The Return of the Native
Thomas Hardy (1878)
“A wild heath, a woman who wants to escape it, a man who chose to return to it — and the landscape that destroys everyone who refuses to accept its terms.”
At a Glance
On the vast, dark expanse of Egdon Heath, Eustacia Vye — beautiful, restless, and desperate to escape rural life — marries Clym Yeobright, a young man who has returned from Paris to become a schoolteacher among the heath folk. Their marriage collapses when Clym's eyesight fails and he becomes a furze-cutter, the very kind of rustic laborer Eustacia married him to escape. Clym's mother, Mrs. Yeobright, dies on the heath after being turned away from Clym's door — Eustacia refused to let her in. Damon Wildeve, the man Eustacia should never have given up, lingers as a temptation. When all paths close, Eustacia drowns in a weir during a storm. Wildeve drowns trying to save her. Clym survives, consumed by guilt, and becomes an itinerant preacher on the heath he never left.
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