The Return of the Native (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

Hardy, Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 019284072X ISBN 13: 9780192840721

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2005

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.
This edition has the only critical text based on the manuscript and first edition, and without the later changes that substantially altered Hardy's original intentions. The new introduction by critic Margaret R. Higonnet is the most critically up-to-date discussion of the novel available and considers the mythic nature of the heath opposed to the modernity of the characters, the economic vocabulary of value and investment, the novel's classical structure, and Hardy's cinematic techniques.

About this title

From the Publisher

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From the Inside Flap

This fine novel sets in opposition two of Thomas Hardy's most unforgettable creations:  his heroine, the sensuous, free-spirited Eustacia Vye, and the solemn, majestic stretch of upland in Dorsetshire he called Egdon Heath.  The famous opening reveals the haunting power of that dark, forbidding moon where proud Eustacia fervently awaits a clandestine meeting with her lover, Damon Wildeve.  But Eustacia's dreams of escape are not to be realized--neither Wildeve nor the retuming native Clym Yeobright can bring her salvation.  Injured by forces beyond their control, Hardy's characters struggle vainly in the net of destiny.  In the end, only the face of the lonely heath remains untouched by fate in this masterpiece of tragic passion, a tale that perfectly epitomizes the author's own unique and melancholy genius.
From the Paperback edition.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 019284072X
• ISBN 13: 9780192840721
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 496
• Editor: Gatrell Simon