Introduction

Author's Preface

Book First The Three Women

I A Face on Which Time Makes But Little

Impression

II Humanity Appears upon the Scene, Hand in

Hand with Trouble

III The Custom of the Country

IV The Halt on the Turnpike Road

V Perplexity among Honest People

VI The Figure against theSky

VII Queen of Night

VIII Those Who Are Found Where There Is Said

to Be Nobody

ix Love Leads a Shrewd Man into Strategy

x A Desperate Attempt at Persuasion

xi The Dishonesty of an Honest Woman

Book Second. The Arrival

l Tidings of the Comer

n The People at Blooms-End Make Ready

III How a Little Sound Produced a Great Dream

iv Eustacia Is Led On to an Adventure

v Through the Moonlight

vi The Two Stand Face to Face

vii A Coalition between Beauty and Oddness

viii Firmness Is Discoyered in a Gentle Heart

Book Third: The Fasclnation

i 'My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is

ii The New Course Causes Disappointment

iii The First Act in a Timeworn Drama

iv An Hour of Bliss and Many Hours of

Sadness

v Sharp Words Are Spoken and a Crisis

Ensues

vi Yeobright Goes and the Breach Is

Complete

vn The Morning and the Evening ofa Day

viii A New Force Disturbs the Current

Book Fourth: The Closed Door

l The Rencounter by the Pool

n He Is Set Upon by Adversilies; but He Sings

a Song

m She Goes Out to Battle against Depression

iv Rough Coercion Is Employed

v The Journey across the Heath

vi A Conjuncture, and Its Result upoo the

Pedestrian

vii The Tragic Meeting of Two Old Friends

viii Eustacia Hears of Good Fortune, and Beholds

Evil

Book Fifth The Discovery

I 'Wherefore Is Light Given to Him That Is

in Misery'

ii A Lurid Light Breaks In upon a Darkened

Understanding

iii Eustacia Dresses Herself on a Black

Morning

iv The Ministrations of a Half-Forgotten

One

v An Qld Move Inadvertently Repeated

vi Thomasin Argues with Her Cousin, and He

Writes a Letter

vii The Night of the Sixth ofNovember

viii Rain, Darkness, and Anxious Wanderers

ix Sights and Sounds Draw the Wanderers

Together

Book Sixth Aftercourses

i The Inevitable Movement Onward

II Thomasin Walks in a Green Place by the

Roman Road

m The Serious Discourse of Clym with His

Cousin

iv Cheerfulness Again Asserts Itself at Blooms-

End, and Clym Finds His Vocation

The place became full of a watchful intentoess 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 wait-

ed thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through

the crises of so many things, that it could only be imag-

ined 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 is-

sues 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

utteriy wanting. Fair prospects wed happily with fair

times; but alas, if times be not fair! Men have oftencr

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 sub-

tler and scarcer instinct, to a more recently learnt emo-

tion, 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 mayfind themselves in closer andcloser

hannony with external things wearing a sombreness

distasteful to our race when it was young. The timc

seems near, if it has not actually arrived, when the chas-

tened 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.

Son of a local builder, Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

was born near Dorchester, Dorset, an agricultural dis-

trict rich in tradition and folklore. At the age of 16,

he started out to follow his father's profession and

began his apprenticeship first in Dorchester and then in

London. Yet his interest was in literature. In his

early years, he wrote a good deal of verse. Afterwards

he turned to prose fiction and produced as many as 15

novels, The Return of the Native (1878) being the first

of his tragic novels. But towards the end of the 19th

century, he gave up novel-writing and published five

volumes of verse in addition to his great epic-drama

'The Dynasts' and two books of short stories.

The scene of The Return of the Native is Egdon

Heath which, as if bypassed by the pace of industriali-

zation, still preserves an ancient charm of its own with

the wilderness, the Roman highways and village bon-

fires, and the traditional superstition of the local

pcople. However, Egdon Heath is no paradise on earth.

tts social structure is breaking apart. Visibly affected

hy this irresistible tide of change, the gentry grow

increasingly worried while the majority of the rustic

heathmen are still contented with their lot, living in

pcace and illusory happiness.

The story begins with two women, Thomasin Yco-

bright and Eustacia Vye, falling in love with Damon

Wildeve who, for some reason, makes his choice in

favour of the former. Eustacia eventually marries

Thomasin's cousin Clym Yeobrigbt, a native returned

from Paris, but it is not long before she is thoroughly

disillusioned with her husband. Wilful, proud, and

self-indulgent, she finds herself confronted with the

dreadful prospect of living on the bleak heath with a

man who is destined to move among rustic folk. Clym,

oa the other hand, conaes back to stay in the village

because he is tired of city life. Hc has, on his return,

the intention of running a school, but he becomes a

fHrze-cutter on account of his failing eyesight. For

Eustacia, this further deterioratioa in social status on

Clym's part is the last straw. A terrible row ariseswhen

Ctym finds his wife unfaithful. This discovery also

precipitates her flight with Wildeve, and both get drowned

on a stormy night. If Eustacia achieves something

of a tragic heroine, Clym is not elevated to the dignity

ofa tragic hero. It is possible that the author deliberate-

ly tries to weaken the tragic effect by making Clym an

itinerant preacher.

The Retwn of the Nalive is Hardy's firet mature

novel. Like a magnificeat building, it attains integrity

and balance in structure. It embodies the author's ar-

tistic principle of writing as well as his philosophical

view of life and nature, while giving a realistic descrip-

Uon of the English pcasantry then in the process of de-

cay. The few lines from John Keats' Endymion which

we find at the beginning of the novel may serve as a

warning to the reader that the story is not to be read

simply for diversion. It might be Hardy's intention to

record trulhfully what happened to the English rural

community in the transitional period of the 19th-cen-

tury industrialization.

Xie Chulan