Summary
Summary of The Return of the Native
Key ideas
Key idea 1
Home means different things to each
Clym Yeobright returns from Paris to Egdon Heath with a wish to stay and teach the poor. Eustacia Vye hates the heath and sees his arrival as a possible escape. Their hopes point in opposite directions before their love story has even begun.
Around them, family, former lovers and loyal friends bring wishes of their own. Hardy shapes this small community into a story of love, pride and bad timing, where wanting a bigger life can clash with wanting a smaller, deeper one.
Key idea 2
The heath shapes every human hope
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Key idea 3
A failed wedding exposes fragile loyalties
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Key idea 4
Eustacia confuses desire with escape
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Key idea 5
Clym returns with the opposite dream
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Key idea 6
Marriage leaves their hopes unspoken
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Key idea 7
Changed work reveals an unchanged divide
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Key idea 8
Good intentions cannot prevent harm
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Key idea 9
Place and chance tighten the knots
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The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
Read the rest freeWho it’s for
For readers who love atmospheric novels, doomed love stories and writing about landscape, and anyone curious about Hardy’s stories of passion, pride and fate.
What this book is
The Return of the Native is a novel by Thomas Hardy, first published in 1878 after running in monthly parts in a magazine. It is set on Egdon Heath, a wild stretch of open country in Hardy's invented region of Wessex, which is based on the real Dorset where he grew up. Hardy wrote it at a time when he was making his name as a novelist, and he gave it the plan of a Greek tragedy, with a small cast, one place and a strict chain of cause and effect.
The story follows a handful of people in a tiny community. Clym Yeobright comes home from Paris, where he sold diamonds, and wants to stay and teach the poor. Eustacia Vye, a proud young woman who hates the heath, sees in his return a way out of it. Around them are Clym's anxious mother, his gentle cousin Thomasin, the restless innkeeper Damon Wildeve, and a strange red-dyed man named Diggory Venn.
What do you get from it? You get a story of love, pride and bad timing, told by a writer who treats landscape as a living force. You also get a sharp study of what happens when a person wants a bigger life and someone else wants a smaller, deeper one. Let us begin where Hardy begins, with the heath itself.
In this summary
- 1Egdon Heath is a character tooFree
- 2A failed wedding sets everything moving
- 3Eustacia longs for a larger life
- 4A native comes home from Paris
- 5Love grows fast between two dreamers
- 6A quarrel, a marriage, and a rift
- 7When his eyes fail, his plans change
- 8Fate, nature and the cost of wanting more
- 9How Hardy builds his tragedy
Key point 1 of 9
Egdon Heath is a character too
The novel opens with no person at all. It opens with a landscape, as a November afternoon darkens over Egdon Heath, a vast, unfenced tract of brown furze, heather and bracken. Hardy spends pages describing it, and he is making a claim. The heath is old, indifferent and unchanging, and the people who live on it are small beside it.
This matters because everything that follows grows from the place. The heath has no trees to speak of, no neat farms and no smart society. Its people cut furze for fuel, gather at bonfires, and keep customs older than the church. They know the paths in the dark, and they know one another's business. Hardy treats this world with respect and a little humour, especially in the chorus of heath folk such as Humphrey, Sam, Fairway and the nervous Christian Cantle.
Hardy also says something bold about taste. A heath, he suggests, is not a pretty place, and the modern world is learning to value that kind of sternness over sweetness. He sees a mood in the bare land that suits an age of doubt and trouble. For some of his characters the heath is home and comfort. For one of them it is a prison.
So from the first page you are asked to read the land as you would read a face. Its weather, its hours of light and its long silences shape how people feel and what they decide. Keep that in mind, because the novel keeps returning to it. The plot is driven by human wants, but the setting decides what those wants cost.
The opening also gives us a first human figure, almost by accident. An old road crosses the heath, and along it a lone traveller walks. We are about to meet the man who will shadow the whole story, and he looks like something from a fairy tale.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Why do Clym and Eustacia imagine different futures together?
Right. “She hopes he will take her to Paris, and he hopes she will stay and share his plain life of teaching.”Not quite. “She hopes he will take her to Paris, and he hopes she will stay and share his plain life of teaching.”
What does Diggory Venn choose after Thomasin rejects him?
Right. “He is not bitter, and he decides to watch over her happiness even if it means helping the man he distrusts.”Not quite. “He is not bitter, and he decides to watch over her happiness even if it means helping the man he distrusts.”
How do small choices contribute to the novel's tragic pattern?
Right. “Characters make choices that seem small and reasonable, and those choices tie together in ways nobody can foresee.”Not quite. “Characters make choices that seem small and reasonable, and those choices tie together in ways nobody can foresee.”
Who’s who
- Clym Yeobright
- A returning diamond merchant, Mrs Yeobright's son and Thomasin's cousin, who hopes to teach the poor on his native heath.
- Eustacia Vye
- Captain Vye's passionate granddaughter longs to escape the heath and sees Clym as a connection to a wider world.
- Mrs Yeobright
- Clym's strong-minded mother worries about his ambitions and distrusts the choices that draw him away from her.
- Thomasin Yeobright
- Clym's gentle cousin hopes to marry Damon Wildeve, while Diggory Venn watches over her welfare.
- Damon Wildeve
- The restless innkeeper of the Quiet Woman is Thomasin's intended husband but remains attracted to Eustacia.
- Diggory Venn
- A travelling reddleman stained red by his trade, he cares for Thomasin and keeps watch on Wildeve.
- Captain Vye
- Eustacia's grandfather is a retired sea captain who shares her home but has little influence over her.
- Christian Cantle
- A timid heath resident, he undertakes errands for the Yeobrights and voices the community's everyday fears.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 145,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 9 h 40 min
- Listening time16 h 10 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 13 other languages
Questions about The Return of the Native
What is The Return of the Native about?
It tells of Clym Yeobright, who comes home to Egdon Heath from Paris, and of Eustacia Vye, who longs to leave it. Their love, and the people around them, drive a story of passion, pride and fate.
Where is The Return of the Native set?
It is set on Egdon Heath, a wild tract of open land in Hardy's invented region of Wessex, which is based on Dorset in southern England. The heath works almost as a character in the book.
When was The Return of the Native written?
Hardy published it in 1878, first in monthly parts in a magazine and then as a book. It is a work of fiction, though its setting and customs draw on the real countryside he knew.
Who is Diggory Venn the reddleman?
Diggory Venn is a travelling seller of reddle, a red dye for marking sheep, which stains him red all over. He once courted Thomasin and now quietly watches over her.
Is The Return of the Native hard to read?
The story is clear and the characters are vivid.
