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    Return Of The Native, By Thomas Hardy: "Why is it that a woman can see from a distance what a man cannot see close?"
    Return Of The Native, By Thomas Hardy: "Why is it that a woman can see from a distance what a man cannot see close?"
    Return Of The Native, By Thomas Hardy: "Why is it that a woman can see from a distance what a man cannot see close?"
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    Return Of The Native, By Thomas Hardy: "Why is it that a woman can see from a distance what a man cannot see close?"

    By Thomas Hardy

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    Thomas Hardy (2nd June 1840 – 11th January 1928), celebrated poet and writer, was born in a modest thatched cottage near Dorchester in the West country, to a builder father. His mother came from a line of intelligent, lively and ambitious women so ensured her son had the best formal education available for their modest means although this ended when he was 16. He became a draughtsman specialising in the building of churches was able to give it up to be a full time writer and poet with the publication of Far From the Madding Crown which became a bestseller and like much of his work was serialised. His writing reflects his passionate beliefs for social reform and exposes the hypocrisy of the rules of the Victorian age which constrained many freedoms with convention and restricted the transcending of class boundaries. His novels are almost entirely set in rural Wessex which although fictional is clearly rooted in the SW counties of England where he was born and lived most of his life. Hardy’s writing caused controversy in his lifetime but despite this he was highly praised and showered with honorary doctorates from many universities, a knighthood, which he refused and in 1910 the prestigious Order of the Merit. Return of the Native opens with an evocative description of the bleak brooding Egdon Heath which is not only the setting for the book but also anticipates the dark tone of the novel. The native in the title is Clym Yeobright who is returning to the place where he grew up to settle and be a positive part of the community which was missing from his life in Paris. He falls in love with the tempestuous Eustacia Vye who dreams of passionate love and is dazzled by the idea of a life in Paris which would liberate her from the stifling claustrophobia she feels in Egdon. Marriage accentuates her restlessness and resolve to escape causing frustration, disappointment, betrayal and tragedy. Hardy provides a poetic compassion for both characters and creates powerful scenes heightening the dramatic tension and making this a special read.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherA Word To The Wise
    Release dateAug 20, 2013
    ISBN9781780009780
    Return Of The Native, By Thomas Hardy: "Why is it that a woman can see from a distance what a man cannot see close?"
    Author

    Thomas Hardy

    Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in Dorchester, Dorset. He enrolled as a student in King’s College, London, but never felt at ease there, seeing himself as socially inferior. This preoccupation with society, particularly the declining rural society, featured heavily in Hardy’s novels, with many of his stories set in the fictional county of Wessex. Since his death in 1928, Hardy has been recognised as a significant poet, influencing The Movement poets in the 1950s and 1960s.

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    Reviews for Return Of The Native, By Thomas Hardy

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    • 2/5
      The eloquence and grandeur of Hardy's writing cannot disguise the soap-opera nature of his story. Melodrama and coincidence figure largely, removing the interest from the actions of its intriguing characters.
    • 5/5
      This is the 6th book that Thomas Hardy wrote and published. For the reading group we have read all the previous ones and I feel like Hardy finally reached his full capacity in this book. It has all the hallmarks that those persons who have only read one or two of his better-known works would recognize.This book is set entirely in the fictitious (but based upon real moorland) Egdon Heath, a sparsely settled and remote area of Wessex. Many of the inhabitants farm or cut furze for a living. Some are of a more upperclass stratum such as the grandfather of Eustacia, Captain Vye, and the mother of Clym, Mrs. Yeobright. As such they have higher aspirations for their offspring than to marry someone from the Heath. Mrs. Yeobright's inclinations also extend to her niece, Thomasin. However, Thomasin (or Tamsin as she is sometimes called) has fallen in love with the innkeeper Wildeve. Mrs. Yeobright at first protested at the banns but she has finally agreed the marriage can take place. So, on the morning of Guy Fawkes day, Thomasin and Wildeve set off to a nearby church to get married. Much to Thomasin's disappointment the wedding cannot take place because the licence was obtained in another township. She has fled from Wildeve and stumbled upon Diggory Venn, who was a former suitor. Diggory is a reddleman which is a person who sells reddle, a type of red ochre, to sheep farmers. He lives out of a small caravan and it and himself and everything he owns is stained red. They arrive home just as the bonfires from Guy Fawkes are dwindling. Thomasin and her aunt just want to escape back home but first the locals come to sing to the, as they thought, newlyweds.Meanwhile, Eustacia has set her own bonfire burning hoping to attract Wildeve who was her lover before he took up with Thomasin. Eustacia has the reputation as a witch and it does seem that she has bewitched Wildeve. He turns up at the bonfire and it is clear that he cares a great deal for Eustacia. The question then arises will he proceed with his plan to marry Thomasin or will he return to Eustacia?During the rest of the book, which takes place in exactly a year and a day, proposals, betrothals, weddings and even a birth take place but who with whom should probably be left to the next reader. As with most Thomas Hardy there is tragedy but there is also a righting of wrongs.Egdon Heath does sound wild and rugged but some of its inhabitants love it. Hardy is the master of describing places and I wish that I could transport myself back in time to experience this place. I think I would find beauty in the furze and other vegetation. I know that the birds and beasts would be wonderful.Hardy is also a master of characterization. The minor characters like Grandfer Cantle, Susan Nonsuch and Charley add to the story. Of the major characters my favourite is Diggory and that certainly is my favourite name. I suspect he might have been Hardy's favourite as well.
    • 5/5
      2007, BBC Audiobooks, Read by Alan RickmanThe Return of the Native, set exclusively on Egdon Heath, opens with reddleman Diggory Venn transporting home a naïve, disgraced Thomasin Yeobright, who was to have married innkeeper Damon Wildeve, earlier in the day. Wildeve, we soon learn, is preoccupied with the novel’s heroine, Eustasia Vye, undoubtedly one of literature’s great characters. Eustasia is intelligent, devious, passionate, and a manipulative object of desire – I did not find her likeable, but she was completely enthralling. Believing herself superior, she detests life on the Heath, and in this vein, she sets out in self-serving pursuit of Clym Yeobright, the “native,” who has just returned to Egdon from Paris, where he has been living a prosperous life as a diamond merchant. Twists of fate thwart even the best laid plans, of course, and the characters are inexorably entwined in complex relationships which Eustacia’s ambition has set in motion.Hardy’s language is beautifully mellifluous; the novel’s narrative is richly layered, read in many voices. Themes include the celebration of the pagan, the primitive, and the pastoral. Hardy glorifies the simplicity of life for the working classes and celebrates the pastoral for its superiority. Egdon Heath is a character in its own right; Clym experiences perfect harmony with nature when he goes to work cutting furze:“Bees hummed around his ears with an intimate air, and tugged at the heath and furze-flowers at his side in such numbers as to weigh them down to the sod. The strange amber-coloured butterflies which Egdon produced, and which were never seen elsewhere, quivered in the breath of his lips, alighted upon his bowed back, and sported with the glittering point of his hook as he flourished it up and down. Tribes of emerald-green grasshoppers leaped over his feet, falling awkwardly on their backs, heads, or hips, like unskillful acrobats, as chance might rule; or engaged themselves in noisy flirtations under the fern-fronds with silent ones of homely hue. Huge flies, ignorant of larders and wire-netting, and quite in a savage state, buzzed about him without knowing that he was a man. In and out of the fern-dells snakes glided in their most brilliant blue and yellow guise, it being the season immediately following the shedding of their old skins, when their colours are brightest. Litters of young rabbits came out from their forms to sun themselves upon hillocks, the hot beams blazing through the delicate tissue of each thin-fleshed ear, and firing it to a blood-red transparency in which the veins could be seen.” (Bk 4, Ch 2)The Return of the Native is timeless, the mark of a true classic for me. I cannot say enough about Alan Rickman’s accomplishment as narrator. Sublime! Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      This novel is a poem to the ancient beauty of the heath. Hardy's descriptions of the way the light falls across it at different hours, the colours that emerge from it, and its ancient invariability and unwillingness to be tamed are beautiful. The characters who live, work, idle and scheme on the heath are among the best, in my opinion, that Hardy created. Eustacia Vye is a wonderful creation, spirited, intelligent, manipulative and yearning for something to lift her from the doldrums in which she perceives herself to be languishing. Clym Yeobright is an idealistic, naïve young man who turns from his life of wealth to seek a sense of usefulness back among his native people. Damon Wildeve is a scurrilous rake in the mould of Pride & Prejudice's Wickham. There is an element of caricature about them, but Hardy is too skilled a writer to bring forth pure exaggerations of human characteristics. Alongside the main personality traits writ large, Hardy includes subtle contradictions, light and shade, that make them seem modern at the same time as being romantic constructs. Hardy is good at acknowledging the restrictions of female existence in his era while at the same time recognising that women are more than society will permit them to be. It is the women in his books that compel. Given that there isn't a single Thomas Hardy novel that is 100% cheerful, it would be too much to expect things to work out well for these three. But the tragedy that befalls them is tempered by a satisfactory joy for the two other, quieter, central characters, Thomasin Yeobright and Diggory Venn.
    • 5/5
      I enjoyed this one tremendously, but I suspect that without Alan Rickman's beautiful reading it would have been a four star, rather than a five star book for me. I found the story very satisfying (though I could have done with rather less about the colors, moisture levels, and textures of Egdon Heath, even if it is, as both Wikipedia and a friend of mine have suggested, the main character, which I'm still not convinced of, btw), and am very pleased with Hardy for being willing to modify his usual doom and gloom ending as a concession to sentimental public taste! Eustacia Vye, superbly loathsome creature that she is, is a memorable character.
    • 3/5
      In this overdrawn and repetitive novel, Hardy offers up deceitful, tiresome Eustacia Vye in a comedy of errors fraughtwith Thomasin generally being a drag. Reading about artificially tensed gambling is always trying.Mrs. Yeobright, mother of dawdling Clym and aunt to Thomasin, is the bright light, once a reader tires of the inexplicabledevotion of riddleman Venn to Thomasin.As always, Thomas Hardy's nature descriptions soar.
    • 3/5
      It took 25 plus years, but after being totally put of Hardy at school, I finally tried again. And it was nothing like as bad as I thought it was going to be. This is the story of two couples who have married and both, for various reasons, are unsuited. The characters are supported by a mass of well drawn characters, pone of which is the landscape itself. The whole of the first chapter is devoted to describing Egdon Heath and it takes on a presence that is more than mere backdrop. There are contrasting opinions on it as well, with Eustacia wanting to get away and Clem feeling he has returned home. It certainly isn't a feel good book, it has an air of melancholy about it, there's a lot of repenting at leisure and the whole tone is nostalgic for a time and tradition that probably never existed. Even the ending seems not to focus on the hope of a marriage (this one seems much more sound) but on the disappointment and lack of emotion of Clem. It was certainly a lot better than my last experience with him, but he's not exactly a cheery bunny. His landscape is excellent, I'm just not sure I bought into his characters entirely, the marriages struck me as a little too far fetched. It may well be less than 25 years before I pick up another.
    • 4/5
      Is Hardy for marriage or against marriage? Having read a few of his works, I think that perhaps he ultimately comes down on the side that marriage is a bad idea. This one, however, leaves you thinking that perhaps under the right conditions, if both parties come to the marriage from a place of grief and don't expect too much then maybe it can work. A young man returns to his village when his cousin's marriage is temporarily disrupted but all sorts of mayhem ensues. It is difficult to give any details of the plot without giving the whole thing away as not many events happen in the book, but it is full of character (both human and of nature) and mood. I really enjoyed it. Definately depressing - but not nearly as much so as Jude, which made me depressed for days.
    • 4/5
      I did it! I persevered and finished off this book just 20 minutes before it was due to vanish from my Kobo in a virtual puff of smoke. After that slow start that had me despairing that anything was ever going to happen, things did pick up and the plot moved along fairly briskly. As the rating says, I'm glad I read it, and I would read more Hardy. In the future, though, I'll be more judicious about how many of those copious footnotes to chase down, as I found more often than not that rather than adding to my understanding of the book they simply impeded the flow of the narrative and made it seem more choppy and uneven than it probably is in actuality. Too many of them were about minute differences between the manuscript version used here (the 1878 serial publication) and later editions, which would have been immensely helpful if I were studying it and looking to make comparisons. As just a regular old reader, however, I found I didn't really give a dingdangdoodle. And I still maintain that I read more than enough about that damned heath in the opening chapters to last me a lifetime. Good grief, no wonder everyone in this book is so freaking depressed. They must have had to listen to Hardy describe their homeland one too many times down the pub.
    • 5/5
      Damn this man can write tragedy! In this novel Hardy createsa love triangle (quadrangle?) that is both beautiful and disastrous. Using his incrediblegift for lyrical prose he takes us into the wild land of Egdon Health.Diggory Venn, a local reddleman, is in love with ThomasinYeobright. She in turn is in love with Wildeve, a restless self-centered man.He is torn between his feelings for her and his love for Eustacia Vye. Add Thomasin’scousin Clym Yeobright, the man who catches Eustacia’s eye, to the mix and you’vegot quite the quandary. Each of the characters is wonderfully developed. We feelEustacia’s restlessness and Thomasin’s earnest devotion. We long for Venn tofind love and Clym to find happiness. We watch their lives unfold with a mix ofapprehension and excitement, wondering all the while if the characters arefalling in love purely for the escape they offer each other or if theirfeelings are true. Do they want something because someone else wants it orbecause it’s truly their heart’s desire?“The sentiment which lurks more or less in all animatenature – that of not desiring the undesired of other – was lively as a passionin the supsersublte epicurean heart of Eustacia.”I loved how the health is one of the main characters in thebook and all of the characters are shaped by their reaction to it. Eustaciadesperately wants to leave it and will do anything to get away. Clym returnsfrom Parisaching for the wild health he loved so much in his childhood. Thomasin feelsthat she is a country girl and is comfortable living in the health. Only Hardycould make the background setting of a drama such a definitive character in theaction. He even describes the effect the health has on the women who live there…“An environment which would have made a contented woman apoet, a suffering woman a devotee, a pious woman a psalmist, even a giddy womanthoughtful, made a rebellious woman saturnine.”SPOILERS All of the characters desperately want what they can’t have.Another person, money, success, peace, travel, etc. Even Clym’s mother Mrs.Yeobright longs for different partners for her son and niece. She wants theirhappiness, but when they’ve chosen their lot in life she has such a hard timeaccepting it that she perpetuates unhappiness in their lives. Each character isdestroyed by their own longing except for Venn. Early in the book he comes toterms with the fact that he’ll never have the woman he truly wants. He acceptsthat and decides that he’ll do everything he can to make her happy from adistance. Then, in the end he’s the only one who ends up getting what he wanted.It’s a beautiful picture of selfless love. SPOILERS OVERBOTTOM LINE: This book is so beautiful and poignant I justcan’t get over it. It’s definitely a new favorite of mine. I’d recommend it ifyou enjoy Victorian literature, tragic love stories or just gorgeous prose. “Love was to her theone cordial which could drive away the eating loneliness of her days.” “Humanity appears upon the scene, hand-in-hand withtrouble.” “What a strange sort of love to be entirely free from thatquality of selfishness which is frequently the chief constituent of the passionand sometimes its only one.”  
    • 5/5
      This is my favorite Hardy novel and I love all of Hardy's novels passionately. He's one of my favorite writers, forever. This man understood and dared to write about the lives of women in a time when women didn't count--and he did so without sentimentalizing them. I adore Eustacia, and if she had but lived a hundred years later, all her problems would not be problems.
    • 4/5
      Beautifully descriptive. A book to just curl up an lose yourself in.
    • 4/5
      Hardy is synonymous with 19th century English country landscapes, and never more so than in Return of the Native. Set on the mythical Egdon Heath, this novel is the next best thing to a time machine, so evocative are his descriptions of these bygone Wessex rural scenes. One doesn't just read a Hardy novel - it's a completely immersive virtual reality experience, and for this reason he remains up there as one of my favourite novelists of all time.Although perhaps not so well known as Hardy's greats such as The Mayor of Casterbridge, this is still a very fine novel. In typical Hardy fashion there is heartbreak and tragedy in spades, yet it is the rural landscape that almost becomes the main protagonist. The descriptions are incredibly vivid, yet their conveyance is so deftly subtle that it adds an additional dimension and depth to the story rather than getting in the way of it. Whilst many novels of that era excel at transplanting you as a fly on the wall to the centre of English social history, I can't think of a better way to experience English natural history than through the experience of a Hardy novel. By the end of Return of the Native the heath was as familiar to me as the countryside on my own doorstep. No, on second thoughts, it was significantly more familiar. Our green space has changed in so many ways since that time, but whilst some of the flora and fauna has changed forever (for instance, adders are much rarer in number now in the English countryside than they would have been back then), it is our interaction with it which has changed most acutely. In Hardy's time the average rural dweller had little option but to traverse their local countryside by foot, often travelling many miles in a day to run an errand or visit a neighbour. Imagine, therefore, how much more familiar and in touch with the earth you become when you are literally walking through it's rural midst every day. And that is precisely the experience that Hardy brings with this novel. You feel 19th century England.This was Hardy book number six for me, and thinking I'd already peaked with his best work I was absolutely delighted to be proved wrong with this novel.4 stars - a wonderful sojourn in rural Victorian England.
    • 4/5
      This novel has all the hallmarks of a classic Hardy novel: doomed love affairs, characters who make poor choices, a portentous environment. Added together, though, it falls a bit short of Hardy's best novels. I think the main problem is that all the characters are either uninteresting or ambiguous at best. Eustacia is probably the most interesting character as the love interest to the "Native" of the title, but she is still one-sided; all she wants is to get out of the heath and live a glamorous life in Paris. Of course, such aspirations are doomed from the outset in Hardy, and her dashed dream is the cornerstone that brings down all the others. Despite its weaknesses, its typical Hardian (Hardy-esque?) strengths make it a worthwhile read.
    • 4/5
      The Return of the Native is one of those books you're forced to read in high school. And as such, you're prone to hate it, because high school English teachers make you dissect the creature of literature before you actually get a chance to observe it in action, and you are forced to make observations on the structure of the cold, dead literature, instead of actually observing the living literature in its natural environment.If this is you, please give it a second chance.The story itself is all in the title: someone comes (back) to town. This town, Egdon Heath (one of the few towns in non-genre literature to be widely considered a character in its own right), and its inhabitants receive Clement "Clym" Yeobright back from Paris.It was Thomas Wolfe to whom we attribute the quote "You can never go home again." This is not to mean "We'll lock up behind you, and post sentries," but rather, as time flows, nothing is truly immutable. When you do come back home, it won't be the same. Some furniture will be moved, everybody will be older, and things will be different.But things that are different aren't always bad. You could meet that nice raven-haired lady everyone thinks is a witch, and end up marrying her. You, thinking about settling down, her, thinking about escaping the malevolent town in which she lives.Such is life, especially life in Edgon Heath.This book is recommended for those who have read and enjoyed other works by Hardy, or who enjoy other literary achievements of the time. Also recommended for rereading anybody who was forced to read it in high school.
    • 4/5
      Hardy weaves a tale of passion and tragedy on Egdon Heath in his fictional Wessex. Eustacia Vye's desire to lead a life elsewhere is dashed when she marries Clym Yeobright (the Native) upon his return from Paris. The lives of this couple and their friends and families are depicted in detail in Hardy's penetrating portrayal of the community on the heath. The final section provides some hope for the future, tempering the otherwise bleak landscape of the novel.
    • 4/5
      "Oh, how hard it is of Heaven to devise such tortures for me!",, 29 November 2015This review is from: Thomas Hardy: The Return of the Native (Paperback)Set on the great, bleak expanse of Egdon Heath, this is a gothic tale of love, despair and misunderstandings.Centred on the imperious Eustacia Vye, resentful at having to live in this god-forsaken place, we see her at first carrying on a clandestine romance with the affianced Damon Wildeve. And then into the picture comes the returned native, Clym Yeobright, cousin of Damon's fiancee. He has been carving out a successful career in Paris, and would seem an ideal match for the beautiful Eustacia who yearns to travel...Forming something of a 'Greek chorus' are the local people, with their amusing conversations, folk customs and superstitions. And the omnipresent 'reddleman', Diggory Venn; a seller of sheep dye, and former (unsuccessful) suitor to Thomasin Yeobright, he seems to be always prowling about the heath looking out for his loved one.At times a little over the top in emotion, this comes to an extremely good and touching ending.
    • 5/5
      “Hurt so good
      Come on baby, make it hurt so good”
      - John Mellencamp

      WUT? Well, reading Thomas Hardy novels always poses this kind of challenge. They hurt, and yet I keep coming back to him because they are indeed good and this kind of hurt is like a good exercise for your EQ. In term of language, I don’t think Hardy’s writing is particularly difficult to access. The more challenging aspects of his books are the initial meticulous scene setting and characters introduction chapters and, of course, the miserable situations that his characters get into.

      “Tragedy
      When the feeling's gone and you can't go on It's tragedy”

      Sorry, I just had a sudden attack of Beegeesitis. Anyway, I am always glad(ish) to be back in Hardyverse, better known as Wessex, a fictional region somewhere in the south of England. A lot of pastoral mayhem seems to take place here so it is probably not an ideal vacation destination (non-existence notwithstanding). In The Return of the Native Hardy again depicts what bad marriages can do. Clym Yeobright, the returning native of the novel’s title, marries the almost preternaturally beautiful Eustacia Vye who is very discontent with her rural surroundings. She yearns for the bright lights, big cities, iStores etc., preferably in Paris. However, she is not a femme fatale, she does her best to be a good, loving wife. Unfortunately her best is of a disastrously low standard and tragedy ensues.

      Much of the tragedy stems from people being unable to speak their minds, to be honest, sincere and – most of all – forgiving. Where this novel really resonates with me is the relationship between Clym and his mother. They have a very close, loving relationship until Eustacia (inadvertently) comes between them. The mother, Mrs. Yeobright, has some very strong prejudices about people of ill repute and is very quick to pass judgment on them, her unyielding mentality eventually leads to her downfall. Eustacia’s inability to settle down, to compromise with her circumstances also leads to a lot of grief and much gnashing of teeth.

      As usual Hardy’s characters are very believable and vivid, and it is interesting that there is no actual villain in this book. Some characters become antagonists of sort merely through very unwise decision making and impropriety. The hero of the book is also not Clym the protagonist, but a sincere, helpful and humble man called Diggory Venn who is a “reddleman” by profession. Basically, he goes around marking flocks of sheep with a red colour (a mineral called "reddle"). Not much call for such services these days I imagine, but it makes him a fair amount of money and also causes his entire body to be red coloured. It plays hell with his attempts at courting a certain young lady, but he eventually finds a way. According to Wikipedia Hardy had a tack on a happy ending for commercial purposes so not all the characters are down in the dumps by the end of the book. Left to his own devices he would rather depress the hell out of his readers.

      Over all this is a typically depressing book by Thomas Hardy. Yet I really like it and recommend it for people who are not overly sensitive or those who are too insensitive and need to emote a little.

      “Life's a piece of shit, when you look at it
      Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true
      You'll see its all a show, keep 'em laughin as you go
      Just remember that the last laugh is on you”
      - Monty Python

      Well, after all that I don’t have any room left to quote an eloquent passage from this book. There are always plenty of those in a Hardy novel (so that’s hardly novel!).
    • 5/5
      This novel haunts me with its characters and settings. Excellent in every way.
    • 3/5
      I liked it, but it was a trudge. There isn't enough rain on the cover!
    • 4/5
      Eustacia is so deeply flawed and believable a character. Self-interested and self-aware found her a delightful character. All ends in tragedy (I wasn't a fan of the alternate ending).
    • 4/5
      For Christmas, I ordered an mp3 player (Library of Classics) that was pre-loaded with 100 works of classic literature in an audio format. Each work is in the public domain and is read by amateurs, so the quality of the presentation is hit or miss. The Return of the Native is a novel written by Thomas Hardy that has as its locale 19th century rural England. The story line of the novel revolves around the romantic attachments of several inhabitants of Egdon Heath, essentially a love pentagon (as opposed to the classic love triangle). There is Diggory Venn, the reddelman, who loves Thomasin. Wildeve, who marries Thomasin, but loves Eustacia, who marries Clym Yeobright, Thomasin’s cousin. You get the picture.The story is a little slow to get started, as Hardy never uses a dozen words when a hundred can be strung together. His prose is overly descriptive and verbose. Finally, we are introduced to all of the major characters and a period of enjoyment commences as the makings of a fine tale emerge. Alas, the story grinds to a halt as long periods of inaction and repetitious behavior develop. I’m sure the style is not unusual for the period, though I’ve read a lot of Dickens and found his writing to be far livelier.In listening to the audiobook, I would have sworn that the book had to contain 800 pages, but the Amazon profile reports only half that. Perhaps it only seemed like 800 pages, given the long periods of sleep inducing inaction and florid prose. In any event, it was not terrible, just not exactly to my liking.
    • 5/5
      I think this is the best of Hardy's novels. Dark, complicated, with characters who make difficult and not often happy decisions. Eustacia Vye is especially well drawn. Worth reading more than once.
    • 4/5
      The Return of the Native is simply a fictional marvel; moving me as a teenager as much as it did as an adult. Its characters are so rich, yet none so omnipresent and foreboding as the Heath itself, which pervades the lives of all of the book's characters. I don't often give 5stars, but just thinking about this makes me want to read it again.
    • 5/5
      An amazing work of art, this would be great to do as a tutored read I think (or follow along with a tutored read at any rate). I'll need to re-read it as there's so much I've missed. The sort of book that reminds me how little depth there is to many of the books I read. Audiobook read by Alan Rickman was initially distracting, because Alan Rickman was reading a book to me, but then I was so drawn into the tale (relationship drama! wedding mishaps! old loves! passionate new love! bonfires! the heath! death! love triangle?) that I stopped noticing him. A couple of chapters from the end when people started hurling themselves into the water, I started giggling with the thought that maybe all of the main characters were going to hurl themselves in and drown, and the rest of the novel would just be pleasant descriptions of the heath.
    • 3/5
      This was my second book by Hardy. Like the first one I read, this is a book about moral dilemmas & the power of misperceptions. Eustacia & Thomasin are tragic heroines who suffer the consequences of rumor & reputation is small town 1800's England. Clym, the one is is the returning native of the title, is a man who fortune treated well in the beginning, but struck down at the end. Wildeve is the romantic hero who is the cause of much of the 2 ladies' problems....It's sad most of the way, with a few clever places throughout, like Eustacia's attempt at disguising herself as a man in the mummer's play so that she could meet Clym to begin with. That evening's work she didn't quite think all the way through, & finds herself in a rather touchy situation :)All in all, I was ok with how the book ended, although the afterword gives us an idea of how the original ending went vice the one that the book gives....
    • 2/5
      “A blaze of love and extinction, was better than a lantern glimmer of the same which should last long years.”The novel opens with a reddleman (a seller of red dye used by sheep farmers) riding across Egdon Heath with Thomasin Yeobright in the back of his wagon. Thomasin's marriage to Damon Wildeve was delayed due to an error in the marriage certificate. Wildeve has arranged the error himself because he is infatuated with Eustacia Vye, a beautiful but independently minded young woman, and is uncertain which woman he should marry. Wildeve has fallen down the social scale and sees stability with Thomasin but passion with Eustacia.When Clym Yeobright, Thomasin's cousin and the son of her guardian, returns home from living in Paris he is thrown into this tangled web. Eustacia hates living on Egdon Heath and sees in Clym a means of an escape. Eustacia convinces herself to fall in love Clym even before meeting, breaking off her romance with Wildeve. He in return marries Thomasin. Despite strong objections of his mother Clym marries Eustacia however, this only acts to rekindle Wildeve's desire, despite his marriage.On a stormy rain-swept night, the action comes to a fatal climax.The 'Native' of the title is obviously Clym and no doubt Hardy intended him to be the central character of this novel but in actuality that distinction must fall to Eustacia. Eustacia is not a native of Egdon Heath, she is a native of the fashionable seaside resort of Budmouth who moves into her grandfather's house after the death of her father. She keeps herself apart from the other heath dwellers and is contemptuous for them. They, in turn, look upon her with suspicion. She takes perverse pleasure in being unconventional and is obviously not an easy person to be around. Fate and Destiny are major themes in this novel and Eustacia is central to both. She is an active demonstration of Destiny believing that she can escape Egdon by her will alone. Yet, she displays a readiness to shift the blame for everything that happens to her onto Fate. Eustacia is seen as intense and passionate whereas Wildeve, despite being quick to have his passions aroused is much more shallow. Bonfires are an important feature. Eustacia to the modern reader will seem sexually oppressed yet it is also obvious that a relationship with the slow and steady Clym will never satisfy her yet in contrast a relationship with Wildeve would initially burn fiercely but soon burn itself out.Overall I found this a bit of a slow burner which took a while to really grab me hence the lowish score.
    • 4/5
      A sad but interesting story. The story includes several tragic characters of which several die. Thomas Hardy twines an interesting set of relationships and personalities in the story. He is an excellent author and I highly recommend his writings.
    • 3/5
      I like the overall story of “The Return of the Native” but would’ve liked it more if not for the slow pace that occasionally leads to utter tedium. Hardy was one of those authors capable of genius, yet at the same time he’d digress and waffle to the point of irritation.
    • 4/5
      Although this book is set in rural England in the 1800s, the story covers a universal theme of star crossed lovers who lives are doomed due to a few pivotal decisions. The heroine (or villain, depending on your outlook) of the story is Eustacia Vye, a dark haired beauty who longs to escape the rural life on the heath for adventure and culture in Paris or other large city. She is romantically involved with Damon Wildeve, the local inn keeper, but chooses to marry Clym Yeobright, a successful businessman in Paris who has returned to the heath to visit his mother. Although, their marriage starts off strong, Clym wants to leave the big city and settle down in rural Egdon Heath and Eustacia still longs for more excitement. To add to this love triangle, after being rejected by Eustacia, Damon marries Clym's cousin Thomasin, although he still loves and longs for Eustacia. And to add even more to the mix, Diggory Venn has declared his love for Thomasin.

      But Return of the Native is not a convoluted soap opera love story. At several key moments in this book, the characters come to a decision point - sometimes as simple as whether or not to open a door - and the choice they make sets the story - and the tragedy - on its way. Added to this is the beautiful description of Egdon Heath and the lives of the people who work the land. These characters not only add a touch of humor to a pretty bleak story, but also provide wisdom and an interesting perspective on life.

      Beautiful, soothing narration by my favorite - Simon Vance.

    Book preview

    Return Of The Native, By Thomas Hardy - Thomas Hardy

    THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE by Thomas Hardy

    Index Of Contents

    Preface

    The Return Of The Native

    BOOK ONE - THE THREE WOMEN

    1 -A Face on Which Time Makes but Little Impression

    2 - Humanity Appears upon the Scene, Hand in Hand with Trouble

    3 - The Custom of the Country

    4 - The Halt on the Turnpike Road

    5 - Perplexity among Honest People

    6 - The Figure against the Sky

    7 - Queen of Night

    8 - Those Who Are Found Where There Is Said to Be Nobody

    9 - Love Leads a Shrewd Man into Strategy

    10 - A Desperate Attempt at Persuasion

    11 - The Dishonesty of an Honest Woman

    BOOK TWO - THE ARRIVAL

    1 - Tidings of the Comer

    2 - The People at Blooms-End Make Ready

    3 - How a Little Sound Produced a Great Dream

    4 - Eustacia Is Led on to an Adventure

    5 - Through the Moonlight

    6 - The Two Stand Face to Face

    7 - A Coalition between Beauty and Oddness

    8 - Firmness Is Discovered in a Gentle Heart

    BOOK THREE - THE FASCINATION

    1 - My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is

    2 - The New Course Causes Disappointment

    3 - The First Act in a Timeworn Drama

    4 - An Hour of Bliss and Many Hours of Sadness

    4 - An Hour of Bliss and Many Hours of Sadness

    5 - Sharp Words Are Spoken, and a Crisis Ensues

    6 - Yeobright Goes, and the Breach Is Complete

    7 - The Morning and the Evening of a Day

    8 - A New Force Disturbs the Current

    BOOK FOUR - THE CLOSED DOOR

    1 - The Rencounter by the Pool

    2 - He Is Set upon by Adversities but He Sings a Song

    3 - She Goes Out to Battle against Depression

    4 - Rough Coercion Is Employed

    5 - The Journey across the Heath

    6 - A Conjuncture, and Its Result upon the Pedestrian

    7 - The Tragic Meeting of Two Old Friends

    8 - Eustacia Hears of Good Fortune, and Beholds Evil

    BOOK FIVE - THE DISCOVERY

    1 - Wherefore Is Light Given to Him That Is in Misery

    2 - A Lurid Light Breaks in upon a Darkened Understanding

    3 - Eustacia Dresses Herself on a Black Morning

    4 - The Ministrations of a Half-forgotten One

    5 - An Old Move Inadvertently Repeated

    6 - Thomasin Argues with Her Cousin, and He Writes a Letter

    7 - The Night of the Sixth of November

    8 - Rain, Darkness, and Anxious Wanderers

    9 - Sights and Sounds Draw the Wanderers Together

    BOOK SIX – AFTERCOURSES

    1 - The Inevitable Movement Onward

    2 - Thomasin Walks in a Green Place by the Roman Road

    3 - The Serious Discourse of Clym with His Cousin

    4 - Cheerfulness Again Asserts Itself at Blooms-End, and Clym Finds His Vocation

    Thomas Hardy – A Biography

    PREFACE

     The date at which the following events are assumed to have occurred may be set down as between 1840 and 1850, when the old watering place herein called Budmouth still retained sufficient afterglow from its Georgian gaiety and prestige to lend it an absorbing attractiveness to the romantic and imaginative soul of a lonely dweller inland.

    Under the general name of Egdon Heath, which has been given to the sombre scene of the story, are united or typified heaths of various real names, to the number of at least a dozen; these being virtually one in character and aspect, though their original unity, or partial unity, is now somewhat disguised by intrusive strips and slices brought under the plough with varying degrees of success, or planted to woodland.

    It is pleasant to dream that some spot in the extensive tract whose southwestern quarter is here described, may be the heath of that traditionary King of Wessex; Lear.

     July, 1895.

    To sorrow I bade good morrow, And thought to leave her far away behind; But cheerly, cheerly, me dearly; She is so constant to me, and so kind. I would deceive her, And so leave her, But ah! she is so constant and so kind.

    BOOK ONE - THE THREE WOMEN

    1 -A Face on Which Time Makes but Little Impression

     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 and 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 halfway.

    The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank blooding 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.

    It was a spot which returned upon the memory of those who loved it with an aspect of peculiar and kindly congruity. Smiling champaigns of flowers and fruit hardly do this, for they are permanently harmonious only with an existence of better reputation as to its issues than the present. 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. The qualifications which frequently invest the facade of a prison with far more dignity than is found in the facade of a palace double its size lent to this heath a sublimity in which spots renowned for beauty of the accepted kind are utterly wanting. Fair prospects wed happily with fair times; but alas, if times be not fair! Men have oftener suffered from, the mockery of a place too smiling for their reason than from the oppression of surroundings oversadly tinged. Haggard Egdon appealed to a subtler and scarcer instinct, to a more recently learnt emotion, than that which responds to the sort of beauty called charming and fair.

    Indeed, it is a question if the exclusive reign of this orthodox beauty is not approaching its last quarter. The new Vale of Tempe may be a gaunt waste in Thule; human souls may find themselves in closer and closer harmony with external things wearing a sombreness distasteful to our race when it was young. The time seems near, if it has not actually arrived, when the chastened sublimity of a moor, a sea, or a mountain will be all of nature that is absolutely in keeping with the moods of the more thinking among mankind. And ultimately, to the commonest tourist, spots like Iceland may become what the vineyards and myrtle gardens of South Europe are to him now; and Heidelberg and Baden be passed unheeded as he hastens from the Alps to the sand dunes of Scheveningen.

    The most thoroughgoing ascetic could feel that he had a natural right to wander on Egdon, he was keeping within the line of legitimate indulgence when he laid himself open to influences such as these. Colours and beauties so far subdued were, at least, the birthright of all. Only in summer days of highest feather did its mood touch the level of gaiety. Intensity was more usually reached by way of the solemn than by way of the brilliant, and such a sort of intensity was often arrived at during winter darkness, tempests, and mists. Then Egdon was aroused to reciprocity; for the storm was its lover, and the wind its friend. Then it became the home of strange phantoms; and it was found to be the hitherto unrecognized original of those wild regions of obscurity which are vaguely felt to be compassing us about in midnight dreams of flight and disaster, and are never thought of after the dream till revived by scenes like this.

    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. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its countenance. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities.

    This obscure, obsolete, superseded country figures in Domesday. Its condition is recorded therein as that of heathy, furzy, briary wilderness Bruaria. Then follows the length and breadth in leagues; and, though some uncertainty exists as to the exact extent of this ancient lineal measure, it appears from the figures that the area of Egdon down to the present day has but little diminished. Turbaria Bruaria the right of cutting heath-turf occurs in charters relating to the district. Overgrown with heth and mosse, says Leland of the same dark sweep of country.

    Here at least were intelligible facts regarding landscape, far-reaching proofs productive of genuine satisfaction. The untameable, Ishmaelitish thing that Egdon now was it always had been. Civilization was its enemy; and ever since the beginning of vegetation its soil had worn the same antique brown dress, the natural and invariable garment of the particular formation. In its venerable one coat lay a certain vein of satire on human vanity in clothes. A person on a heath in raiment of modern cut and colours has more or less an anomalous look. We seem to want the oldest and simplest human clothing where the clothing of the earth is so primitive.

    To recline on a stump of thorn in the central valley of Egdon, between afternoon and night, as now, where the eye could reach nothing of the world outside the summits and shoulders of heathland which filled the whole circumference of its glance, and to know that everything around and underneath had been from prehistoric times as unaltered as the stars overhead, gave ballast to the mind adrift on change, and harassed by the irrepressible New. 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. Those surfaces were neither so steep as to be destructible by weather, nor so flat as to be the victims of floods and deposits. With the exception of an aged highway, and a still more aged barrow presently to be referred to, themselves almost crystallized to natural products by long continuance, even the trifling irregularities were not caused by pickaxe, plough, or spade, but remained as the very finger-touches of the last geological change.

    The above-mentioned highway traversed the lower levels of the heath, from one horizon to another. In many portions of its course it overlaid an old vicinal way, which branched from the great Western road of the Romans, the Via Iceniana, or Ikenild Street, hard by. On the evening under consideration it would have been noticed that, though the gloom had increased sufficiently to confuse the minor features of the heath, the white surface of the road remained almost as clear as ever.

    2 - Humanity Appears upon the Scene, Hand in Hand with Trouble

    Along the road walked an old man. He was white-headed as a mountain, bowed in the shoulders, and faded in general aspect. He wore a glazed hat, an ancient boat-cloak, and shoes; his brass buttons bearing an anchor upon their face. In his hand was a silver-headed walking stick, which he used as a veritable third leg, perseveringly dotting the ground with its point at every few inches' interval. One would have said that he had been, in his day, a naval officer of some sort or other.

    Before him stretched the long, laborious road, dry, empty, and white. It was quite open to the heath on each side, and bisected that vast dark surface like the parting-line on a head of black hair, diminishing and bending away on the furthest horizon.

    The old man frequently stretched his eyes ahead to gaze over the tract that he had yet to traverse. At length he discerned, a long distance in front of him, a moving spot, which appeared to be a vehicle, and it proved to be going the same way as that in which he himself was journeying. It was the single atom of life that the scene contained, and it only served to render the general loneliness more evident. Its rate of advance was slow, and the old man gained upon it sensibly.

    When he drew nearer he perceived it to be a spring van, ordinary in shape, but singular in colour, this being a lurid red. The driver walked beside it; and, like his van, he was completely red. One dye of that tincture covered his clothes, the cap upon his head, his boots, his face, and his hands. He was not temporarily overlaid with the colour; it permeated him.

    The old man knew the meaning of this. The traveller with the cart was a reddleman, a person whose vocation it was to supply farmers with redding for their sheep. He was one of a class rapidly becoming extinct in Wessex, filling at present in the rural world the place which, during the last century, the dodo occupied in the world of animals. He is a curious, interesting, and nearly perished link between obsolete forms of life and those which generally prevail.

    The decayed officer, by degrees, came up alongside his fellow-wayfarer, and wished him good evening. The reddleman turned his head, and replied in sad and occupied tones. He was young, and his face, if not exactly handsome, approached so near to handsome that nobody would have contradicted an assertion that it really was so in its natural colour. His eye, which glared so strangely through his stain, was in itself attractive, keen as that of a bird of prey, and blue as autumn mist. He had neither whisker nor moustache, which allowed the soft curves of the lower part of his face to be apparent. His lips were thin, and though, as it seemed, compressed by thought, there was a pleasant twitch at their corners now and then. He was clothed throughout in a tight-fitting suit of corduroy, excellent in quality, not much worn, and well-chosen for its purpose, but deprived of its original colour by his trade. It showed to advantage the good shape of his figure. A certain well-to-do air about the man suggested that he was not poor for his degree. The natural query of an observer would have been, Why should such a promising being as this have hidden his prepossessing exterior by adopting that singular occupation?

    After replying to the old man's greeting he showed no inclination to continue in talk, although they still walked side by side, for the elder traveller seemed to desire company. There were no sounds but that of the booming wind upon the stretch of tawny herbage around them, the crackling wheels, the tread of the men, and the footsteps of the two shaggy ponies which drew the van. They were small, hardy animals, of a breed between Galloway and Exmoor, and were known as heath-croppers here.

    Now, as they thus pursued their way, the reddleman occasionally left his companion's side, and, stepping behind the van, looked into its interior through a small window. The look was always anxious. He would then return to the old man, who made another remark about the state of the country and so on, to which the reddleman again abstractedly replied, and then again they would lapse into silence. The silence conveyed to neither any sense of awkwardness; in these lonely places wayfarers, after a first greeting, frequently plod on for miles without speech; contiguity amounts to a tacit conversation where, otherwise than in cities, such contiguity can be put an end to on the merest inclination, and where not to put an end to it is intercourse in itself.

    Possibly these two might not have spoken again till their parting, had it not been for the reddleman's visits to his van. When he returned from his fifth time of looking in the old man said, You have something inside there besides your load?

    Yes.

    Somebody who wants looking after?

    Yes.

    Not long after this a faint cry sounded from the interior. The reddleman hastened to the back, looked in, and came away again.

    You have a child there, my man?

    No, sir, I have a woman.

    The deuce you have! Why did she cry out?

    Oh, she has fallen asleep, and not being used to traveling, she's uneasy, and keeps dreaming.

    A young woman?

    Yes, a young woman.

    That would have interested me forty years ago. Perhaps she's your wife?

    My wife! said the other bitterly. She's above mating with such as I. But there's no reason why I should tell you about that.

    That's true. And there's no reason why you should not. What harm can I do to you or to her?

    The reddleman looked in the old man's face. Well, sir, he said at last, I knew her before today, though perhaps it would have been better if I had not. But she's nothing to me, and I am nothing to her; and she wouldn't have been in my van if any better carriage had been there to take her.

    Where, may I ask?

    At Anglebury.

    I know the town well. What was she doing there?

    Oh, not much to gossip about. However, she's tired to death now, and not at all well, and that's what makes her so restless. She dropped off into a nap about an hour ago, and 'twill do her good.

    A nice-looking girl, no doubt?

    You would say so.

    The other traveller turned his eyes with interest towards the van window, and, without withdrawing them, said, I presume I might look in upon her?

    No, said the reddleman abruptly. It is getting too dark for you to see much of her; and, more than that, I have no right to allow you. Thank God she sleeps so well, I hope she won't wake till she's home.

    Who is she? One of the neighbourhood?

    'Tis no matter who, excuse me.

    It is not that girl of Blooms-End, who has been talked about more or less lately? If so, I know her; and I can guess what has happened.

    'Tis no matter....Now, sir, I am sorry to say that we shall soon have to part company. My ponies are tired, and I have further to go, and I am going to rest them under this bank for an hour.

    The elder traveller nodded his head indifferently, and the reddleman turned his horses and van in upon the turf, saying, Good night. The old man replied, and proceeded on his way as before.

    The reddleman watched his form as it diminished to a speck on the road and became absorbed in the thickening films of night. He then took some hay from a truss which was slung up under the van, and, throwing a portion of it in front of the horses, made a pad of the rest, which he laid on the ground beside his vehicle. Upon this he sat down, leaning his back against the wheel. From the interior a low soft breathing came to his ear. It appeared to satisfy him, and he musingly surveyed the scene, as if considering the next step that he should take.

    To do things musingly, and by small degrees, seemed, indeed, to be a duty in the Egdon valleys at this transitional hour, for there was that in the condition of the heath itself which resembled protracted and halting dubiousness. It was the quality of the repose appertaining to the scene. This was not the repose of actual stagnation, but the apparent repose of incredible slowness. A condition of healthy life so nearly resembling the torpor of death is a noticeable thing of its sort; to exhibit the inertness of the desert, and at the same time to be exercising powers akin to those of the meadow, and even of the forest, awakened in those who thought of it the attentiveness usually engendered by understatement and reserve.

    The scene before the reddleman's eyes was a gradual series of ascents from the level of the road backward into the heart of the heath. It embraced hillocks, pits, ridges, acclivities, one behind the other, till all was finished by a high hill cutting against the still light sky. The traveller's eye hovered about these things for a time, and finally settled upon one noteworthy object up there. It was a barrow. This bossy projection of earth above its natural level occupied the loftiest ground of the loneliest height that the heath contained. Although from the vale it appeared but as a wart on an Atlantean brow, its actual bulk was great. It formed the pole and axis of this heathery world.

    As the resting man looked at the barrow he became aware that its summit, hitherto the highest object in the whole prospect round, was surmounted by something higher. It rose from the semiglobular mound like a spike from a helmet. The first instinct of an imaginative stranger might have been to suppose it the person of one of the Celts who built the barrow, so far had all of modern date withdrawn from the scene. It seemed a sort of last man among them, musing for a moment before dropping into eternal night with the rest of his race.

    There the form stood, motionless as the hill beneath. Above the plain rose the hill, above the hill rose the barrow, and above the barrow rose the figure. Above the figure was nothing that could be mapped elsewhere than on a celestial globe.

    Such a perfect, delicate, and necessary finish did the figure give to the dark pile of hills that it seemed to be the only obvious justification of their outline. Without it, there was the dome without the lantern; with it the architectural demands of the mass were satisfied. The scene was strangely homogeneous, in that the vale, the upland, the barrow, and the figure above it amounted only to unity. Looking at this or that member of the group was not observing a complete thing, but a fraction of a thing.

    The form was so much like an organic part of the entire motionless structure that to see it move would have impressed the mind as a strange phenomenon. Immobility being the chief characteristic of that whole which the person formed portion of, the discontinuance of immobility in any quarter suggested confusion.

    Yet that is what happened. The figure perceptibly gave up its fixity, shifted a step or two, and turned round. As if alarmed, it descended on the right side of the barrow, with the glide of a water-drop down a bud, and then vanished. The movement had been sufficient to show more clearly the characteristics of the figure, and that it was a woman's.

    The reason of her sudden displacement now appeared. With her dropping out of sight on the right side, a newcomer, bearing a burden, protruded into the sky on the left side, ascended the tumulus, and deposited the burden on the top. A second followed, then a third, a fourth, a fifth, and ultimately the whole barrow was peopled with burdened figures.

    The only intelligible meaning in this sky-backed pantomime of silhouettes was that the woman had no relation to the forms who had taken her place, was sedulously avoiding these, and had come thither for another object than theirs. The imagination of the observer clung by preference to that vanished, solitary figure, as to something more interesting, more important, more likely to have a history worth knowing than these newcomers, and unconsciously regarded them as intruders. But they remained, and established themselves; and the lonely person who hitherto had been queen of the solitude did not at present seem likely to return.

    3 - The Custom of the Country

    Had a looker-on been posted in the immediate vicinity of the barrow, he would have learned that these persons were boys and men of the neighbouring hamlets. Each, as he ascended the barrow, had been heavily laden with furze faggots, carried upon the shoulder by means of a long stake sharpened at each end for impaling them easily, two in front and two behind. They came from a part of the heath a quarter of a mile to the rear, where furze almost exclusively prevailed as a product.

    Every individual was so involved in furze by his method of carrying the faggots that he appeared like a bush on legs till he had thrown them down. The party had marched in trail, like a travelling flock of sheep; that is to say, the strongest first, the weak and young behind.

    The loads were all laid together, and a pyramid of furze thirty feet in circumference now occupied the crown of the tumulus, which was known as Rainbarrow for many miles round. Some made themselves busy with matches, and in selecting the driest tufts of furze, others in loosening the bramble bonds which held the faggots together. Others, again, while this was in progress, lifted their eyes and swept the vast expanse of country commanded by their position, now lying nearly obliterated by shade. In the valleys of the heath nothing save its own wild face was visible at any time of day; but this spot commanded a horizon enclosing a tract of far extent, and in many cases lying beyond the heath country. None of its features could be seen now, but the whole made itself felt as a vague stretch of remoteness.

    While the men and lads were building the pile, a change took place in the mass of shade which denoted the distant landscape. Red suns and tufts of fire one by one began to arise, flecking the whole country round. They were the bonfires of other parishes and hamlets that were engaged in the same sort of commemoration. Some were distant, and stood in a dense atmosphere, so that bundles of pale straw-like beams radiated around them in the shape of a fan. Some were large and near, glowing scarlet-red from the shade, like wounds in a black hide. Some were Maenades, with winy faces and blown hair. These tinctured the silent bosom of the clouds above them and lit up their ephemeral caves, which seemed thenceforth to become scalding caldrons. Perhaps as many as thirty bonfires could be counted within the whole bounds of the district; and as the hour may be told on a clock-face when the figures themselves are invisible, so did the men recognize the locality of each fire by its angle and direction, though nothing of the scenery could be viewed.

    The first tall flame from Rainbarrow sprang into the sky, attracting all eyes that had been fixed on the distant conflagrations back to their own attempt in the same kind. The cheerful blaze streaked the inner surface of the human circle -now increased by other stragglers, male and female with its own gold livery, and even overlaid the dark turf around with a lively luminousness, which softened off into obscurity where the barrow rounded downwards out of sight. It showed the barrow to be the segment of a globe, as perfect as on the day when it was thrown up, even the little ditch remaining from which the earth was dug. Not a plough had ever disturbed a grain of that stubborn soil. In the heath's barrenness to the farmer lay its fertility to the historian. There had been no obliteration, because there had been no tending.

    It seemed as if the bonfire-makers were standing in some radiant upper story of the world, detached from and independent of the dark stretches below. The heath down there was now a vast abyss, and no longer a continuation of what they stood on; for their eyes, adapted to the blaze, could see nothing of the deeps beyond its influence. Occasionally, it is true, a more vigorous flare than usual from their faggots sent darting lights like aides-de-camp down the inclines to some distant bush, pool, or patch of white sand, kindling these to replies of the same colour, till all was lost in darkness again. Then the whole black phenomenon beneath represented Limbo as viewed from the brink by the sublime Florentine in his vision, and the muttered articulations of the wind in the hollows were as complaints and petitions from the souls of mighty worth suspended therein.

    It was as if these men and boys had suddenly dived into past ages, and fetched therefrom an hour and deed which had before been familiar with this spot. The ashes of the original British pyre which blazed from that summit lay fresh and undisturbed in the barrow beneath their tread. The flames from funeral piles long ago kindled there had shone down upon the lowlands as these were shining now. Festival fires to Thor and Woden had followed on the same ground and duly had their day. Indeed, it is pretty well known that such blazes as this the heathmen were now enjoying are rather the lineal descendants from jumbled Druidical rites and Saxon ceremonies than the invention of popular feeling about Gunpowder Plot.

    Moreover to light a fire is the instinctive and resistant act of man when, at the winter ingress, the curfew is sounded throughout Nature. It indicates a spontaneous, Promethean rebelliousness against that fiat that this recurrent season shall bring foul times, cold darkness, misery and death. Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say, Let there be light.

    The brilliant lights and sooty shades which struggled upon the skin and clothes of the persons standing round caused their lineaments and general contours to be drawn with Dureresque vigour and dash. Yet the permanent moral expression of each face it was impossible to discover, for as the nimble flames towered, nodded, and swooped through the surrounding air, the blots of shade and flakes of light upon the countenances of the group changed shape and position endlessly. All was unstable; quivering as leaves, evanescent as lightning. Shadowy eye-sockets, deep as those of a death's head, suddenly turned into pits of lustre: a lantern-jaw was cavernous, then it was shining; wrinkles were emphasized to ravines, or obliterated entirely by a changed ray. Nostrils were dark wells; sinews in old necks were gilt mouldings; things with no particular polish on them were glazed; bright objects, such as the tip of a furze-hook one of the men carried, were as glass; eyeballs glowed like little lanterns. Those whom Nature had depicted as merely quaint became grotesque, the grotesque became preternatural; for all was in extremity.

    Hence it may be that the face of an old man, who had like others been called to the heights by the rising flames, was not really the mere nose and chin that it appeared to be, but an appreciable quantity of human countenance. He stood complacently sunning himself in the heat. With a speaker, or stake, he tossed the outlying scraps of fuel into the conflagration, looking at the midst of the pile, occasionally lifting his eyes to measure the height of the flame, or to follow the great sparks which rose with it and sailed away into darkness. The beaming sight, and the penetrating warmth, seemed to breed in him a cumulative cheerfulness, which soon amounted to delight. With his stick in his hand he began to jig a private minuet, a bunch of copper seals shining and swinging like a pendulum from under his waistcoat: he also began to sing, in the voice of a bee up a flue

    "The king' call'd down' his no-bles all',          

    By one', by two', by three';       

    Earl Mar'-shal, I'll' go shrive'-the queen',          

    And thou' shalt wend' with me'.

    "A boon', a boon', quoth Earl' Mar-shal',          

    And fell' on his bend'-ded knee',       

    That what'-so-e'er' the queen' shall say',          

    No harm' there-of' may be'."

    Want of breath prevented a continuance of the song; and the breakdown attracted the attention of a firm-standing man of middle age, who kept each corner of his crescent-shaped mouth rigorously drawn back into his cheek, as if to do away with any suspicion of mirthfulness which might erroneously have attached to him.

    A fair stave, Grandfer Cantle; but I am afeard 'tis too much for the mouldy weasand of such a old man as you, he said to the wrinkled reveller. Dostn't wish th' wast three sixes again, Grandfer, as you was when you first learnt to sing it?

    Hey? said Grandfer Cantle, stopping in his dance.

    Dostn't wish wast young again, I say? There's a hole in thy poor bellows nowadays seemingly.

    But there's good art in me? If I couldn't make a little wind go a long ways I should seem no younger than the most aged man, should I, Timothy?

    And how about the new-married folks down there at the Quiet Woman Inn? the other inquired, pointing towards a dim light in the direction of the distant highway, but considerably apart from where the reddleman was at that moment resting. What's the rights of the matter about 'em? You ought to know, being an understanding man.

    But a little rakish, hey? I own to it. Master Cantle is that, or he's nothing. Yet 'tis a gay fault, neigbbour Fairway, that age will cure.

    I heard that they were coming home tonight. By this time they must have come. What besides?

    The next thing is for us to go and wish 'em joy, I suppose?

    Well, no.

    "No? Now, I thought we must. I must, or 'twould be very unlike me, the first in every spree that's going!

    "Do thou' put on' a fri'-ar's coat',          

    And I'll' put on' a-no'-ther,       

    And we' will to' Queen Ele'anor go',          

    Like Fri'ar and' his bro'ther.

    I met Mis'ess Yeobright, the young bride's aunt, last night, and she told me that her son Clym was coming home a' Christmas. Wonderful clever, 'a believe, ah, I should like to have all that's under that young man's hair. Well, then, I spoke to her in my well-known merry way, and she said, 'O that what's shaped so venerable should talk like a fool!' that's what she said to me. I don't care for her, be jowned if I do, and so I told her. 'Be jowned if I care for 'ee,' I said. I had her there, hey?"

    I rather think she had you, said Fairway.

    No, said Grandfer Cantle, his countenance slightly flagging. 'Tisn't so bad as that with me?

    Seemingly 'tis, however, is it because of the wedding that Clym is coming home a' Christmas to make a new arrangement because his mother is now left in the house alone?

    Yes, yes, that's it. But, Timothy, hearken to me, said the Grandfer earnestly. Though known as such a joker, I be an understanding man if you catch me serious, and I am serious now. I can tell 'ee lots about the married couple. Yes, this morning at six o'clock they went up the country to do the job, and neither vell nor mark have been seen of 'em since, though I reckon that this afternoon has brought 'em home again man and woman, wife, that is. Isn't it spoke like a man, Timothy, and wasn't Mis'ess Yeobright wrong about me?

    Yes, it will do. I didn't know the two had walked together since last fall, when her aunt forbad the banns. How long has this new set-to been in mangling then? Do you know, Humphrey?

    Yes, how long? said Grandfer Cantle smartly, likewise turning to Humphrey. I ask that question.

    Ever since her aunt altered her mind, and said she might have the man after all, replied Humphrey, without removing his eyes from the fire. He was a somewhat solemn young fellow, and carried the hook and leather gloves of a furze-cutter, his legs, by reason of that occupation, being sheathed in bulging leggings as stiff as the Philistine's greaves of brass. That's why they went away to be married, I count. You see, after kicking up such a nunny-watch and forbidding the banns 'twould have made Mis'ess Yeobright seem foolish-like to have a banging wedding in the same parish all as if she'd never gainsaid it.

    Exactly, seem foolish-like; and that's very bad for the poor things that be so, though I only guess as much, to be sure, said Grandfer Cantle, still strenuously preserving a sensible bearing and mien.

    Ah, well, I was at church that day, said Fairway, which was a very curious thing to happen.

    If 'twasn't my name's Simple, said the Grandfer emphatically. I ha'n't been there to-year; and now the winter is a-coming on I won't say I shall.

    I ha'n't been these three years, said Humphrey; for I'm so dead sleepy of a Sunday; and 'tis so terrible far to get there; and when you do get there 'tis such a mortal poor chance that you'll be chose for up above, when so many bain't, that I bide at home and don't go at all.

    I not only happened to be there, said Fairway, with a fresh collection of emphasis, but I was sitting in the same pew as Mis'ess Yeobright. And though you may not see it as such, it fairly made my blood run cold to hear her. Yes, it is a curious thing; but it made my blood run cold, for I was close at her elbow. The speaker looked round upon the bystanders, now drawing closer to hear him, with his lips gathered tighter than ever in the rigorousness of his descriptive moderation.

    'Tis a serious job to have things happen to 'ee there, said a woman behind.

    'Ye are to declare it,' was the parson's words, Fairway continued. And then up stood a woman at my side, a-touching of me. 'Well, be damned if there isn't Mis'ess Yeobright a-standing up,' I said to myself. Yes, neighbours, though I was in the temple of prayer that's what I said. 'Tis against my conscience to curse and swear in company, and I hope any woman here will overlook it. Still what I did say I did say, and 'twould be a lie if I didn't own it.

    So 'twould, neighbour Fairway.

    'Be damned if there isn't Mis'ess Yeobright a-standing up,' I said, the narrator repeated, giving out the bad word with the same passionless severity of face as before, which proved how entirely necessity and not gusto had to do with the iteration. And the next thing I heard was, 'I forbid the banns,' from her. 'I'll speak to you after the service,' said the parson, in quite a homely way, yes, turning all at once into a common man no holier than you or I. Ah, her face was pale! Maybe you can call to mind that monument in Weatherbury church, the cross-legged soldier that have had his arm knocked away by the schoolchildren? Well, he would about have matched that woman's face, when she said, 'I forbid the banns.'

    The audience cleared their throats and tossed a few stalks into the fire, not because these deeds were urgent, but to give themselves time to weigh the moral of the story.

    I'm sure when I heard they'd been forbid I felt as glad as if anybody had gied me sixpence, said an earnest voice, that of Olly Dowden, a woman who lived by making heath brooms, or besoms. Her nature was to be civil to enemies as well as to friends, and grateful to all the world for letting her remain alive.

    And now the maid have married him just the same, said Humphrey.

    After that Mis'ess Yeobright came round and was quite agreeable, Fairway resumed, with an unheeding air, to show that his words were no appendage to Humphrey's, but the result of independent reflection.

    Supposing they were ashamed, I don't see why they shouldn't have done it here-right, said a wide-spread woman whose stays creaked like shoes whenever she stooped or turned. 'Tis well to call the neighbours together and to hae a good racket once now and then; and it may as well be when there's a wedding as at tide-times. I don't care for close ways.

    Ah, now, you'd hardly believe it, but I don't care for gay weddings, said Timothy Fairway, his eyes again travelling round. I hardly blame Thomasin Yeobright and neighbour Wildeve for doing it quiet, if I must own it. A wedding at home means five and six-handed reels by the hour; and they do a man's legs no good when he's over forty.

    True. Once at the woman's house you can hardly say nay to being one in a jig, knowing all the time that you be expected to make yourself worth your victuals.

    "You be bound to dance at Christmas because 'tis the time o' year; you must dance at weddings because 'tis the time o' life. At christenings folk will even smuggle in a reel or two, if 'tis no further on than the first or second chiel. And this is not naming the songs you've got to sing....For my part I like a good hearty funeral as well as anything. You've as splendid victuals and drink as at other parties, and

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