The Return of the Native is a dark novel. The mood is serious, tragic and foreboding right from the outset. Hardy’s Wessex novels almost all have one major thing in common: for the most part, everyone’s fates are sealed. This means—for some characters—that tragedy is inevitable, a fact that quickly becomes clear to the reader.
The book begins by describing Egdon Heath in detail. Hardy's somber and gloomy depictions of the area foreshadow the painful events to come. The reader is briefly allowed a sense of optimism as Clym Yeobright’s romantic storyline is introduced. However, this quickly gives way to melancholy. With the progression of the plot, each characters’ flaws and weaknesses are painfully exposed. By the time Book One is over, the reader already feels a sense of dread and anxiety. The novel hones in on themes of regret and loss, making the reader question the implications of even happy-seeming moments.
As the story continues, the reader becomes increasingly torn. It doesn’t seem safe to sympathize with or feel too happy for any character, as disaster always seems just around the bend. Although there are satisfying, even joyful moments, the overall mood is uneasy and threatening. The novel’s peaks and valleys of action are dramatic and disturbing, making the reader feel unsettled and ill at ease.
At the end of the novel, the reader experiences an anticlimax. The deliberate emotional murkiness of the final chapters is frustrating, especially as Eustacia Vye and Damon Wildeve’s deaths happen so suddenly and horribly. This underscores the novel's central narrative of the lack of control humans have over their own destinies. Like Clym in the novel's final stages, the reader is left haunted by the unfairness of fate and a sense of things being unfinished. However, the reader is also given a faint sense of hope by the end, as Thomasin Yeobright and Diggory Venn’s romance blossoms.
In Book 1, Chapter 6, Hardy's use of allusion, visual imagery and foreshadowing provides the reader with a deeper understanding of Eustacia's character. He describes her striding around the Heath in the following way:
A profile was visible against the dull monochrome of cloud around her; and it was as though side-shadows from the features of Marie Antoinette and Mrs. Siddons had converged upwards from the tomb to form an image like neither but suggesting both. This, however, was mere superficiality. In respect of character a face may make certain admissions by its outline; but it fully confesses only in its changes.
In this allusion, Hardy compares Eustacia to Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France before the French Revolution, and to Mrs. Siddons, a renowned British actress known for her portrayal of tragic characters. This aligns Eustacia with both the idea of beauty and bad behavior, as these were things both Antoinette and Siddons were known for.
The allusions to these historical figures do not only lend Eustacia an air of regal beauty and notoriety. They also subtly foreshadow her own tragic trajectory. Both Marie Antoinette and Mrs. Siddons are also associated with downfall and despair: Antoinette with the fall of the French monarchy and Siddons with her tragic onstage roles. By aligning Eustacia with these figures, Hardy hints at her own approaching downfall.
The visual imagery of the "dull monochrome of cloud around her" and the "side-shadows from the features" of Antoinette and Siddons contribute to the sense of Eustacia as a mysterious and enigmatic figure. Her body in this passage is silhouetted against clouds and formed from shadows, suggesting that there’s a supernatural or mysterious aspect to her presence.
What's more, Hardy's commentary on the superficiality of facial features and their inability to fully convey a person's character serves as a reminder to the reader not to judge Eustacia solely based on her physical beauty. The fact that her face might “make certain admissions by its outline” doesn’t speak to her nature as a whole. In saying that a face “confesses” solely through its “changes,” Hardy teases again that the reader will have to wait to see Eustacia’s fate revealed.
In Book 2, Chapter 3 of The Return of the Native, Hardy uses allusion, foreshadowing and strong visual language to depict Eustacia's complex dream following her meeting with Clym and her conversation with her grandfather:
She dreamt a dream; and few human beings, from Nebuchadnezzar to the Swaffham tinker ever dreamed a more remarkable one. Such an elaborately developed, perplexing, exciting dream was certainly never dreamed by a girl in Eustacia’s situation before. It had as many ramifications as the Cretan labyrinth, as many fluctuations as the Northern Lights, as much colour as a parterre in June, was as crowded with figures as a coronation. To Queen Scheherezade the dream might have seemed not far removed from commonplace.
The allusions Hardy makes here to “Nebuchadnezzar,” the “Swaffham tinker,” the “Labyrinth of Crete,” and to “Queen Scheherezade” all refer to figures or stories associated with dreams, mysteries, and intricate narratives. Nebuchadnezzar, a Babylonian king who appears in the Bible, had profound dreams interpreted by the Christian prophet Daniel. The “Swaffham tinker” is a figure in English folklore who followed his dream to find treasure. The Labyrinth of Crete is a famous mythological maze with a Minotaur at its center. Scheherazade is the storyteller of "One Thousand and One Nights," known for preserving her life through her enchanting and elaborate tales. These many allusions suggest the extraordinary quality of Eustacia's dream, which is far brighter than anything else in her life at this point in the novel.
In addition to these allusions, Hardy’s descriptive language is rich with visual imagery. Eustacia’s dream is full of "ramifications," suggesting a maze-like quality of intricate, winding paths. These twists and turns both reflect and foreshadow the confusion of Eustacia's feelings for Clym. The comparison to the "Northern Lights" also conveys fluctuation and a dazzling display of colors. The reference to a "parterre in June" brings to mind a formal garden at its peak. The reader sees a vision of glorious colors, symbolizing the richness and intensity of Eustacia's emotions and hopes. Hardy paints a vivid picture of her internal emotional landscape through this barrage of images and ideas. Eustacia's dream is a microcosm of her aspirations, her desires, and the complicated feelings that meeting Clym stirs up in her.
In Book 2, Chapter 8, Hardy uses a flashback rife with foreshadowing to describe a new perspective on Thomasin and Wildeve’s wedding. This provides crucial new details about relationships among the characters at this early stage. It also invokes the novel’s theme of miscommunication. The narrator describes that:
The report that Diggory had brought of the wedding, correct as far as it went, was deficient in one significant particular, which had escaped him through his being at some distance back in the church. When Thomasin was tremblingly engaged in signing her name Wildeve had flung towards Eustacia a glance that said plainly, ‘I have punished you now.’ She had replied in a low tone – and he little thought how truly – ‘You mistake; it gives me sincerest pleasure to see her your wife to-day.’
Characters in The Return of the Native are often unable or unwilling to fully understand or communicate their feelings to each other. The flashback to the wedding illustrates this, but it also foreshadows the illicit relationship between Eustacia and Wildeve. The exchange of glances and words “flung” between them are loaded with unspoken tensions and regrets. The narrator notices this, but Diggory, the observer, fails to capture it in his report. Diggory's version of events is woefully incomplete, but not out of malice. It’s because he is unaware of the angry undercurrents between Eustacia and Wildeve. This instance of partial understanding points to a trope of the Naturalist genre that’s central to the book: the notion that people's understanding of events is usually flawed or incomplete, and that this often leads to tragedy.
Wildeve's glance, which says “plainly… 'I have punished you now,” to Eustacia is another moment of foreshadowing. It's the first explicit indicator of the vindictiveness and pettiness that characterizes his relationship with her. The fact that Eustacia responds with "sincerest pleasure" at seeing him married to another woman further points to the future conflict between these two people.
In this passage from Book 3, Chapter 3, Hardy describes an important encounter of Clym's with Eustacia. The author uses visual imagery, a metaphor of sharpness and foreshadowing to hint at the complexity and pain that will characterize their relationship:
The lowest beams of the winter sun threw the shadow of the house over the palings, across the grass margin of the heath, and far up the vale, where the chimney outlines and those of the surrounding tree-tops stretched forth in long dark prongs.
The imagery of the winter sun casting long, cold shadows across the landscape underscores the notion of an impending change in Clym's life. The scenery of his childhood, once familiar and comforting, is now transformed into something sinister and foreboding. The house's shadow is thrown “over the palings” and into the heath. This reflects the influence of Eustacia on his perception of the world around him and also invokes the heath’s aura of danger and darkness. This change in Clym's landscape foreshadows the difficulties and challenges that his marriage will bring.
The visual and tactile imagery of the contrast between the "cold" light of the sun and the dark, menacing "prongs" of the trees and chimneys adds to the ominous atmosphere. The metaphor Hardy uses here aligns with his previous description of Egdon in Book 1 as Eustacia’s “Hades.” Now that Clym is associated with her, his childhood home also takes on the visual imagery of horns and pitchforks. Furthermore, the use of the word "prongs" suggests danger and sharpness, further emphasizing the harm that's approaching because of Clym and Eustacia's impending marriage. Now she's in his life, even Clym's home is "cold," "dark," and unsafe.
In this passage from Book 4, Chapter 2, Eustacia and Clym have a candid conversation about the deterioration of their marriage, foreshadowing its demise. Hardy employs a metaphor of temperature change and a related idiom to convey the shifting dynamics between these characters:
‘[..] How cold you seem this afternoon! and yet I used to think there never was a warmer heart than yours.’
‘Yes, I fear we are cooling—I see it as well as you,’ she sighed mournfully.
‘And how madly we loved two months ago! You were never tired of contemplating me, nor I of contemplating you. [...]
The metaphor Hardy uses here revolves around the imagery of warmth and coolness. Eustacia remarks on Clym's apparent coldness toward her, stating, "How cold you seem this afternoon! and yet I used to think there never was a warmer heart than yours." The metaphorical use of "warm" signifies the affectionate and passionate feelings Eustacia and Clym used to share, while "cool" refers to his apparent loss of interest. This metaphor of “cooling” is doubly significant in Eustacia’s case, as she’s often aligned with burning and fire in The Return of the Native. Given this, her love “cooling” is more of a drastic change than it would be for others. Eustacia's admission of "cooling" foreshadows the fast descent that follows this encounter.
The use of the word “cooling” also has an idiomatic meaning in this passage. It situates the interaction in its 19th-century moment. In Victorian English, "cooling" was a commonly used euphemism to indicate the waning of physical desire between lovers. Eustacia and Clym's emotional intimacy has clearly diminished, but this idiom also implies that their sexual chemistry has also begun to falter and fade away.
In the following passage from Book 6, Chapter 2 of The Return of the Native, Hardy employs the visual imagery of pleasant, rolling moorland. He does so to romanticize the tension between Thomasin Yeobright and Diggory Venn when they meet by chance by the road. He also foreshadows their later romantic relationship in this passage:
This conversation had passed in a hollow of the heath near the old Roman road, a place much frequented by Thomasin. And it might have been observed that she did not in future walk that way less often from having met Venn there now. Whether or not Venn abstained from riding thither because he had met Thomasin in the same place might easily have been guessed from her proceedings about two months later in the same year.
Through the visual imagery of the "hollow," Hardy creates a vivid depiction of the setting. The passage describes the encounter between Thomasin and Venn as happening in “a hollow of the heath.” Rather than merely being a standard roadside run-in, this sets the interaction in a romantic and inviting environment. Instead of being frightening, Egdon Heath now seems welcoming, containing a cozy “hollow” where pleasant things happen. The visual language of horror and despair has been replaced with that of softness and pliancy.
Hardy also subtly employs foreshadowing here, as the nature of this meeting hints at the future relationship between Thomasin and Diggory. This is quickly proven correct, as the passage's timeline jumps abruptly forward to events that occur two months later. This shift creates a sense of anticipation and intrigue for the reader, setting the stage for the development of the relationship between Thomasin and Venn.
Their meeting by the hollow also happens near a symbol of ancient England, the old Roman road. Though they meet by the “old” road, Diggory is travelling to his destination on the newer one that's overlaid on parts of it. The language of antiquity used here evokes a sense of timelessness for the reader. It also foreshadows the new “road” of marriage Diggory and Thomasin are about to travel together, one that overlays parts of their past.
