The Return of the Native (Criticism)

Criticism

David Kelly

Kelly is an instructor of Creative Writing and Literature at Oakton Community College in Illinois. In the following essay, he examines how the timelessness of Egdon Heath actually helps support the plot's reliance on chance.

Upon delving into any number of essays focused on Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native, one is almost certain to come across a few important issues. The first issue is the character of the setting, Egdon Heath, which Hardy establishes in that long, lovely description in the first chapter and then comes back to throughout the book. More than most novels, even the bulk of Victorian romances, this book uses the setting as a character, a living presence, and not just as a buffer to linger over in between scenes. It seldom fails to impress. Critics who do not think much of Hardy's attributes as a novelist will usually point out, to soften the tone of their criticism, how he brings Egdon Heath to life — it's their way of paying homage to the man whose literary reputation is firmly established. Similarly, critics often point out his greatest weakness as a fiction writer: that he often stretched credibility too far by expecting his readers to believe that awkward twists in the plot happened because of coincidence.

These two outstanding aspects of The Return of the Native, though often mentioned just in passing and almost always separately, are in fact supports bracing one another — wedges of the same frame that Hardy used to present a unified world-view. The timelessness of the heath, and the unlikely confluence of the events that go on there, blend to create a unique place where nature itself is unnatural.

Stories, of course, have to happen somewhere; moreover, the stories that are the most artistically sound use their settings to manifest what is happening to the characters. Some novels, especially if they are set in the present and under familiar circumstances, can take their settings for granted, offering up names of towns and streets and occasional descriptions of the surroundings. When the location will probably be unfamiliar — most notably in science fiction or fantasy or historical fiction — the writer is obliged to paint a fuller landscape. What is notable about The Return of the Native is that Hardy could have effectively set the scene with far less detail than he did in fact use. It is a desolate area; the people there live as their ancestors did; the railroad has not arrived yet. That covers all that needs to be covered.

Instead, he opens the book with a haunting description that extends from sky to ground, from dark to light, and from the present to the past. Other novels occur in settings that have evolved in ways corresponding to the laws of history, but the rules of physics don't apply to Egdon Heath.

In his study of Hardy's career, Richard Carpenter cites John Patterson as identifying the heath as Limbo or the Cimmeron of Homer — places that are balanced between this world and Hades — not miserable but certainly not places of life. Hardy writes that the heath has the ability to "retard the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely generated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight to a cause and dread." The character of this place is so crucial to telling this story that it is expanded across six pages, which is an incredible amount of space for a novelist to spend on a description of anything. Also telling is the fact that it is situated first in the book, establishing its importance before any specific human characters are introduced.

Carpenter describes this setting as more than an image: it is a convenient narrative tool, allowing Hardy's characters to summon one another across miles with signal fires and also to bump into each other unexpectedly as they wander the twisted paths through the furze. "By confining nearly all of his action to its terrain," he writes, Hardy "achieves a unity of place which markedly aids in the creation of dramatic effects." It is a handy set-ting for events that have to be brought together in order to make the story work, but it is in no way a superbly successful one. If Egdon Heath were flawless in drawing readers into the novel's magical spell, the reader would be left feeling completely satisfied about the reality and inevitability of what he or she is told goes on there. Instead, the reader is left conscious of the hand of the author as coincidences abound, apparently there only for his storytelling convenience.

Stories always depend on coincidental events. Hardy appears to not have recognized the boundary that separates "did not anticipate" from "could not anticipate" — and that line, wide as the Mississippi River, separates tragedy from potboiler. A turn of events like Clym Yeobright's semi-blindness, for example, seems to materialize pretty quickly in the story, but it follows naturally from Clym's sudden dedication to be a great educator, which follows from his impulsive high-minded character, and is therefore grounded in the story.

Diggory Venn always shows up unexpectedly and fortuitously, so the reader can accept him as either a supernatural presence or an extremely prepared guardian. Eustacia and Wildeve are drawn together by a similar restlessness, so it is no wonder that their internal clocks would direct them both to the East Egdon "gipsying" at the same time. The adder that bites Mrs. Yeobright is the natural result of life on the heath. Eustacia is devious enough to loiter outside of the chapel when Wildeve is marrying, so there is no stretch of reality in her being the wedding's witness.

Even the event that starts the whole novel into motion — the canceled marriage between Thomasin and Wildeve — seems only to be a matter of coincidence to the people in the book. Readers recognize this as one of those psychological non-accidents, reflecting the fact that one of these two subconsciously wanted the ceremony abandoned — although it is unclear whether the hesitant party is Thomasin, who changed towns suddenly at the last moment, or Wildeve, who forgot to change the license.

These coincidences can all be explained, and they even afford readers some fun in recognizing that life in the novel can be as unruly and unpredictable as it is in the world. Other coincidences are harder to swallow. Readers who can get past the idea that Mrs. Yeobright and Wildeve and Johnny Nunsuch all arrive at the cottage at the same time still have to accept the fact that Clym would happen to choose that particular night, after months, to visit his estranged mother's house. Wildeve's fortune arrives out of nowhere, just in time for Eustacia to notice him again. The strangest of all, perhaps, is Fairway showing up late the night Eustacia is leaving, almost as an afterthought, with Clym's letter: it is hard enough to believe that he would happen to write when she happens to be leaving, but having a very minor character show up and say he had forgotten the letter until the drama is mounting shows a truly half-hearted effort on the part of the writer to simulate reality.

All readers of conscience are left to wonder how much the heath's wonderful, unique character can be allowed to account for the gaps in the story's credibility. To some extent, a lot: the otherworldliness that is so richly established allows Egdon Heath to excuse itself from any standards of behavior that are generally expected. If the laws of evolution are suspended there, then the laws of chance must be so too, since the one leads to the other. The same glitch that has left the heath unaltered for a thousand years also makes it possible for money to rain down unexpectedly from a previously unknown source, or for Diggory Venn to show up whenever his appearance would help the story.

In fact, Hardy not only flaunts the fact that chance rules, but he actually uses the readers' diminished expectations as part of the story's fabric. The characters who have any sense of the outside world become impatient with the slow, staid pace at Egdon Heath and they try taking fate into their own hands, creating tragedy. These characters include Eustacia and Clym, who has lived in Paris, the capital of the civilized world. Wildeve, an educated man, is able to sense a world beyond the heath, but he lacks the fortitude to do anything about it. When he inherits a lot of money later in the novel, he makes plans to break free of the heath and traverse the globe, but this hope is what leads to the tragedy at the book's end. Wildeve and Eustacia find out that the law of the heath is not outside of nature, that it is their nature.

Trying to change is what causes trouble in an environment where change is the one thing that cannot happen; and, because their energies cannot produce the results that were intended, the force expended careens off into the void and then bounces back in ways not expected. Readers who accept the fact that time has passed the heath by do not have to strain too hard to see that the same mysterious force that stops time is not universal — that the real-world passions of Eustacia and Yeobright and Wildeve will bring loose energy into the place and create chaos.

The question at the center of all of this is whether Thomas Hardy is the force that made the heath, or if the novel's unique elements can be accounted for naturally. One thing that is certain is that Hardy felt that the Egdon Heath he presented was a description, not a creation. Photographs and the testimony of other writers who came after him seem to bear out this idea, that the place before the arrival of technology was just as it had been for thousands of years. In old pictures, it looks just as desolate as the moon would look if it grew weeds. However, the old photos were shot with the theme of desolation in mind, thanks to Hardy: he observed the land and then added the idea that it willed itself to not change. Today, that area in the south of England is plenty inhabited, as cultivated as any other, proving, if such is necessary, that it had no magic aura that sealed it. Thomas Hardy, like any good novelist, saw a unique situation and took advantage of that opportunity to create his own mythology.

Much as I try, I cannot find causes for the strikingly bold "coincidences" I have mentioned, but I do feel that they belong in the novel. The same property that made Egdon Heath unique also allows characters in the book to stroll up with letters sent long ago, or to all decide at once to go to the same place. Like early physicists, the readers' job might be to identify the unseen currents and principles that make actions lead to unexpected results in this one field; or, like early theologians, the reader might just have to accept the fact that all that occurs is related. The degree to which Hardy's surprises are or are not believable goes beyond the events themselves and depends on how much one believes in the author and his world.

Source: David Kelly, in an essay for Novels for Students, Gale Group, 2001.

What Do I Read Next?

• All of Hardy's other novels are well-respected, but Tess of the D'Urbervilles, published in 1891, is particularly like Return of the Native in theme and setting.
• One of the greatest novelists of Hardy's time was George Meredith, an author known for his psychological insights. His Diana of the Crossways (1885) is about a woman who has an affair and is accused of giving away secrets to her lover.
• Margaret Mitchell's 1936 romance set during the Civil War, Gone With the Wind, is an epic story about longing and survival. The protagonist of the novel, Scarlett O'Hara, possesses many of the same traits as Eustacia Vye: she is proud, ambitious, restless, and driven by love.
• George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans) wrote similar stories about life in rural England. The Mill on the Floss was published in 1860 and it concerns the trials of a sensitive young woman, facing rejection by her family.
• The definitive biography of Thomas Hardy is Martin Seymour-Smith's Hardy (1994), which includes exhaustive detail and comprehensive insight.