The Return of the Native

The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy is an excellent novel. Set in his fictional region of Wessex, and beautifully incorporating the wild countryside ("Egdon Heath"), the story centers on flawed characters in a doomed marriage. Its protagonists--Clym Yeobright and Eustacia Vie--are both fully rounded characters that contain multitudes but share an inability to overcome their tragic flaws. Allowing them to fall in love, the story anticipates Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road or Noah Baumbach's A Marriage Story in its unflinching depiction of domestic decay. Hardy is a tremendous, poetic writer, and The Return of the Native was as rich and realized as his Far from the Madding Crowd. Highest recommendations for this haunting, monumental novel. 

One reason I avoid novels from the nineteenth century is that while the writing is elevated and often beautiful, the plots tend to be convoluted and labyrinthine. This is a function of being serialized. Most of these writers released a chapter at a time in a monthly magazine. The back third of these novels can a rough read, just like seasons three and four of a serialized television show can be rough watches. The writers lose their way. Hardy rarely does this, and he maintains excellence throughout all of The Return of the Native. However, I think he is irritated by the form as well. Late in the novel, two minor characters actually do get happily married. He didn't want this to happen, but he allowed it, and he includes the best author's note I have ever read. I will end this review with Hardy's own words:

"The writer may state here that the original conception of the story did not design a marriage between Thomasin and Venn. He was to have retained his isolated and weird character to the last, and to have disappeared mysteriously from the heath, nobody knowing whither--Thomasin remaining a widow. But certain circumstances of serial publication led to a change of intent. 

Readers can therefore choose between the endings, and those with an austere artistic code can assume the more consistent conclusion to be the true one."

I like to think that I have an "austere artistic code," but so happy was I with the novel overall that I accept either ending as believable and satisfying--artistically or otherwise.