The Return of the Native
| Title: | The Return of the Native (Oxford World's Classics) |
| Author: | Thomas Hardy
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| Year First Published: | 1878 |
| Page Count: | 349 |
| Synopsis: | In Hardy's The Return of the Native, Eustacia Vye criss-crosses the wild Egdon Heath, eager to experience life to the full in her quest for "music, poetry, passion, war." She marries Clym Yeobright, a native of the heath, but his idealism frustrates her romantic ambitions and her discontent draws others into a tangled web of deceit and unhappiness. Early readers responded to Hardy's "insatiably observant" descriptions of the heath, a setting that for D. H. Lawrence provided the "real stuff of tragedy." For modern readers, the tension between the mythic setting of the heath and the modernity of the characters challenges our freedom to shape the world as we wish; like Eustacia, we may not always be able to live our dreams. |
Favorite Review
| craigadams | 
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| There are long descriptive passages. And there seems to be short descriptive passages on almost every page. The story felt bogged down by these descriptions and some tricky dialect, through the first third. I almost gave up several times. However, as the story developed, it became more engaging. Interesting character study. |
Categories
Tags
| Focus | Male/Female | Readability | Difficult |
| Focus | Husband/Wife | Setting | Europe |
| Focus | Parent/Child | Setting | Small Town |
| Number of pages | 300-400 | Time Period | 1800's |
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