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.
