. It's written in a style where he can just say these things without the characters ever being in the same place. He could just have Eustacia there alone and then describe her like that instead of just having Diggory happen upon her. The coincidence continues as an offhand remark sparks the entire plot. Someone tells Eustacia she'd go well with Clym out of nowhere. Eustacia isn't really viewed as the kind of person who is okay with being given any kind of advice, but yet she finds the one person who is willing to do that. And that's what the sparks the entire plot? Then, there's the insane series of coincidences with the money. Then, there's the insane series of coincidences that not only means Mrs. Yeobright believes her son doesn't love her but is also bit by a snake. The snake is obviously symbolism, but he's sacrificing the reality of his story for heavy-handed symbolism. Then, there's the coincidence that just makes Damon desirable again out of the blue because of a sizable inheritance. Then, there's the coincidence that Johnny was just outside the cabin, so he could tell Clym what happened the day his mom died and create more conflict. Taken individually, each of these events is excusable. As a whole, it's not great that a lot of the conflict is derived from coincidence. Also, it makes a lot of sense that this was released in installments in a magazine. It reads like it was meant for that.
ReplyDeleteI agree fully! Coincidence or what I would say is fate played a major role in this work. When Eustacia is given an opportunity it seems that Hardy uses the work of fate to change things for her rather than with another character. Hardy says, "...no sooner had Eustacia formed this resolve than the opportunity came which, while sought, had been entirely withholden". In other words, once Eustacia has made up her mind to take the opportunity, it is no longer available and this is because “providence” or fate being fickle. As such, Estacia’s fate is already set up for her.
DeletePepijn syas:
ReplyDelete"I finally finished reading The Return of the Native and I must say I am glad that’s over. I often have trouble focusing when I read, but I’ve never had it as bad as with this book, especially in the beginning. I often found myself reading several pages at a time and barely absorbing any of the information, leading me to read all those pages over again. I also found that Hardy carried on his descriptions to the point where it was pretty excessive. That being said, I do think the book improved as the plot developed. It was quite difficult remembering all the names of the characters and who was marrying who, especially with all the love triangles going on, but after a while I got the names down. As for the setting, I thought the heath was a perfect place for this novel. Both the story and the setting were kind of sad and depressing. Almost everyone in the novel grew up on the heath and planned on living there for their entire life. There wasn’t much of an escape from the heath, which was similar to the novel in the sense that some of the characters couldn’t escape their depressing emotions, specifically Clym. Although I found most of the novel to be a bit boring I thought the climax was pretty intense, and most of all very surprising. I definitely didn’t expect what happened to happen. I’m not sure how I feel about the ending, I feel like Hardy could have made it more interesting. Overall I thought the book wasn’t that bad. Hardy did a good job developing the characters and making them very complex."
There were so many different characters in this novel which made it hard for me to keep straight who was who. But the one character that stood out to me the most was Mrs. Yeobright. She reminded me so much of your typical overprotective mother who dedicates their life to their children. She was so close to her son that when her son started to disobey what she believed she did not know what to do with herself. She stood out to me so much in the novel because of her admiral persistence that she demonstrated throughout the book. She had a feeling that Eustacia was not good enough for her child and she spent the entirety of the book trying to prove that to him. I also found it interesting that she was the only character that we never learned her first name. It sort of left a side of mystery to her and allowed the audience to only identify her as the widow of Mr. Yeobright and the loving mother.
ReplyDeleteMrs. Yeobright also reminded me of your typical overprotective mother figure. Her protectiveness over her son and her close relationship with him were what made her resent Clym and Eustacia's marriage. Mrs. Yeobright didn't dislike Eustacia because of who she was as a person. Rather, she felt that Clym marrying Eustacia was Clym choosing Eustacia over her. She was jealous that she was no longer the only woman in Clym's life. Mrs. Yeobright also believed that Clym's decision to not return to Paris and to give up his job as a diamond merchant was because he was in love with Eustacia. Mrs. Yeobright was so distraught over losing her son to Eustacia that she wasn't able to see that it was Clym's own choice to stay at the heath. Eustacia actually wanted to go to Paris. This miscommunication led to the worsening of Mrs. Yeobright and Clym's relationship.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI see Mrs. Yeobright as a monther and a care giver who only wants the best for the people she loves. It has always been said that mothers have the best sense of who people really are. She gave me that impression, she was the one who disapproved the marriage of Clym and Eustacia. Although I do think she had a sense of jealousy, she was right about Eustacia. However, she wanted to put aside their differences and apologize to the son and daughter-in-law, and accept them. She had the right to feel hurt and upset when she felt unwelcomed. I honestly think her death was one of the saddest parts of the book. The fact that she died not knowing that Clym was looking for her and cared about her is terrible. She died thinking of herself as "a broken hearted women cast-off by her son". Even if she was a little hast and unfair, nobody deserves to die with that mindset when it isn't true. She was just a mom that wanted to protect her boy, and like Sidney said she was probably jealous of the 'new' woman in her son's life.
DeleteWhile this novel was dense and frustrating to get through, especially because it required over 200 pages of reading to reach the situation described by the back cover, I did like the complexity of the plot, how it was not simple cause-and-effect but rather several causes leading up to one drastic effect. For example, in the case of Eustacia's suicide (assuming she wasn't just possessed by Susan Nunsuch's voodoo doll), there are a myriad of events that lead up to this, and it is difficult to pinpoint who is most responsible for her death. The most obvious answer would be Clym, who severely scolded Eustacia to the point where she believed Clym would never love her again. However, given the circumstances, I do not blame Clym for Eustacia's death because she intentionally did not open the cabin door to Mrs. Yeobright, and Clym had the right to be angry. Additionally, it was completely out of Clym's control that his apology letter never reached Eustacia. Considering the fact that what was immediately distressing Eustacia before her death was the prospect of living as Wildeve's mistress, it may also be considered that Damon was to blame. However, Wildeve's apparent intention was to rescue Eustacia from a place where she was already unhappy, so with or without Wildeve she may have considered taking her life. I believe Eustacia's death can be most attributed to her own grandfather's neglect toward her. Given that he was aware that Charley saw her contemplating suicide with a pistol, Captain Vye should have paid Eustacia much more attention rather than leaving her to escape in to the heath. Furthermore, had Captain Vye paid close attention to Eustacia, he could have given her Clym's letter as soon as she woke, which likely would have changed the outcome of the story. Ironically, Captain Vye subtly claimed told Clym that he never approved of his marriage with Eustacia, indirectly blaming Clym for his granddaughter's disappearance.
ReplyDeleteAlthough it took a while, I eventually became fascinated with the plot of "The Return of the Native". The drama caused by bad relationships and a web of characters confined to Egdon Heath calls for great respect for the mind of Thomas Hardy. That being said, his writing style was not particularly pleasurable for me. I would like to see another artist explore this plot through a different manner of storytelling. This would bring about a much broader appeal for the original narrative, especially if it were given a more modern touch. Not that Hardy's original piece is not good enough, I would just like to see a more engaging interpretation of his story.
ReplyDeleteEustacia is one nosey girl! She is so focused on meeting Clym and befriending the Yeobright family, it honestly seems to me that she’ll do anything it takes. Just in “book” two of this book I’ve taken note of three separate instances where we find Eustacia eavesdropping, in order to learn more about Clym or about what’s going on around her throughout the town. One of them is when she decides to stake out the Yeobright household and finds that nobody is home. As she turns to leave and head back to her own house they cross paths, and she suddenly becomes very shy and not very social. Afterwards, when they say their goodbyes and head separate ways Eustacia listens in on what the family chats about as they approach the house, just for her own pleasure of learning something new. Although her actions don’t show it, Eustacia seems to be overflowing with excitement that she heard Clym’s voice during their short interaction. The second time is when she decided to join the mummer’s conversation regarding the upcoming Christmas party. Is Eustacia friendly with the mummers? Or is it just such a small town that you don’t need to be friendly with people to barge into their conversations? Anyways, when she takes control of the situation, and somehow is able to convince Charley to take his role in the play. The third time I’ve noticed it is, at the Christmas party, after the play. Eustacia, after talking to Clym and him not having a single clue who she is. She notices Clym go downstairs and obviously her crush radar goes off the charts. When we learn shortly thereafter that the conversation was between Thomasin and Clym, about Thomasin’s excuse on why she has decided not to come upstairs. I feel that Eustacia is very secretive about her spying which is good, however, I feel like she’ll eventually get in trouble for it, by getting caught, or sharing a detail she wasn’t supposed to be aware of. Those are just my predictions for later in the novel when it comes to Eustacia and her desire to know more information.
ReplyDeleteThe childish nature of some of the characters in this book irritated me. Why were the lovers driven by jealousy and revenge? For example, Damon basically proposed to Thomasin to make Eustacia jealous. When Eustacia learned that Thomasin’s affections for Damon had lessoned, Eustacia no longer wanted him because he didn’t seem as “desired.” These people are more interested in controlling the person they “love” instead of actually loving them. They see other people as conquests instead of actual human beings. Diggory seems as if he is the only person in this book that actually loves. He wants to actually make Thomasin happy, even if that results in his own unhappiness or loss (not that he is totally selfless though, he does have his own agenda).
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with Rachel. I feel the same frustration with the characters and their foolish acts. The book is about making people jealous and making then feel bad about themselves. I understand why Damon does not want to go to the wedding but his wife, at the time, was there and was mature enough to handle an awkward situation. Damon instead decided to start some trouble by taking (gambling) all the inherence money from the Yeobright's. He knew what he was doing and did it anyways to hurt someone else. The characters are all about jealousy and hurting people to get what they want, and in the end I believe it will bite them in the butt.
DeleteI agree with what Rachel is saying too. I found it frustrating that the characters were acting so childish during many parts of the play. Why does Eustacia and Damon’s relationship need to be based off of jealousy and what others are thinking? What was most frustrating to me was how quickly Eustacia lost interest in Damon. She seemed to be somewhat interested in Damon, but once she found out that Thomasin was no longer interested in Damon, she lost interest just like that. To me it seems like Eustacia still has a lot of growing up to do. To me, the mindset she had going into any relationship with the characters set her up for failure. You should actually want to get to know these people for who they are, rather than what they are worth.
DeleteI also agree with Rachel, the character’s relationships are more childish and not branching from a loving base and I also agree with Kelly on relationships should be based on the person, not the others worth. I think that this can also relate to Hedda, she did not marry Tesman for love. Hedda believed that her best shot for the highest standard of living lied with her marriage to Tesman. Tesman wanted to make Hedda happy, he wanted to give her all of the things she dreamt: horses, a butler, etc. Hedda had no interest in Tesman’s family, especially when his aunt passed away. Tesman married Hedda because of his love for her, but she married him for the benefits it would bring to her. Although Diggory Venn loved Thomasin, his feelings were also not returned in the way that they should be in a marriage. Both marriages were not at the full potential that a couple who was in love would have been.
DeleteWhen I first started reading this book I was not looking forward to reading it. The beginning stared with excessive descriptions of the setting. While it is very helpful to know the setting and it can give you clues about the rest of the book I found it to be a little much. It got to be very boring after the first couple pages and I would get lost and find myself reading pages but not actually absorbing any of the information that was on them. As the book continued I began to notice the plot and understand the story. I was very interested in the many relationships that were formed. While there seemed to be no connection between these characters in the beginning their relationships evolved and we were made aware of them. Eustacia, Wildeve, Thomasin, and Clym all had intertwining relationships. Thomasin and Wildeve married each other in order to save face. However, Eustacia and Wildeve were secretly in love with each other. So out of spite that Wildeve did not marry her, Eustacia married Clym. She thought that he could give her a good life. She thought Clym was a respectable man who could provide her and give her the life that she felt she deserved and was worthy of. However, when he started to get sick is really when everything started to take a turn for the worse and the plot really intensified.
ReplyDeleteI've just finished Book 3, and I'm moving on to Book 4. I found that this section of the novel was much different from the rest of the book-the setting was more spread out, as were the descriptions of other characters.
ReplyDeleteWe found out a LOT more about Clym in this section. We know that he seems to enjoy the heath more than Eustacia does-this is a slight conflict in their relationship, but seems to draw them closer together at the same time. He reveals his plan to start a school and to never move back to France-though this upsets Eustacia, she agrees to marry him. Mrs. Yeobright is the least accepting of this marriage. Her heart is broken-both of the children she looked after went off to marry people "lower than the Yeobrights".
Hardy's use of third person omniscient confused me at first-I had no idea who I was following because of all the characters I was introduced to. I know feel that I know who they are talking about, and can describe the characters.
I am making a prediction that Thomasin and Damon's marriage will not last. Damon is realizing that because Eustacia is gone, he loves her more. Mrs. Yeobright does not seem to trust Damon, and Thomasin does not sound happy in the marriage.
I am looking forward to more action in the next book.
Just like almost everyone else, I found this novel very hard to get into. The first few chapters were difficult to read and understand, and I was dreading the rest of the book. However, as the main characters and conflicts were introduced, and Hardy spent less time on description, I found myself enjoying "The Return of the Native" more than I thought I would. When Clym Yeobright was introduced, I felt that the plot became much more compelling and the conflicts much more interesting. One component of this novel that I particularly liked is the fact that many of the major events only happen due to unfortunate coincidences or misunderstandings. For example, the deaths of Mrs. Yeobright, Eustacia, and Wildeve likely could have been avoided if Clym had woken up and answered the door for his mother like Eustacia thought he would. This made the ending all the more tragic. All in all, despite hating the first few chapters, I'm happy to say that I was able to enjoy this novel.
ReplyDeleteSadly I am not as far as I would like to be. I am finding this book hard to plough through, though after the initial beginning, it has become easier. It's easy to see the similarities between Eustacia Vye and Hedda Gabler and reading and feeling the cold indifference of so many characters as well as this very complicated love pattern that appears, I find that I don't dislike the book as much as I originally thought. Eustacia isn't going to give up Damon without a fight, and Damon honestly doesn't seem to care what really happens. And Clym...I'm very interested to say the least how it will all play out.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree with others that the seemingly endless description in the beginning was boring and made the book hard to read, I had a slightly different take on it. Because I could not understand many of the words, I had to look them up which broke up the flow of the book and made it hard to read. But after thinking about it, I realized how much work the author put into these descriptions and it made me wish I was reading this book in the time period it was written. The story itself was compelling and intriguing which I will talk about in other posts. Had there been in updated version of the book, I would likely have loved this story.
ReplyDeleteI like this thought. I feel like it would be vastly more enjoyable if the archaic language were updated into a modern novel with the same plot. I agree with what you say about the diction interrupting the flow. I don't need for the books I read to be easy but they are always much more enjoyable to read if the story flows naturally without repetitive stopping and this was anything but that.
DeleteI like this thought. I feel like it would be vastly more enjoyable if the archaic language were updated into a modern novel with the same plot. I agree with what you say about the diction interrupting the flow. I don't need for the books I read to be easy but they are always much more enjoyable to read if the story flows naturally without repetitive stopping and this was anything but that.
DeleteEmma P. says:
ReplyDeleteSo i’m getting towards the end of the book and although I felt that the description was a bit excessive (like there was three whole pages just on a description of Eustacia), I do admire that Hardy really wanted the reader to feel apart of the book. I was pleasantly surprised about how much drama was in the book. I love analysing what the characters want to feel vs what they actually feel. For an example, Eustacia creates this picture of how Clym is before even meeting him. She almost tricks herself into falling in love with the idea of Clym to distract her from the reality that the chemistry isn't all there. She feels like in the end, this is in her best interest so she can finally get out into the world. Even though this takes place a long time ago, this theme is so present in today. With social media and everything, it is so easy to have these expectations build up.
Emma also says:
ReplyDeleteIn The Return of the Native I found it interesting that all of the female characters were constantly in search of a man. Eustacia was in search of a man to escape and she also idolizes the idea of a true love. She thought that a man would cure her loneliness and problems from Heath. I also liked that Eustacia was self centered. Okay it sounds weird, but she went against the whole stereotypical woman of the time . She had goals for herself and did what she had to do to make them happen. It was sort of revolutionary. Also i’m reading both The Return of the Native and Hedda Gabler at the same time. I felt like both books are kind of similar in a way because the reader can have multiple takes on things and use their imagination. In The Return of the Native, Eustacia’s death could have been an accident or suicide. Personally I think that she had a strategic plan to commit suicide. I felt like she planned it because she could never truly be content with their life, but I could see both ways.Hardy left such a big part of the book up to us. In Hedda Gabler, we know that Hedda definitely committed suicide, but the reason is unclear. Once again, the reader is left to their own conclusion. Im wondering what the majority thought for both books.
I really like Emma's interpretation of comparing The Return of the Native with Hedda Gabler. I do feel both Eustacia and Hedda have the same mentality. Both individuals know what they want and do what they can to reach their desires. I agree that Eustacia does go looking for a man due to her desire to change her loneliness. I find this to be alike Hedda but also different from her. Both Eustacia and Hedda think in the same way that men will help to solve their problems. I feel they are unalike though because Hedda knows a man will get her ahead and make her look better in society but she doesn’t seem happy to be with a man. Unlike Hedda, Eustacia is looking for a man because she is looking for happiness. She believes in true love and desires to have it. Both women faced problems in the society in which they lived in but looked to men to help them out.
DeleteEmma, I really liked the way you compared them. The endings left me wondering. I also think that Eustacia's death was a suicide. Hardy wanted us to make our own conclusions of the book and to keep thinking about the ending. Same goes for Hedda Gabler. Even though we know she committed suicide, we aren't 100% sure why.
DeleteAmanda Forshey says:
ReplyDeleteAfter finishing the book, I don't feel that it's impacted my life in any major way. While the descriptive language actually grew on me, and I find the book well written, I was disappointed with the death of Eustacia. I felt that she was the most dynamic character of the novel, and the storyline fell flat as soon as she died. None of the other characters seemed to be majorly affected by the deaths of the Eustacia, Wildeve, and Mrs. Yeobright. Clym grieved for a while, but soon he was giving picturesque, idealistic sermons on top of Rainbarrrow. And Thomasin, who supposedly loved Wildeve deeply, was married to Diggory Venn six months later. To me, it just seems that there's no lesson or moral involved in the story. The whole plot was wrapped up neatly in a bow, and it seems that Thomas Hardy was afraid to take the book to a place of true daring.
I do agree that, unlike most books that we read, there wasn't an obvious lesson at the end that Hardy wanted his readers to take away from his book. I think that Hardy had some solid aspects of his novel (like Eustacia's fiery spirit) in which he could have brought up topics that, at the time, would have aroused many people, caused some controversy, and possibly some social change. But instead of continuing Eustacia's development and story to do just that, Hardy decided to let her die. I don't know if Hardy decided to do this because of social pressures, or his own personal beliefs, but I do believe that he could have taken this story to a new level if his ending had been different.
DeleteI definitely agree. There was no real moral or lesson and I wasn't a huge fan of the ending either. However, I did enjoy it. Although I felt it was slow at times, it was just because of Hardy's wordy style. However, I would like to know more about what happened after the story ended. I am especially interested in Clym and what he would decide to do with his life. I would want to see if he really did gain his sight back and return to Paris, or what would happen in the Heath. I'd also like to see how the marriage of Diggory Venn and Thomasin played out, especially with Thomasin's child who would never really know her real dad.
DeleteI fall into the same boat as almost everyone else. It did take me a while to read this novel, especially the beginning. Personally I'm more of the type of reader that likes time to go by quickly in books where more things happen. Although the beginning for me was a struggle, I did find the rest of the book to move much quicker. Something I really enjoyed about the novel was that the heath could represent many different things depending on the perspectives of the people who lived there. As for most of the characters, with the exception of Eustacia, they seemed to find comfort, a feeling of home, and beauty in the heath. As for Eustacia, the heath was ugly. I liked this aspect of the book because I like the idea of everyone experiencing the same place and each individual getting something different out of it. I found this to be very interesting. Although I wouldn’t say it was my favorite book to read, overall I found some of it enjoyable.
ReplyDeleteTaylor, I'm actually really happy you brought up the importance of the heath and how it impacted each of the individual characters. What I took from the heath is that even though it's an inanimate object it could be interpreted that the heath hates Eustacia and Wildeve. I know this seems farfetched and as I said in other posts I could be reading into the work a little more than necessary, but what if the heath kills everyone who resembles an enemy. Death by drowning not only ties into Hardy's use of nature impacting each character but serves an almost necessary way to die for Wildeve and Eustacia. I don't carry any spite towards these characters, I just believe that the hostility of the heath was intended by Hardy. The heath just seeks revenge for itself due to the hatred shown by these two characters.
DeleteAfter reading the Return of the Native, I think a message the author is trying to get across is the balance of good and bad in the world. By making the relationships between the characters seem like a circus, it makes the divide between these two groups very clear. Characters like Eustacia and Damon seems absurd with all the foolish and emotion driven behavior they show. Their actions like trying to run away at the end of the novel show how they had no regard for Clym. These two only cared about themselves and had no loyalty which was shown by them not being faithful and being deceitful with their relationships. The characters who are meant to show the good in the world are Clym and Thomasin. Throughout the book, Clym suffers bad luck with his wife dying, his mother dying, and his disease. Thomasin is used by Damon and never has a real relationship until later in the book when she marries Diggory. Because the author showed both negative outcomes and positive outcomes for both the good and bad characters, it conveys the idea that both good and bad exist in the world.
ReplyDeleteWhile I was reading The Return of the Native, I found love and relationships to be brought up in the novel in many different forms and situations. Something that I noticed about the novel was, for most of the characters, love isn’t easy, and in fact it is quite painful. It seems to me that most of the characters have fallen in love with the idea of being in love. They also fall in love with the idea of another person who would be someone of their fantasy, not reality. The problem with this is when one falls out of their fantasized view of the other, things get ugly. Eustacia, for example has a romantic relationship with Damon Wildeve, but then she engages in a heart-rending marriage with Clym Yeobright because she realizes that he is what she wants. Eustacia was so eager to find a man to cure her loneliness that she didn’t find what she truly was looking for, she just like the idea of having someone. To me, this is one of the reasons why I feel Eustacia thought of the heath as such a horrible place.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Taylor that Eustacia married Clym because she was eager to find a man to cure her loneliness now that Wildeve married Thomasin. However, there were also some other reasons for her marriage to Clym. Eustacia didn't so much love Clym, but rather what he represented. To Eustacia, a marriage to Clym meant a new life. Eustacia loathed the heath and believed that "here she was forced to abide." Clym returned to the heath from Paris where he worked as a diamond merchant. Eustacia desperately wanted to go to Paris and escape her boring life on the heath. She hoped that after she married Clym they would soon move to Paris together. As we all know, Eustacia's dream doesn’t become a reality. Being stuck to live in a small cottage on the heath, in combination with her husband’s partial blindness and new job as a furze cutter, Eustacia becomes even unhappier with her life.
DeleteI realized the characters seemed less affected by character to character interactions but what really shaped them was the role nature played. An example I have is this, “The subtle beauties of the heath were lost to Eustacia; she only caught its vapours. An environment which would have made a contented woman a poet, a suffering woman a devotee, a pious woman a psalmist, even a giddy woman thoughtful, made a rebellious woman saturnine." In this quote Hardy is saying that the beauty of the heath is lost on Eustacia and she only picks up on its depressing vibes. Hardy goes on to say that different kinds of women would be influenced differently by the heath such as a giddy woman becoming thoughtful but that Eustacia became gloomy on the heath; her rebelliousness turns to gloom. As Hardy says it's more nature's role than anything else. Am I the only one who saw this? Or am I reading a little bit too much into this piece?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe character I found most interesting was Diggory Venn. He always seemed to appear at the right place at the right time. He also has the distinction of being the one truly selfless character. All the other characters act mostly or entirely in their self-interest. Everything he does is to make Thomasin happy, even if this means her marrying a man other than himself. One scene that exemplifies Venn's character is when he and Wildeve gamble for Thomasin and Clym's inheritance, on pages 225-232. Wildeve is doing it for selfish reasons -- he feels that what belongs to his wife should also belong to him. However, Venn is doing it for altruistic reasons. He knows the money belongs to Thomasin and his only goal is to return the money to her. This sets Venn apart from the other characters. While they have their own agendas, he acts selflessly to improve the happiness of someone else. As I was reading, I found Venn to be the only character I was really rooting for. To me, all the other characters had qualities that made them unlikable or hard to sympathize with. Throughout the novel, Venn was constantly slighted and rejected despite his noble acts, which made me want him to succeed in his goals more than any other character.
ReplyDeleteI really like Diggory as well. He was one of the only helpful ones in the entire novel. But, I was also rooting for Clym. He seemed like a genuine character too. I felt bad for him especially when it became clear that Eustacia was unhappy and wanted more. I was so sad when he started losing his eyesight and also when he lost his mom. Eustacia was not the best match for him and I wish he could've found a better wife. He deserved better.
DeleteAllison Salina has a few thoughts about this novel:
ReplyDelete1.I agree that the beginning of the story was very slow and rather unappealing. But after the background was laid for the setting and the characters, Thomas Hardy was finally able to make his novel more interesting. As the pages went on, the love affairs of Thomasin, Wildeve, Eustacia and Reddleman obtained depth and intricacy. I enjoyed how the author allowed us into his character’s heads and we were able to see the constant back and forth in their minds. It was as if we were part of the major life decisions they made which allowed for an emotional bond to be created between the book and its audience. Once Clym Yeobright came into town, the novel picked up pace and it became much more entertaining and engaging to read.
2.Thomas Hardy’s descriptions in the novel may be tedious, and at times annoying, but I did find them to be quite captivating. Every couple of pages he would throw in a phrase that really got me thinking and would say things in ways that were purely poetic and intriguing. The book is jammed pack with examples but some of my favorites are:
i. “…he would allow the enigma to drop into the abyss of undiscoverable things”.
ii. “…when equilibrium was lost”.
iii. “The wings of her soul were broken by the cruel obstructiveness of all about her…”
iv. “Can there be no beautiful bodies without hearts inside”?
v. “I’d give the wrinkled half of my life”!
Hardy has such a way with words that he seemed to make even the plainest and simplest thoughts have depth and intricacy. He made poetry out of his character’s life which made his story much more appealing.
3.After finishing the novel, I have found that my favorite character is unquestionably Clym Yeobright. I admired how he stuck to who he was as a person even when the people closest to him were telling him to do otherwise. He went to Paris, and was on track to become a financially successful man but he knew in his heart that he had a passion for literature, books and teaching. As much as his mother, and eventually his wife, pressured him into returning to the big city, he found the courage to stay in the heath where he felt he belonged. I also loved how his feelings were always incredibly pure and wholesome. After Eustacia had passed away, he had the opportunity to pursue a relationship with Thomasin, a beautiful woman who could stand by his side the rest of their lives. But rather, he decided to stay by himself. He realized that when he loved Eustacia, he loved with everything he had. “Every pulse of loverlike feelings which had not been stilled during Eustacia’s lifetime had gone into the grave with her…. Even supposing him capable of loving again, that love would be a plant of slow and labored growth, and in the end only small and sickly, like an autumn-hatched bird”. Clym put all of his heart and soul into one basket and when that did not work out he was brave enough to accept that he could never be the same again. Overall, I believe that Clym seemed to be more evolved than the other characters in the sense that he was not as worried about money and social status but instead he cared for people.
Although I like Clym a lot because of how he always stayed true to himself despite the other outside influences, my favorite character was Diggory. At times I felt that his hopeless devotion to Thomasin was a little creepy he was always selfless in what he did to make her happy. Throughout the entire novel he put his feelings on the back burner in order to make her happy until of course he got his happy ever after at the end.
DeleteAnd a few more:
ReplyDelete4.Though there were many romantic connections in the novel I personally believe that Diggory Venn’s lust for Thomasin is the purest love. Although he was a tad bit obsessive, I found it very sweet how tender and caring he was. All of his actions were concentrated towards protecting Thomasin and her happiness even when it involved strengthening her connection with another man. He was willing to go to extreme lengths for her, even eaves dropping on other’s conversation’s and changing his profession. He gave Thomasin his heart and soul vowing to her how he “could never take pleasure in a day that was bad for you”. Although it was a mostly unrequited love, Diggory Venn never thought for even a moment that he would do anything to hurt her. His adoration for Thomasin was wholesome and without any expectation of gaining anything in return. Overall, I found it to be quite endearing how selfless Venn was.
5. Eustacia and Wildeve’s relationship seems to be consistently unhealthy throughout the novel. They claim how they always want to meet with each other and seconds later they never want to see each other again. They fight constantly, they interrupt one another’s life once it seems as though everything is going smoothly, and they seem to be the root of many of the problems within the town. All in all, it appears to be that together all they are is trouble. Eustacia claimed to Wildeve how “You may come again to Rainbarrow if you like, but you won’t see me; and you may call, but I shall not listen; and you may tempt me, but I won’t give myself to you any more”. Obviously, this was proven to be false time and time again. They tried endlessly to break away from one another but to say that they would keep away from each other was only a lie. Their love was so constant and strong that eventually they lead themselves to their own deaths.
I completely agree with both of your statements. Diggory was probably the most selfless person in the novel and his love for Thomasin was by far the most pure. He would do anything for her even at the expense of her loving him. A good example of this is his attempts to keep Damon from breaking her heart and leaving her for Eustacia, even after getting them together in the first place. Your second statement is also extremely accurate, as you said they go back and fourth between each other in a classic "Love-Hate" relationship which seems to change at every conflict. They messed with other peoples lives to get back at each other until it eventually ended in tragedy.
DeleteJacob W. is responding to an earlier post:
ReplyDeletePlease post this in reply to the standalone comment Andrew Burns made on The Return of the Native on August 27 at 1:34 PM.
"That's actually a very good point, Andrew. Many people (myself included) forget the age and the context in which this book was written, and as a result, it inevitably obscures much of the meaning of Hardy's prose. However, that's not necessarily a fault of the book itself. Many others and I have pointed out how the majority of the references are irrelevant and obscure, and that Hardy's insistence on their frequent inclusion only detracts from the reading experience. However, this book was first published in 1878. 138 years ago. To a more religious audience acquainted with world affairs of the mid-late 1800's, many of Hardy's references are not at all irrelevant or obscure. Rather, to the average reader of the time period, many of his allusions would add insight, humor, or detail that thoroughly enriches the prose. I agree that if there was a more updated version of this novel, with either the outdated references changed or removed outright, the reading experience would at least not be as hindered as it currently is. Honestly, I gave up looking up every single reference and allusion in the first chapter alone. It just wasn't worth it. I would read an obscure and unfamiliar reference, spend a minute or two looking it up and attempting to interpret it in the context in which the reference was made, then go all the way back and find my place in the text again. I simply didn't have the attention span to do so throughout the hundreds of pages in this lengthy work. If others here did, then sincerely, I applaud your dedication."
After reading the part when Eustacia falls into the weir, I immediately questioned whether her actions were purposeful or accidental. It wouldn't come as a huge shock if Eustacia had meant to kill herself because she previously had suicidal thoughts. After she leaves Clym and returns to her old home, Eustacia is caught staring at the pistols. Eustacia wasn't in a good place mentally after Clym blamed her for his mother's death and kicked her out. She also realizes that even if she made it to Paris she wouldn't have any money to live off of. Maybe Eustacia realized that it was too complicated and hard to escape the heath and finally gave up on trying to find happiness. However, Eustacia had tried so long to escape the heath that it seems odd she would give up when she was so close to freedom.
ReplyDeleteIn my opioion I do think that their deaths were and act of suicide. This part of the book reminded me of Romeo and Juliet except less focused on the suicide part. Both of the chacters felt helpless and lost. They were both hashed out of wanted to run away and couldn't face the fact of not being together. I find that when relationships in this book get questioned the outcomes lead up to dramatic events. She did give hints to sucided just like Hedda did. She even admitted she had suicdal thoughts and the idea of everyone 'turning on her' probably didn't help. She probably saw it as a last resort. Damon probably saw it as a 'you jump I jump' romantic time and place for them to die together. Which I think is terrible on all sorts of levels. They felt as it suicide was the answer and that they needed to be together but couldn't in the 'real world'. Just my opinion!
DeleteI definitely think that Eustacia's death was an act of suicide. Although it does seem odd that she gave up so close to the end, with her mental state anything was possible. In our right minds as we were all reading this book, we can't understand how she could give up, but sadly, Eustacia wasn't in her right mind. She had fought with Clym's mother and felt it was her fault she died and she moved out of her house. She felt that there was no way to move forward which is an immediate sign of the want to commit suicide. After all of these harsh events passed through her life, she seemed to be more and more flustered at her life situation and seemed to grow pale and lose motivation more and more as the story moved on.
DeleteConsidering Eustacia's incident with the pistols, her death was definitely a suicide. However I do not think Damon's death was a suicide, but instead he made a rash decision to save Eustacia without considering his own ability to swim. This is because as Clym and Damon were pulled from the water, Damon was found tightly grasping Clym's legs. The most likely explanation for this is that, as a drowning victim, Damon was trying to grab onto the nearest object in an attempt to get to the surface. A less likely explanation would be that, after realizing he would never be able save Eustacia, he might have intentionally tried to drown Clym so that he couldn't have Eustacia either, but this less likely explanation would also require Damon jumping into the water to save Eustacia, not to commit suicide.
DeleteI was actually a little annoyed that Diggory Venn married Thomasin at the end of the book. The book was clearly set up to be a tragedy in every way, from the poor timing of Mrs. Yeobright visiting Clym, to the unfortunate fate of Clym's apology letter, which never reached Eustacia. Of course, when Clym, Eustacia, and Damon are pulled out of the dam, Clym is the only survivor. As Clym already felt guilty about scolding Eustacia, it was only fitting that he should deal with the survivor's guilt of negatively impacting so many lives without any harm to himself or even any punishment. Even though I liked Diggory as a character, it seemed very strange to conclude such a developed tragedy with a half-hearted happy ending, rushed into the last thirty pages of the book.
ReplyDeleteI can see Corey's point, when he states that he was annoyed by the ending. However, I rather enjoyed it. The ending symbolizes a very important lesson in life. Thomason was devastated by the death of her husband, not to mention the fact he was going to run away with Eustacia. She must have felt all different levels of pain after the 'accident' mentally and physically. However, she got back up, she started to find her happiness again. She reconnected with her daughter and then proceeded to turn her life around for the better. She moved on and fell in love with the right person, she could have married Clym but she didn't because she did feel as if it was right. She didn't jump into the marriage like the other couples did. She took the time to find the right person for herself, which the majority of the characters in this book failed to do. I think this was the lesson that was learned at the end of the book, or the moral of the story. She found someone she loved, someone who loved her through it all and had always loved her. Dighory Venn did what all the other men didn't do, was to wait. He didn't jump in and ruin any relationships or cheat etc. He waited for the love of his life and I think the book turning around for the better is something that should be celebrated. It gave the 'lesson learned' feeling to the end of the book, which I think is very important when reading a romantic novel.
DeleteI agree with Corey that this was a very strange way to end a "tragedy" that had been developed in a very methodical way. Hardy chose a different path in writing this book and added a twist to the traditional tragedy. I think this added suspense to the novel. In no way had I thought Diggory and Thomasin would marry in the end due to the events that had developed throughout the book before. This ending was like a fairy tale ending in the midst of disaster. I took the ending as a way for Hardy to say, that life moves forward even when tragedy prevails. He chose a new way of telling his novel and as noted by certain students, the beginning of the book was hard to get through, but after that the book seemed to be full of detail and color.
DeleteOne of my favorite sections is at the end of Chapter I of the first book: "In [the heath's] venerable one coat lay a certain vein of satire on human vanity in clothes...We seem to want the oldest and simplest human clothing where the clothing of the earth is so primitive". This makes me think EMULATOR, the humbling effect nature has on humanity, habitual imitation/assimilation. It sets the scene as a sort of vacuum, void of frivolity. More than anything, this cements the relationship between the heath and its people for me.
ReplyDeleteThe lack of frivolity is ironic, because Eustacia lives on the Heath but desires everything considered frivolous on a place that is tough and many of its people do not desire much, and are happy with their simple lives.
DeleteI agree! The first few chapters set such a mood of somber simplicity that when Eustacia came into the picture, I was startled by how little she seems to care for anything that is not immediately related to what she wants at the time.
DeleteGreat Schmitz says:
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this book! It was a little tough to adjust to Hardy's verbose and flowery style, but I found myself extremely engrossed in the story. My favorite aspect of the novel was the set of characters. Hardy's in-depth descriptions brought these people to life and made their slew of emotions feel authentic and genuine. I found myself sympathizing with Diggory in the true unfairness of the way both his peers and fate itself treated him. I felt upset at Clym and Mrs. Yeobright's extreme stubbornness and disconnect. I hated Wildeve's carelessness and inane actions. Hardy's thorough characterization fully inserted me into Egdon and the Heath itself, and I think that is what kept me so committed to this story. If not for that, I would have had a lot harder time.
Something I like to see in an older English novel is a bit of humor, and Book 1 Chapter 3 is where I found it. The chatter between the people of the heath was so amusing to me, especially the part when they called out Christian. One turf-cutter was like, "Hey has anyone heard of a man that no one would ever marry," and everyone says "No not me," and then Fairway is like, "I do but I'm not naming names". And then a man is like,"Hey Christian why are your teeth chattering, are you cold?" For some reason this conversation just made me laugh so much and I don't know if this was the intended effect but to me, it was written like a comedy. Also, the fact that Clym went *nearly* blind? Again, not sure if that was mean to produce a laugh, but maybe Hardy threw it in to warn readers not to take studying too seriously. I've read my fair share of extremely dry and wordy old English novels, and I am glad this was not one of them.
The thought of escaping to Paris was a very attractive and distracting idea to Eustacia, and later Wildeve. A large part of the conversations between Eustacia and Clym at the synthesis of their relationship is going to back to Paris, where Clym just returned from. Clym could care less, but Eustacia is oblivious to his irritation and becomes intoxicated with the thought of leaving the Heath and going somewhere extraordinary. It becomes a central part of why she marries Clym. Later on, Wildeve agrees to get Eustacia to Paris, and suddenly, they both believe they can be free from the Heath and from their confusing marriages. They instead die together, neither of them seeing Paris.
Greta, I liked how you mentioned about the dream of going to Paris. Eustacia was so stuck on the idea that Paris would be her place of complete freedom. She wanted to escape with Wildeve and live together forever. My thought was that both characters died together in the end because even if they had went on to live in Paris together, I don't think Eustacia would ever be able to forgive herself. She was stuck in this mental breakdown mode that made her very vulnerable and I don;t think even her dreams could've made this any better. Even when Clym lived through his life-saving act, he still wasn't able to recover fully. His body had been through so much stress trying to figure out how his mother had died and in the end he felt that he was the cause of two woman's deaths. There was no way he was going to go back to what he was before all of these tragedies. This seems to be the same for Wildeve and Eustacia. The author ended the book with an odd type of "happy-ending" where the lovers were at least with one another.
DeleteI love what you said about the humor, Greta! When I first read that part, I was confused because I wasn't sure whether they were being serious or not, but after going back over it, I found it really funny too. I agree with your theory about throwing some ha-has in for the reader. I like how Hardy embeds humorous sections like this one into the work, almost like Easter eggs. It's a nice break from the dryness, and once you decode it, there's this nice quality of exclusivity, almost, like being let in on a secret.
DeleteHas anyone wondered why this book is called The Return of the Native? I figured it was called this because Clym is the catalyst for the entire story; he moved back to his hometown of Blooms-end after living in Paris. He was a native to Egdon Heath, and quite literally returned home, but I wasn't sure if the name of this book had more meaning to it that I overlooked. Anyone have any ideas?
ReplyDeleteI think Clym is the native in this book. No other characters really move away and return except for him. His actions were important to the plot. His coming back to the heath provided Eustacia with her unrealistic and romantic notion that he would give her everything she wanted. Of course this did not work out because he loved his home town and didn't want to return to Paris. After Clym lost his eyesight he physically could not go back to Paris even if Eustacia talked him into it. Eustacia was trapped once again in Egdon Heath, furthering her misery and making her look elsewhere, namely Wildeve, for her happiness.
DeleteI think that Clym had a big part in the title of the book, but I think there may be more too it than just his return. Clym was left in the end of the novel to be the only one of the original "main" characters to survive throughout the roller coaster of a life they had been through. I think the title deals with the idea that his return brought a new "life" to the book. When he came back everything in the book changed. People felt that they had to welcome him back and be connected with him. Mrs. Yeobright immediately needed to make sure that Thomasin was married before he found out that she had not been married as had been first scheduled. She feared this would make Clym feel as though Thomasin had made a fool of the family. Another main interaction was with Eustacia feeling that he was to be her only true love and she dressed up for the play in order to meet him. Clym changed the dynamics of the novel and added a great amount to the downfall of the characters in the novel. Clym was the character who made the novel suspenseful when he arrived and the one who added greatly to the tragedy of the book in the end.
DeleteGreta says:
DeleteI believe the title is also signifying that Eustacia is an outsider. Hardy goes on and on at great lengths to let you know that Eustacia is other-worldly, "alien", and out of place. He compares her beauty to that of goddesses and myths. Everyone in the town even thinks she's a witch! And, she is so complex in comparison to Thomasin, a typical and naive character in books like these. When she marries "the native", there's a juxtaposition between Clym and Eustacia as a coupling, the native vs the outsider.
To me Clym is the Native in the book. By dictionary definition a native is "a person born in a specified place or associated with a place by birth, whether subsequently resident there or not." Clym grew up in the Heath but left in order to peruse a job. He was the only character to both leave and return to the Heath. I really like how Greta connected Eustacia to being an outside because I never made the connection that “there's a juxtaposition between Clym and Eustacia as a coupling, the native vs the outsider."
DeleteClym is definitely the native. In a literal sense, he was a native of Egdon Heath before he moved to Parrs. After he moved he did return to his former home. Not only is he literally a "the native," but also in the way that he really does belong at the Heath. Although he does gain a lot of knowledge and experience in Paris, he fits in very well at the Heath. Even after his dream of Paris was prohibited to happen due to his deteriorating vision, he fits right in as a furze-cutter and lives a life that wasn't necessarily of his choosing, but it is a life that he seems to grow to enjoy.
DeleteThe title of the book essentially comes from a quote from Eustacia in Book Fourth, Chapter IV, "If you had never returned to your native place, Clym, what a blessing it would have been for you!" Considering this, Clym is the native of the title.
DeleteI like what everyone is saying here. Of course, Clym is the native who returns, yada yada, but if you look at the phrase "the return of the native" with no context, it helps show how the plot progresses away from what the title implies. A native returning sounds like it would be a good thing, maybe with some homecoming celebration. However, while Clym's travels and worldliness fascinate Hedda at first, ultimately, her hopes are only lifted to be crushed.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAt the conclusion of this book I think that Hedda and Eustacia are exactly alike. I think they are alike in the sense that people generally don't like them. They are mean to people and sneak around when they know it isn't right, and they do it for selfish reasons. For example, Eustacia's husband fell very ill and couldn't read, which is something that made him him. He was devistated and instead of giving up in life he aspired for a new job. The fact that he decided to be a furze-cutter drove Eustacia crazy. This part really really annoyed me because he would probably rather be studying and teaching but he can't. She shouldn't look at someone any less because of their choice of employment. This is where their realtionship starts to fall apart which I think is the worst part of it all. When her husband gets sick and isn't seen as this 'perfect healthy man' she starts looking for other men like Damon. A health issue is no reason to leave or become less interested in someone, when you get married the terms are 'in sickness and in health' and she disobeyed it and doesn't really care.
ReplyDeleteI do also think like Hedda she uses people, she wanted to go to Paris but didn't have the money. She started to see Damon as someone who she could use for money and didn't really desire. She just wanted to go to Paris and that was that. I also think she doesn't really know what she wants. Like Hedda she is very confused on who she actually loves or even if she loves anyone. Eustacia leaves when things start to get bad, like with her husband and her suicide. She couldn't handle her husband so she left, she couldn't handle the stress of the people she was hurting so she left.
I do think the book was an okay read, although it was a little slow as the characters started to develop and secrets were no longer secrets, is when the book got interesting. I think the chacters in this book relate to Hedda Gabbler, the mix in the relationships and the hidden feelings for each other. I liked the sense of mystery in this book with Eustacia and her lovers and how it all ended up playing out.
While reading, I also found many similarities between Hedda and Eustacia. Hedda shares her feelings to both Brack and Ejlert that make them question her love to Tesman just how Eustacia shares feelings between Clym, Damon. In addition, both seem pretty bored about their lives and want some escape. Eustacia hates living in the Heath and wants to leave while Hedda wants to get out of her home and be free. I think it caused both of them to have stress and caused them to be both manipulative and eventually leads up to their deaths.
DeleteThomas Hardy's lengthy description of the heath made it very easy to picture where the story took place. It was helpful to feel like you were there as the plot unfolds. Eustacia's dreamy, romantic quality really stood out against the dreary backdrop of the heath. Hardy made it very easy to see that she didn't belong here, similar to Hedda in "Hedda Gabler". Even though one woman was from Northern England and the other from Norway, I feel as though both of them lived in a time period in which they didn't belong. It's almost as if these women were from the present and time traveled back to the 19th century because they acted dominant in every relationship even though women from their time usually did not do this.
ReplyDeleteI found that I was incredibly dissappointed by The Return of the Native's ending. To me, the book should've remained a comeplete tragedy through and through. Perhaps this is me being pessimistic, but I think that after such terrible things happened, no one should've had a happy ending. It seemed artificial, and so unlike the rest of the book to have the end that it did. Diggory Venn was a quirky, strange man, but he loved Thomasin greatly. To see him marry her was nice, but odd. It seemed to me that realistically he would never stop his trade and he should've continued to be a reddleman and just disappear and never be heard from again. Clym remained a guilt stricken, unmarried man for the rest of his days, and while he briefly considered marrying his cousin, it seemed fit that both of them should've remained spouseless. In fact, the copy of the book that I own said in a note at the bottom of the page that Hardy had not originally planned the marriage between Thomasin and Diggory, but after sometime, he rewrote the ending, and that people could choose the ending they preferred. That's why I think the "happy" ending is so dissatisfying to me. It fits awkwardly, and I don't think it was the ending that Hardy truly wanted for his book.
ReplyDeleteA theme that I found continuously come up throughout the book was the lack of communication in relationships. This lack of communication often caused relationships to be damaged or end altogether. An example of this was when Thomasin was afraid to ask Wildeve for money. Instead of coming right out and talking to him about it, Thomasin went to her aunt. Her aunt later asked the boy to send the guineas to Thomasin, and then the whole gambling debacle with the boy and Wildeve ensued. This caused Wildeve to realize that Thomasin's aunt didn't trust him, which probably caused him to distrust his relationship with Thomasin a least a little and revive his attraction to Eustacia even more. If Thomasin had been more straightforward, her relationship with Wildeve might have been stronger. Another example is when Eustacia avoided telling Clym that his mother came to their house that day but she didn't let her in. When Clym found out from another source what had happened, he exploded and let out his anger on Eustacia. If Eustacia had told him what happened herself, he might have been more understanding and their relationship might have continued a little while longer.
ReplyDeleteI know Egdon Heath was mentioned a lot throughout the novel and may have been the hardest details of the book to stay interested with, but i think they were an essential part of the novel. The book starts out by explaining the Heath and all those who live in it. The novel continues to state the elements of the Heath that make the lives of the characters challenging. I think the Heath added to the whole story as another aspect of difficulty and happiness simultaneously. Thomasin was in love with the Heath and knew it well so she didn;t normall get lost, but when the Heath was in a rainstorm, she needed the aid of Diggory Venn. The Heath moved characters closer to what their end result was to be. Thomasin and Venn in the end were married and the Heath had moved them closer together and showed how much they cared for each other. The Heath was also a place for Clym and others to go on long walks and contemplate their lives. I think the Heath was a huge part of the dynamics of the book and led the plot to move along in an orderly manner.
ReplyDeleteI think you make an excellent point. While it was extremely hard to get through the details and continue being interested in the plot, the Heath wasn't just the setting of the novel, it was the explanation for how some characters act. The Heath was important because it represented familiarity and safety. It was a good place for people who wanted conformity and no change, but for people who wanted change, the Heath was an annoying place to be. The Heath, throughout the book, I found was more than just a place, like you said, it led people to what their end result was. It's more of a guide than a place.
DeleteOne section of the text really stuck with me throughout the whole book. This section was
ReplyDelete"The great inviolate place had an ancient permanence which the sea
cannot claim. Who can say of a particular sea that it is old? Distilled by the sun,
kneaded by the moon, it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour. The sea changed,
the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon
remained" (Page 12).
I had to stop and read this section twice because I thought it was written so beautifully. It made me feel as though time had stopped in Egdon and they were missing out on what was happening in the world surrounding. This connection is what made me think about how Eustacia felt throughout the book and why she so desperately wanted to leave.
While Hedda and Eustacia have a lot in common as far as their lifestyles and situations, I think it is still obvious that Eustacia is still a more 'down to earth' type of character. Hedda never tried to fool herself into thinking she was in love. She always knew she wasn't in love with George and only married him because it seemed like the logical thing to do due to the money and George's willingness to make her happy. However, Eustacia 'fell in love' multiple times and she completely convinced herself that she was meant to be with them. I think Eustacia was more addicted to and drawn to men because of their level of unavailability. If they wanted her, she didn't want them, and if she wanted them, they would be attracted to or with another woman. Altogether, I think Eustacia's believed her intentions were good while Hedda knew her's were bad.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Taylor. Eustacia tricked herself into thinking she was in love countless times during the novel and in the end was only in her relationships for material things like moving to Paris and being able to sustain herself after she moved there. Hedda however, accepted George into her life because it truly was the most logical option for her. While she was absolutely devoted to Mr. Tesman, she was usually truthful and never tricked herself otherwise.
DeleteI think that I can sympathize much more with Eustacia than Hedda. First of all, Eustacia never really had an affair. Yes, it wasn't directly stated that Brack and Hedda had an affair, but one could tell that they had a much closer relationship than they should've. Eustacia did have a few meetings with Wildeve that Clym had never known about. At the same time, they were much less close than Hedda and Brack. Plus, when Eustacia did plan to leave with Brack, she was not married. She had separated from Clym and was living with her father. Although it was wrong of Wildeve to leave his wife and child, it was much more acceptable for Hedda to do since she wasn't even married. Also, as mentioned above, Eustacia did try and love to love Clym. Although Paris was a motivation for her love, she loved him nevertheless. As Clym first started to lose his sight, she would sit and read to him so that he could possibly learn what he needed to to become a teacher. Eustacia did love, or at least try to love Clym. On the other hand, Hedda never really loved or was happy with Tesman.
ReplyDeleteI find Diggory Venn to be very interesting. He always seems to show up right when his help is needed without any cries for help, and is usually unexpected when he does show up. One example of this was when he won all the money back from Wildeve in dice. I really enjoyed that part of the novel. I found it almost comical how Wildeve could not be stopped when he had won the money, but his luck would completely turn when he gambled against Diggory. I think the most amusing part was when he got his dice stuck on something and rolled a zero, while Wildeve had rolled a one.
ReplyDeleteFor lack of better term, Diggory seems like Egdon Heath's "golden boy." Not only does he seem to be in the right place at the right time, but he also gets what he truly desires in marrying Thomasin. Although she did reject his marriage in the first place, she does end up marring him in the end. This wasn't exactly how Diggory had planned it out, but it happened nonetheless. He also does become wealthy after he decides to become a dairy farmer. Overall, Diggory Venn is a very interesting and even lucky character.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteJulia Lyon says:
ReplyDeleteAt the start of this book, Eustacia stood out against the rest of the people and the setting. She was exciting and mysterious. I found her power over the other characters intriguing. Although somewhat unethical, I actually thought it was interesting that she controlled Damon so much that he was willing to push off his marriage to give her a chance to change her mind and come running to him. Even after she initially married Clym, I was still interested in her mysterious confidence. However, once her marriage took a turn, I began to despise her. When her husband, whom she seemed to care deeply about, became ill, she changed. Eustacia grew unloyal and deceitful to a level that I could not comprehend. Then, when things weren’t going her way, she decided she would give Damon a second chance. Might I remind you, he was married to Thomasin at this point in time. She completely disregarded respecting her and tried to reel Damon back into her. Unfortunately, Damon fell for it. They were shown sneaking around together throughout the remainder of the story. Mrs. Yeobright, Clym’s mother and Thomasin’s aunt, was painfully aware of the secret relationship between Damon and Eustacia. When she went to speak to her son, she was not welcomed into the home and started her journey home. During this trip, she faced her fate and passed away. Clym was livid when he discovered that Eustacia was primarily to blame for his mother’s death. This tragedy pushed Eustacia away even further and into Damon’s arms. They planned to run away together but in the execution of their plan, their spouses came looking for them. At the sight of both Damon and Clym waiting for her, Eustacia threw herself into the water and her two lovers dove in after her. This act was so cowardly on her half that it frustrates me. She sees those two men who care about her so deeply that they risk their lives for her, yet she still doesn’t have the courage and respect to face them with the truth. In Hedda Gabler, I found that many of the characters were equally responsible for the tragedies and deaths. In this story, I can’t seem to pin any of the blame on anyone except Eustacia. She caused nothing but trouble as soon as something went wrong in her perfect little life.
Olivia Finnegan says:
ReplyDeleteI agree with Taylor that Eustacia's actions were mostly of good intention, while Hedda's obviously were not. I have realized that over the years, in books and movies, I personally am more attracted to the villans and the antagonists the "save the day" heroines. I think that Hedda is so much more relatable. She is often mopy, bitter and cynical to the life she was handed. Both books feel like a kind of soap opera, but I really did enjoy them more than I expected. The introduction of Return of the Native says that Hardy had a deep attachment/connection to his characters. I believe that Hardy fashioned this novel loosely from his own life, and that readers can personally identify with each character in some way.
Oliva also "would also like to Comment on Taylor Papa's comment at 9:19 on the 28th of August.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the relationships of this novel point to the authors message and that the characters saw what they wanted to see in their partners, not reality. True love is seeing the flaws in someone and wanting only them anyways. Romantically, I didn't see true love in this novel except for Mrs. Yeobright's love for Clym. She swallowed her pride to make amends with her son, even after he left her. I also see this fantasy lens when Thomasin looks at Wildeve. She loves him yes, but never fully acknowledges that he is having an affair with Eustacia. She basically dismisses it because she doesn't want to face the painful truth that her husband isn't prince charming."
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOne more from Olivia:
ReplyDeleteAugust 26, 6:56 AM response to Jessica please
I agree with you Jess that Wildeve and Eustacia were in love, but they just ere in the wrong circumstances. If divorce was common, maybe they could've been a strong happy couple. If they had put their pride aside and let no one else's petty words influence them, this story definitely would have been different. I also agree that a modern take to this story with Wildeve and Eustacia as the focus would be a story I would love.
The Return of the Native was painfully descriptive in the beginning and it left me fairly confused. However as the book started moving along, I began to actually enjoy the plot and the complexity of the characters and their relationships. Clym and Thomasin both got the short end of the stick in their relationships. They were used as props by Eustacia and Damon, the two people they loved. Eustacia used Clym to try to get out of the Heath and live in Paris. Damon used Thomasin to get to Eustacia. It seemed Eustacia and Damon had no real feelings for Clym and Thomasin throughout their relationships, especially when they ran away together. The only person who didn't have some kind of other motive with their love was Diggory Venn. His love for Thomasin seemed very pure and he was always there for her at the right times. The multitude of relationships in this book was hectic but kept it interesting.
ReplyDeleteI 100% agree. I couldn't have said it better than you Ty.
DeleteThe book was a very hard read when it first began, however once the characters became more developed and the book shifted from focusing on the long and elaborate descriptions to the characters and what they were doing in their life the book became much more interesting. The relationship between Eustacia and Wildeve was one of my favorites. Although they were both married to different people, every interaction that they had throughout the novel, you could feel the love and passion that they had for each other through the authors descriptions. Unfortunately, they both ended up dying together in the end, which in my perspective is a beautiful ending for the two of them. Although they could not be together while they were alive, neither of them had to spend a day without the other and now they can be together in another place. I think the book itself can be described as being a romantic tragedy. Due to the fact that they both did die leaving their husband and wife to go on without them, however, they ended up together in the end, which is what they both wanted from the start.
ReplyDeleteOne scene that I feel characterizes Eustacia particularly well is on pages 116-118, where she passes by Clym and he says goodnight to her. Her reaction is what makes this scene so interesting. This simple goodnight sends her imagination running wild. Hardy writes, "She glowed; remembering the mendacity of the imagination, she flagged; then she freshened; then she fired; then she cooled again. It was a cycle of aspects, produced by a cycle of visions" (117). All of this is caused by one word uttered by a man she has yet to meet. This demonstrates how much of a hopeless romantic Eustacia is. It also foreshadows her downfall, as it is clear she becomes obsessed with the idea of Clym being her way out of the Heath.
ReplyDeleteI agree, and it seemed interesting to me how Eustacia never seemed as much in love with Clym as she was with the idea of Clym. Had Clym lived in the heath his whole life, there would probably be little chance that Eustacia would have ever fallen in love with him in the first place. Their views of the heath were completely opposite, with Clym loving the feeling of being close to nature and Eustacia despising the boredom of living there. Despite this, Eustacia was entranced by the idea of Clym being an interesting man from a part of the world she wished to explore, even though Clym had no intention of ever going back to Paris.
DeleteIt was almost funny how Eustacia kept looking forward to seing the rest of the world with Clym because she thought it was a promise between them, when Clym repeatedly said that he wished to stay at the Heath and become a schoolmaster of some sorts, yet she still married him on the premises of love and escape.
DeleteCorey, I agree with how you say Eustacia was infatuated with the idea of Clym, not Clym himself. To add to that, do you think her later frustration was directed at Clym? Or at the false idea of Clym, or at herself (probably not), for basing her decisions on a false perception? Barry Kerzin, an American physician and Buddhist monk, advises people to "mind the gap", or acknowledge that there is a difference between what IS and what is PERCEIVED. I have to say, Eustacia isn't too great at minding the gap.
DeleteI just finished reading the book and although it was well written, I really didn't enjoy the story too much. This was probably due to the fact that I found Eustacia rather shallow. She's looking for someone who can make her wildest dreams come true. Who she truly loves doesn't matter as much as someone who has the means to make her dreams a reality. The ultimate reason why she cast herself into the nearby weir is because she realizes that she's broke and she's have to take Damon Wildeve with her to Paris in order to survive there. However, Damon isn't fancy or ambitious enough for her. The only reason why she was considering Damon was because he was more rich than Clym. So basically she goes hopping from one man to the next depending on who can offer her more in er life.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first started to read the novel, I found myself often thinking back to last summer, struggling to get through the language of Huckleberry Finn. The third chapter is what really made me think of it. The conversation between the men discussing Mrs. Yeobright's outburst at church is primarily slang embedded with descriptive words and outcries. It reminded me specifically of the conversations between the duke, the dauphin, Huck, and Jim. The two con men were often embellishing everything they said, and it appears to be the same instance here.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that Thomasin ignored her mother's requests to not marry Damon Wildeve, instead choosing her heart and how he acted in a similar way while chasing Eustacia throughout the novel. Because both of them entered into these almost forbidden relationships, it seems fitting that they both settled with each other in the end in order to keep face and spite others. Damon married Thomasin to stick it to Eustacia that he was still happy without her, and how his life turned out just perfect with a wife and the prospect of a family. Thomasin always had feelings towards Damon, but when their first ceremony fell through, she caught cold feet for a brief period. In the end though, she went through with the marriage with the bitter permission of her mother, because in that small town, face and public appearance were everything. Her mother was still not happy with the marriage, and Thomasin went ahead with it as planned anyways, wanting to do what was best for her and her family.
ReplyDeleteI once again will be making a comparison to the television show "Game of Thrones", so if you plan on watching it be warned, I may spoil parts of it.
ReplyDeleteThe first connection I made was that the Heath was much like the far north, the wall and beyond, in the show. For those reading this who do not know what that is, it is the area that separates the more civilized people of the seven kingdoms who live under the king and queen. The civilized people like below "the wall," which is exactly what it sounds like, a huge wall made of ice protected by an elite army who must never take a wife and looses their right to become heir to anything, from the free folk, who are wild, and are lead by an elected leader. The wall and beyond is in a forever winter, where the cold alone could kill a man, and the many people and creatures that live beyond the wall understand this. The land has its own force to it, and the people must respect that. This is much like the Heath, which is also described as wild and has a very unforgiving in the terrain and weather that occurs. Much like the people who live I the north, the people of the heath learn to live with the their conditions and make a life with what they have.
Also, the confusing storylines of the charectors is much like the show, in which different houses lead by different people have different relations with others in public versus in private, much like the story in which the charectors true feelings are often hard to discover because they are to busy lying to others about their feelings.
Finally, although a very minor connection, is that the people of the Heath light fires to ward of winter and believe in many gods, which is also what some people do in the television show to ward of winter, depending on which god they believed the strongest in. They too have many gods.
Like almost everyone else, I found the first few chapters somewhat confusing due to the long, uninterrupted descriptions of the town and the area surrounding it. The author used a little too much detail here instead of focusing on the characters and the social aspects of the town. Despite this, he still did an excellent job later on of bringing the characters to life and making them three-dimensional. In other words, the characters in this story all had a sort of good side and bad one, even Eustacia. While it seemed at first she sought after different men based on their economic and social status, she later stuck by Clym's side when he started to go blind by reading to him and taking care of him. In conclusion, I was glad to have realized that the whole book wasn't simply long descriptions of scenery with barely any plot.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the fact that Eustacia had a different outlook on the heath than everyone else in the novel, especially Clym who was her love interest for the most part. She absolutely hated the heath and everything it stood for, with each possessing very little significance. It tied her to a small town, small girl life that she would do anything to escape from. She felt that she was destined for better things in a better place, specifically Paris. Clym had once escaped the heath, but like most on it, he felt like it was everything he wanted in a home. It provided a comfort to him, and he felt the most at ease when he was close to it. It was evident that while he was left to be a furze cutter, he felt most at peace. These contrasting ideas made me question how their relationship could really work when their core ideas were so different.
ReplyDeleteI definitely disagree with what you said about Eustacia being willing to do anything to escape the country life of the Heath. Near the end of Book First, Diggory Venn offered Eustacia an easy opportunity to move out to Budmouth, backed by the support of Venn's uncle. While Eustacia was at first excited by Venn's proposition, she rejected his plan after learning she would need to perform a miniscule amount of work.
DeleteAlso, Eustacia must have felt bound to the Heath because of her fixation on Damon Wildeve; Venn offered Eustacia that escape after he crawled in the bushes and overheard her and Wildeve discussing their relationship. Throughout the whole book, Eustacia cannot get Wildeve out of her mind, even as she is married to Clym. It also sounds like Eustacia was attracted to Clym naturally and additionally saw an "escape route", out to anywhere but the Heath, through their marriage.
DeleteThe beginning of this book was tough to read, but I felt it was necessary to the plot of the story. The beginning was mostly a description of the Heath as the setting of the story. It is made out to be a lonely, sort of sinister, area. Hardy describes, "The sombre stretch of rounds and hollows seemed to rise and meet the evening gloom in pure sympathy, the heath exhaling darkness as rapidly as the heavens precipitated it" (Hardy 12). The reader gets the idea that the Heath is like a dark wasteland. This is fitting to the plot because most of the book is seen as tragic, and a dark setting is the ideal location for this type of plot. Eustacia never received Clym's letter of apology and after being pulled from the dam, only Clym survived, which shows that for the most part, this novel was a tragedy. The Heath is the only setting that could do the plot its justice.
ReplyDeleteHardy’s writing style is extremely intriguing to me, as well as, how he describes the characters and their points of view on life. My favorite line in the story is when he talks about Eustacia and her ideas on love. Hardy describes, “To be loved to madness-such was her desire. Love was to her the one cordial which could drive away the eating loneliness of her days. And she seemed to long for the abstraction of passionate love more than for any particular lover” (74). Eustacia desired to feel love and really fawned over the idea of it. She did not care who it was, which makes sense because she didn’t really care whether she was with Wildeve or Clym (there was always something wrong with either of them), she just wanted to have love in her life. The only question I have is whether she is capable of loving someone or not. Part of me thinks that it would be impossible for her to even feel love and that it’s something she desires, but could never attain. What I wonder is if Eustacia and Wildeve hadn’t died and successfully ran away together, would she have ever loved him? Would she ever have been happy? Or would she constantly long for what she doesn’t have and stop wanting to be with Wildeve once his money ran out. I am also curious as to what Eustacia would be like if her death never happened.
ReplyDeleteIt is so unclear whether these characters in the novel actually love each other or not. I think the character that I’m really unsure about is Thomasin. Thomasin rejected the reddleman the first time he proposed marriage. It isn’t until the very end, when absolutely everything else had fallen through, that she wanted to marry him. It makes me wonder if she only married him to have some stability for her new baby. Diggory Venn is a loving, kind hearted man and possess all of the characteristics you would want a father to have. Thomasin didn’t always realize this, but from our standpoint, it is clear he is a perfect family man. Do you guys think that Thomasin realized this and married him for practicality or that she actually loved Diggory Venn?
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like Thomasin married Wildeve because she had wronged him by not marrying him on the first attempt when they went to the wrong town. Mrs. Yeobright was the strongest influence on Thomasin's decisions, and the aunt's insistence on the unity of Thomasin and Wildeve was what fueled the marriage. Although Diggory Venn presented himself as a noble option for Thomasin's hand, Thomasin also cared to right her wrong and not tarnish her and her aunt's reputation as a flippant maid. It is also mentioned that as Venn and Wildeve were both, at one time, options for marriage, Wildeve got to the Yeobright household before Venn could and took Thomasin's hand. Another point that you brought up was that
Delete"[i]t makes me wonder if she only married him to have some stability for her new baby", but she became pregnant by Wildeve if I recall correctly. Also, a majority of Diggory Venn's good deeds came after Thomasin became married to Wildeve; rightly, Diggory Venn would have been a good husband, if not a little overprotective as his later actions proved, but it was not fated for him and Thomasin to be married.
I always love a book with a creative title, and The Return of the Native certainly has its share of interpretations. Much of this book is centered around what home means, how to some of the characters Egdon Heath represents safety and comfort, and to others its a ball and chain keeping them from living the life they desire. A native is one who is born and raised, and often shares pride for the area in which they were raised. Clym is clearly this such native - he left the heath for Paris and returned later to his hometown. Clym does return, but it"s probably not the return he was hoping for. After incurring tragedy after tragedy, I couldn't help wishing he'd never left Paris. All he wanted to do was make Egdon a better place, and he ended up with a dead girlfriend and mother, not to mention partial-blindness. I believe your personality and approach to life can change drastically based on where you're living at the time - were Clym's bold moves too risky for such a small town? His choice to bring Eustacia into his home was certainly precarious, especially without his mother's permission. Clem's downfall in this novel all stemmed from the choices he made - choices he probably wouldn't have even thought of before his time in Paris. If the choices you make are fueled by where you're from, is Clym even considered a native anymore? I think Hardy's intent in the title was to create a sense of irony, that the native who's returning is no longer truly a native, but a man corrupted by the life of the city and headed for doom.
ReplyDeleteOne aspect of this book that I did enjoy was the fact that the Heath was characterized as though it was a living, breathing person. One particular quote does a good job summarizing this thought up, "It was, at present, a place perfectly accordant with man's nature – neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly: neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony" (Hardy 13). This quote acknowledges that the Heath shares similar traits to a man. The reader can see through this quote that the Heath tolerates in inhabitants yet always stays unchanged. It sort of looks over all human events that occur in its land. The first chapter of the first book in the novel is even named "A Face On Which Time Makes But Little Impression," which adds to the idea that the Heath appears as a living entity. It is given human features to further support the thought of the Heath as lifelike. This facet of the novel made the plot slightly more enjoyable as it is not typical for settings to be given lifelike qualities.
ReplyDeleteI also appreciated that personification of the Heath. Also "Twilight combined with the scenery of Edgon Heath to evolve a thing majestic without severity, impressive without showiness, emphatic in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity." I feel it gives the Heath almost God like qualities. It sets it, as you said, unchanging to it troublesome inhabitants.
DeleteOk let me start by saying this book was very Thomas Hardy to read. His descriptions undoubtedly had importance but they weren't enjoyable to read by any means especially that of the heath. Hardy was quite over wordy with his descriptions of people and places but then again this was the writing style of the time. One aspect of the book I did enjoy however was the parallels that can be drawn to modern day life. One of which is the constant gossip and rumors that flew through the heath. Everyone living there wanted to know what everyone else was doing and news travelled fast. This can of course been today with similar situations (deaths, marriage, love interests, etc.). Another parallel that can be drawn is the manipulation, jealousy and self interest in relationships. Although relationships "should" be a mutual loving connection there are often anything but. Eustacia shows this as she hops from man to man to find the one who can offer the most to her. We can see this in modern times as well.
ReplyDeleteQuite to my surprise, I enjoyed reading "Return of the Native"; my initial unease was caused by such an ancient title as this book possesses. However, after trudging through the first descriptions and the confusion of the campfires, Thomas Hardy presents an interesting, if not long-winded, marital adventure. To begin with, Eustacia Vye deserved some sympathy, as an at-heart city girl trapped in the rural plains of Heath. Her adventures in love were an attempt to liven up her dreary life, though they were quite scandalous. It was easy to hope that her love for Clym would keep her honest, but her true nature of desiring too much destroyed even a healthy marriage. However, I lost any sympathy or respect for her once she could not see all the effort and love that Clym put into their marriage, and even more so when she completely turned away from him and thus to Wildeve. The final straw was her causing Mrs. Yeobright's death; the fact that she barely owned up to it in the face of Clym her grieving son was too low for any person to fall. While this may seem dark, I was happy that Charley hid the pistols from her because she deserved to live with some consequence, though she soon died anyways. While Eustacia may have possessed some redeeming qualities, her actions deemed her unworthy of any sympathy or even respect.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteJust as a commentary on the book as a whole, I rather liked reading Hardy's detailing of the environment; the vivid imagery of the tall grasses, hill terrain, and beaten paths made the characters seem more realistic and easier to imagine moving along the land. Without such details, I feel that the book would have been even drier to absorb; relying only on the twisted interactions between the lovers would have been insufferable. At least constantly knowing the setting of the book explained some of action, with the best example being how Mrs. Yeobright died by exhaustion. The detailing in that section exemplified how knowing that she suffered from inescapable heat characterized both the land, the mother, and the people she affected. Overall, Hardy's attention and obvious adoration of detailing added to the reading experience.
ReplyDeleteI agree. Without the captivating imagery the book would be a skeleton. Each of the character is a part of the Heath, so to understand them is to know the land.
DeleteI have never read such a description for a character. Never have I encountered such a dynamic character. Who am I talking about? Cranky old Mrs. Yeobright? Or perhaps her gullible niece or her confused husband? No no that largest character is the Heath itself. Its description spanned the entire book and its dialogue was raw emotion that reflected the happenings of the scene. I will be honest, the read was challenging.I felt like there were so many ways things could be described differently. But if that were to happen then we would be quick to see the Romeo and Juliet elephant in the room. After reading Hedda Gabler I could see the people relate to one another as a small distorted mirror. Venn and the Judge have the outside observing role while they can still manipulate the situation to keep escalating for their own pleasure. Wildeve and Tesman the dopes who loved women who had her hand on their heart and eyes distant to fantasies. Mrs. Yeobright and Thea Were both beaten a long time ago at the loss of someone that the manipulator and moved far away Eustacia and Hedda, what a power couple they would be. I mean I would want to be Venn if these girls went to highschool with me. Just observing and occasionally stirring the pot to be amused at the bubbles that formed, Just waiting until they burst. Eustacia and the Heath; oh what weather they made. The descriptions of tall grass and a woman who both resented it yet hid in it made this book a good read. Reading it was un-enjoyable but looking back seeing the book as a whole makes me smile and I suppose that what a book is made to do in the end.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading "The Return of the Native", I found the descriptive writing style similar to when reading "The Scarlet Letter" last year in class. In both novels, at times, I found it hard to read because of their long descriptions of characters and scenes, but in both cases, are vital to the development to the story. Both of them were written in the same time period which can explain the similar style, but these descriptions helped me later understand the story a lot more and helped me appreciate both novels a lot more.
ReplyDelete