Every
good character in fiction deserves a name as singularly memorable as Eustacia
Vye, and a setting as breathtakingly depicted as Egdon Heath.
You know what
else is nice to have? An engaging story that doesn't play out like a series of
tragic contrivances.
As Thomas Hardy would be the first to remind us, you can't
have everything.
Vye is
one of three women we meet early on in Hardy's 1878 novel The Return Of
The Native; the others being sweet and simple Tamsin and Tamsin's aunt,
Mrs. Yeobright. Tamsie's fiancé, a rakish sort named Wildeve, secretly fancies
Eustacia, while Tamsie's cousin and Mrs. Yeobright's son, Clym, just back from
Europe, also takes a shine to Eustacia. Meanwhile, another man mysteriously
lurks in the background, watching over Tamsie protectively and sticking out for
his bright red hue, which he has gotten from selling reddle for sheep-marking.
None of
this matters in the least when reading the book's opening chapter, which
concerns itself not with people at all but the world in which they live. For
those of us who regard Hardy as a pre-eminent nature writer who wrote with a
macabre wit and appetite for detail, the first chapter of Return Of The
Native is a can't-miss experience.
The
distant rims of the world and of the firmament seemed to be a division in time
no less than a division in matter," he writes of his fictional Wessex
setting, the bleak and primordial Egdon Heath. "The face of the heath by
its mere complexion added half an hour to evening; it could in like manner
retard the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely
generated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight to a cause of
shaking and dread.
The greatness of Hardy is nicely encapsulated in this opening chapter; it resonates with a fearful appreciation of nature's concomitant beauty and power. The chapter's subtitle, "A Face on Which Time Makes but Little Impression," sets us up to expect a person when what we get is the heathland, which Hardy reminds us is little changed from primordial times. People come and go, but the land remains pretty much the way the Romans and Celts have found it. In fact, this first chapter is entirely devoid of people, who only begin showing up at the beginning of Chapter 2.
Once they do, however, Return Of The Native becomes a patchier reading experience. The problem isn't so much the personalities but what Hardy does with them. The subject of Return Of The Native is love, so what we get are characters entirely driven by their sociobiological urges, to the point where they lose any nuance. Even with Hardy's descriptive powers at high boil, his reductive tendencies get in the way.
Of one male, Hardy writes "rejected suitors take to roaming as naturally as unhived bees." A woman decides on a mate after glimpsing him at a festive party: "She was at the modulating point between indifference and love, at the stage called 'having a fancy for.' It occurs once in the history of the most gigantic passions, and it is a period when they are in the hands of the weakest will."
Rather aloof a tone for romantic fiction, no? Well, get used to it. In Return Of The Native, Hardy writes in tones reminiscent of a naturalist who turns over a rock to uncover mating slugs.
The greatness of Hardy is nicely encapsulated in this opening chapter; it resonates with a fearful appreciation of nature's concomitant beauty and power. The chapter's subtitle, "A Face on Which Time Makes but Little Impression," sets us up to expect a person when what we get is the heathland, which Hardy reminds us is little changed from primordial times. People come and go, but the land remains pretty much the way the Romans and Celts have found it. In fact, this first chapter is entirely devoid of people, who only begin showing up at the beginning of Chapter 2.
Once they do, however, Return Of The Native becomes a patchier reading experience. The problem isn't so much the personalities but what Hardy does with them. The subject of Return Of The Native is love, so what we get are characters entirely driven by their sociobiological urges, to the point where they lose any nuance. Even with Hardy's descriptive powers at high boil, his reductive tendencies get in the way.
Of one male, Hardy writes "rejected suitors take to roaming as naturally as unhived bees." A woman decides on a mate after glimpsing him at a festive party: "She was at the modulating point between indifference and love, at the stage called 'having a fancy for.' It occurs once in the history of the most gigantic passions, and it is a period when they are in the hands of the weakest will."
Rather aloof a tone for romantic fiction, no? Well, get used to it. In Return Of The Native, Hardy writes in tones reminiscent of a naturalist who turns over a rock to uncover mating slugs.
 |
| Thomas Hardy's fictional Wessex was the setting for his most famous novels, including The Return Of The Native. Egdon Heath is visible in the lower center of this map, just east of the similarly-fictional town of Casterbridge and south-southwest of the very real locale of Stonehedge. Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_regional_literature. |
You can't help but want more from Hardy here. In
Eustacia, a singularly proud and headstrong woman who draws our sympathy like a
flame does a moth, Hardy provides a boon match for his Lovecraftean canvas. You
feel for her even as you shake your head at her decisions, because she's so
alive and entertaining on every page where she appears.
The other characters here are a dim lot; with romantic rivals Clym and Wildeve
playing their stereotypical parts of idealist and cad while Tamsie slips
off-stage, unnoticed and unmissed. The reddleman has a name even cooler than
Eustasia's, namely Diggory Venn, yet he comes off the most labored and
unnatural player in this play, with his way of popping in and out to address
the foibles of others.
An Amazon.com user review praises the novel for affording "a cerebral playground" for Hardy's thematic concerns. To me, that's an apt summary for Return Of The Native's core problem, the sense of lab rats being run through a maze.
An Amazon.com user review praises the novel for affording "a cerebral playground" for Hardy's thematic concerns. To me, that's an apt summary for Return Of The Native's core problem, the sense of lab rats being run through a maze.
Hardy
pushes all the characters through their various tragic paces, employing the sort of snares
that trip up other Hardy characters in other novels. Tess d'Urbanville suffered
from the deprivation of a letter-eating carpet; here a letter-eating hat does
its worst. Only in Return Of The Native this happens a lot more often than you expect. People are always meeting at the worst times, where they will trigger
the worst suspicions and suffer the worst results. Much is said in anger and
repented too late.
"Sometimes more bitterness is sown in five minutes than can be got rid of in a whole life," notes Eustacia near the story's end, by which time this idea has already been introduced in myriad other ways.
Most jarringly, such matters are presented in a resigned, "thus-it-is-always-so" tone. It grates because, while fate can be cruel, seldom does it come off as contrived as it does here. Because it's Hardy, and you know to expect it, it's kind of enjoyable in a bleak-comic way; but only Eustacia's situation pulls you in deeper because she's so full of zest and humor. The rest of the cast work more like sock-puppets there for registering pain only, spending much of their time pining offstage as it were for another to notice them. You might expect one of the more practical characters in the novel to give up living in his wagon on the edge of town in hopes of winning over a woman married to someone else. But read on another chapter, and he's still there, waiting to jump in at just the critical moment.
"Sometimes more bitterness is sown in five minutes than can be got rid of in a whole life," notes Eustacia near the story's end, by which time this idea has already been introduced in myriad other ways.
Most jarringly, such matters are presented in a resigned, "thus-it-is-always-so" tone. It grates because, while fate can be cruel, seldom does it come off as contrived as it does here. Because it's Hardy, and you know to expect it, it's kind of enjoyable in a bleak-comic way; but only Eustacia's situation pulls you in deeper because she's so full of zest and humor. The rest of the cast work more like sock-puppets there for registering pain only, spending much of their time pining offstage as it were for another to notice them. You might expect one of the more practical characters in the novel to give up living in his wagon on the edge of town in hopes of winning over a woman married to someone else. But read on another chapter, and he's still there, waiting to jump in at just the critical moment.
Hardy's
brilliance as a writer stands out even here; so do his limitations as a
scenarist. What you wind up with here is a pretty pain parade that taxes your
patience long before it reaches its end.
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