The Return of the Native: Introduction by John Bayley

by Thomas Hardy, John Bayley (Introduction)

Overview

Eustacia Vye longs to escape from Egdon Heath, but the man she chooses to save her longs to stay. Out of their struggle, the unfulfilled passion of his heroine, and the daily rhythms of late-nineteenth-century rural life, Hardy builds a drama fully worthy of the magnificent stage on which he places it.

The Return of the Native is dominated by the brooding presence of Egdon Heath, located in Thomas Hardy’s imaginary Wessex, and in no other book did Hardy’s extraordinary feeling for landscape blend so perfectly with his austere, stoic vision of human fate.

Once more he treats his favorite theme of the mismatched couple with masterly pathos and understatement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679417309
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/03/1992
Series:	Everyman's Library Classics Series
Pages:	552
Sales rank:	699,874
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

THOMAS HARDY, whose writings immortalized the Wessex countryside and dramatized his sense of the inevitable tragedy of life, was born near Egdon Heath in Dorset in 1840, the eldest child of a prosperous stonemason. As a youth he trained as an architect and in 1862 obtained a post in London. During this time he began seriously to write poetry, which remained his first literary love and his last. In 1867-68, his first novel was refused publication, but Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), his first Wessex novel, did well enough to convince him to continue writing. In 1874, Far from the Madding Crowd, published serially and anonymously in the Cornhill Magazine, became a great success. Hardy married Emma Gifford in 1874, and in 1875 they settled at Max Gate in Dorchester, where he lived the rest of his life. There he wrote The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). With Tess, Hardy clashed with the expectations of his audience; a storm of abuse broke over the “infidelity” and “obscenity” of this great novel he had subtitled “A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented.” Jude the Obscure aroused even greater indignation and was denounced as pornography. Hardy’s disgust at the reaction to Jude led him to announce in 1896 that he would never write fiction again. He published Wessex Poems in 1898, Poems of the Past and Present in 1901, and from 1903 to 1908, The Dynasts, a huge drama in which Hardy’s conception of the Immanent Will, implicit in the tragic novels, is most clearly stated. In 1912, Hardy’s wife, Emma, died. The marriage was childless and had long been a troubled one, but in the years after her death, Hardy memorialized her in several poems. At seventy-four, he married his longtime secretary, Florence Dugdale, herself a writer of children’s books and articles, with whom he lived happily until his death in 1928. His heart was buried in the Wessex countryside; his ashes were placed next to Charles Dickens’s in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.

Date of Birth:

June 2, 1840

Date of Death:

January 11, 1928

Place of Birth:

Higher Brockhampon, Dorset, England

Place of Death:

Max Gate, Dorchester, England

Education:

Served as apprentice to architect James Hicks

Read an Excerpt

A SATURDAY afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment. Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor.

The heaven being spread with this pallid screen and the earth with the darkest vegetation, their meeting-line at the horizon was clearly marked. In such contrast the heath wore the appearance of an instalment of night which had taken up its place before its astronomical hour was come: darkness had to a great extent arrived hereon, while day stood distinct in the sky. Looking upwards, a furze-cutter would have been inclined to continue work; looking down, he would have decided to finish his faggot and go home. The distant rims of the world and of the firmament seemed to be a division in time no less than a division in matter. 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 dread.

In fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly roll into darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began, and nobody could be said to understand the heath who had not been there at such a time. It could best be felt when it could not clearly be seen, its complete effect and explanation lying in this and the succeeding hours before the next dawn: then, and only then, did it tell its true tale. The spot was, indeed, a near relation of night, and when night showed itself an apparent tendency to gravitate together could be perceived in its shades and the scene. 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. And so the obscurity in the air and the obscurity in the land closed together in a black fraternization towards which each advanced half-way.

The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank brooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen. Every night its Titanic form seemed to await something; but it had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through the crises of so many things, that it could only be imagined to await one last crisis—the final overthrow.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Thomas Hardy: A Brief Chronology
A Note on the Text

The Return of the Native

Appendix A: Prefaces and Maps

1. The Preface to the 1895 Wessex Novels Edition
2. The Postscript added to the 1912 Wessex Edition
3. From the General Preface to the Novels and Poems (1912)
4. Map of Egdon Heath (1878)
5. Map of Wessex (1895)

Appendix B: Contemporary Reviews

1. From The Athenaeum (23 November 1878)
2. Hardy’s response to the Athenaeum review (30 November 1878)
3. From W.E. Henley, The Academy (30 November 1878)
4. From the Saturday Review (4 January 1879)
5. From the Spectator (8 February 1879)
6. From the New Quarterly Magazine (October 1879)
7. From Havelock Ellis, “Thomas Hardy’s Novels,” Westminster Review (April 1883)

Appendix C: Philosophical and Political Contexts

1. Positivism: from Auguste Comte, System of Positive Polity (1851−54; trans. 1875−76)
2. The Individual and Freedom: from John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)
3. The Woman Question: from John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies (1865) and John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women (1869)
4. Hedonism and Modernity: from Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873)

Appendix D: Scientific Influences

1. From Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology (1830−33)
2. From Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859)
3. From Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology (1864−67)
4. From Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873)

Appendix E: Other Writings by Hardy

1. A Selection of Hardy’s Poetry
1. Hap
2. At a Bridal
3. Neutral Tones
4. Nature’s Questioning
5. An August Midnight
6. The Dead Man Walking
7. By the Barrows
8. The Roman Road
9. The Moth-Signal
10. The Oxen
11. Welcome Home
12. The Graveyard of Dead Creeds
13. Domicilium
2. From “The Dorsetshire Labourer” (1883)
3. From “The Profitable Reading of Fiction” (1888)
4. From “Candour in English Fiction” (1890)
5. From The Life of Thomas Hardy (1928; 1930)

Appendix F: The Play of Saint George

Appendix G: Arthur Hopkins’s Illustrations for the Monthly Serialization of Belgravia (1878)

Select Bibliography

Reading Group Guide

1. What does Egdon Heath symbolize to you? How does each character relate to the heath? To what extent does the landscape control the actions of the characters or influence them? How do the characters resist or succumb to the landscape? What is the role of urban life in the novel?

2. Discuss Clym's spiritual odyssey. How does it shed light on Hardy's concerns in the novel? Would you describe Clym as idealistic? How does his attitude compare to that of the people of Egdon Heath or that of Eustacia?

3. Why does Eustacia hate Egdon Heath? Is she too headstrong? How much control does Eustacia have over events that shape her life? Over the lives of others? Do you think Eustacia symbolizes human limitation or potential? Do you think her death is a reconciliation of sorts, or not?

4. Discuss the role of fate or chance in the novel. Is Hardy sympathetic to the victims of chance in this novel? To what extent are events caused by the force of a character's personality (e.g., Eustacia), rather than by chance? To what extent do actions produce results opposite from that desired? Do you think there is a connection between this use of irony and the role of fate in the novel?

5. Discuss the novel's opening scene, in which Hardy describes Egdon Heath. How does this establish the emotional tone of the book? How does it foreshadow the action within the novel?

6. Why is Eustacia interested in Clym? How does this set the wheels of the plot in motion? How does this affect the other characters, like Thomasin and particularly Clym's mother? What is Wildeve's role in Mrs. Yeobright's fate?

Editorial Reviews

Most of Hardy’s novels, and particularly the early ones, have a Shakespearean power of creating a unique world and climate of being . . . The Return of the Native is . . . thoughtful, valedictory, poetic, tinged with the somberness of an uncertainty which seems to well up from the depths of the author’s own subconscious . . . Hardy’s sense of the tragic life of human beings, mere small fragments of consciousness in a vast uncaring universe, comes directly from his own youthful awareness of the place and circumstances described in the novel.” –from the Introduction by John Bayley

From the Publisher

"Simon Avery's edition of The Return of the Native, Hardy's first great classic, provides a beautifully balanced, meticulously researched resource. Avery's editorial approach is, in every respect, new and fresh – even in his interpretation of the novel's denouement. Offering a wide range of critical perspectives, the compelling Introduction features a rich collection of viewpoints and critiques in a manner so informative, compact, and stylish that exploration becomes the modus operandi within and beyond the plot. In turn, the appendices at the end of the book complement the contextualising of the Introduction and footnotes. A selection of Hardy's other writings in prose and poetry adds textual weight and structural balance overall."

Rosemarie Morgan

"Simon Avery has edited Hardy's The Return of the Native with great skill: his footnotes are detailed and extensive without becoming intrusive; his bibliography of further reading selects judiciously from old and new materials; and he gives a generous range of contemporary materials to help contextualise the book. Alongside the unmistakable nineteenth-century concerns present in Hardy's novel, Avery alerts us to less well-known ones, illuminating in particular Hardy's depiction of Eustacia Vye, who can be seen from this edition as a precursor to Sue Bridehead, the proto-feminist of Jude the Obscure. Distinctively too, Avery includes a selection of Hardy's poetry, helpfully breaking down the barrier between Hardy the novelist and Hardy the poet. In all respects, the volume continues the excellent standard of Broadview Hardy editions."

Ralph Pite