Thomas Hardy - Return of the Native

Table of Contents

Title Page THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE Thomas Hardy

History of Collins

Life & Times

PREFACE

BOOK ONE—THE THREE WOMEN

Chapter 1: A Face on Which Time Makes but Little Impression

Chapter 2: Humanity Appears upon the Scene, Hand in Hand with Trouble

Chapter 3: The Custom of the Country

Chapter 4: The Halt on the Turnpike Road

Chapter 5: Perplexity among Honest People

Chapter 6: The Figure against the Sky

Chapter 7: Queen of Night

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

Chapter 9: Love Leads a Shrewd Man into Strategy

Chapter 10: A Desperate Attempt at Persuasion

Chapter 11: The Dishonesty of an Honest Woman

BOOK TWO—THE ARRIVAL

Chapter 1: Tidings of the Comer

Chapter 2: The People at Blooms-End Make Ready

Chapter 3: How a Little Sound Produced a Great Dream

Chapter 4: Eustacia Is Led on to an Adventure

Chapter 5: Through the Moonlight

Chapter 6: The Two Stand Face to Face

Chapter 7: A Coalition between Beauty and Oddness

Chapter 8: Firmness Is Discovered in a Gentle Heart

BOOK THREE—THE FASCINATION

Chapter 1: “My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is”

Chapter 2: The New Course Causes Disappointment

Chapter 3: The First Act in a Timeworn Drama

Chapter 4: An Hour of Bliss and Many Hours of Sadness

Chapter 5: Sharp Words Are Spoken, and a Crisis Ensues

Chapter 6: Yeobright Goes, and the Breach Is Complete

Chapter 7: The Morning and the Evening of a Day

Chapter 8: A New Force Disturbs the Current

BOOK FOUR—THE CLOSED DOOR

Chapter 1: The Rencounter by the Pool

Chapter 2: He Is Set upon by Adversities but He Sings a Song

Chapter 3: She Goes Out to Battle against Depression

Chapter 4: Rough Coercion Is Employed

Chapter 5: The Journey across the Heath

Chapter 6: A Conjuncture, and Its Result upon the Pedestrian

Chapter 7: The Tragic Meeting of Two Old Friends

Chapter 8: Eustacia Hears of Good Fortune, and Beholds Evil

BOOK FIVE—THE DISCOVERY

Chapter 1: “Wherefore Is Light Given to Him That Is in Misery”

Chapter 2: A Lurid Light Breaks in upon a Darkened Understanding

Chapter 3: Eustacia Dresses Herself on a Black Morning

Chapter 4: The Ministrations of a Half-forgotten One

Chapter 5: An Old Move Inadvertently Repeated

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

Chapter 7: The Night of the Sixth of November

Chapter 8: Rain, Darkness, and Anxious Wanderers

Chapter 9: Sights and Sounds Draw the Wanderers Together

BOOK SIX—AFTERCOURSES

Chapter 1: The Inevitable Movement Onward

Chapter 2: Thomasin Walks in a Green Place by the Roman Road

Chapter 3: The Serious Discourse of Clym with His Cousin

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

Footnotes

Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from the Collins English Dictionary

Copyright

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Thomas Hardy was born in a Dorset village in 1840. Although he had a modest upbringing, Hardy found himself working successfully as an architect in London at the age of 22. He spent five years in London, but was eventually drawn back to Dorset because he did not enjoy the urban environment or the class prejudice he felt, mixing with the well-heeled of England’s capital city. Having returned to the countryside, he began to consider an alternative career as a novelist. By 1867 he had already completed a manuscript, but had no luck placing it with a publisher. Despite this, his ambition knew no bounds and he persevered securing his first publication in 1871. His first five novels were well received and Hardy’s confidence in pushing the literary envelope grew steadily.

Most of Hardy’s work is set in a semi-fictional region called Wessex. The name comes from the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Wessex, which was eventually fragmented following the invasion of William the Conqueror in 1066. In his imaginary Wessex, Hardy gives many real places alternative names as if it were a kind of parallel universe. This was Hardy’s devise, partly to make it abundantly clear that his work was not about real people and places, but also to provide a world into which he could escape as a writer.

In Far From the Madding Crowd , published in serial form in 1874, Bathsheba is his beautiful female protagonist and it is through her experiences that Hardy exposes his feelings on romantic love and the inconsistency and destruction that can be caused by relationships. However, the central concern of Far From the Madding Crowd highlights Hardy’s preoccupation with the modernity and industrialization of society. Many of his texts are set in rural locations and Hardy details the dialects, landscape, and people of the English countryside to try and preserve that history and endangered way of life. Central to Hardy’s overall ambition was to show that living people are only ever custodians of the world for future generations. Dorset is filled with ancient sites of human activity and prehistoric evidence of a past without humanity. Hardy wanted to make it clear that we each have a window of opportunity in life to make our mark. That is why he had little time for people whom he considered to be fatuous or self-interested, because he was acutely aware that it is the impression that we make on others that counts the most, both during life and after death.