There is a conflict staged in The Return of the Native between Egdon Heath and the modern world. Egdon Heath is described in the beginning of the novel as a timeless place that modernity has yet to touch, making it a rather unusual location. It’s a place that’s still steeped in history, as many of its inhabitants believe in old folklore and perform traditional work that some might view as antiquated. Venn, for example, is a reddleman (someone who sells red coloring that farmers use to mark their sheep). The book describes him as “one of a class rapidly becoming extinct in Wessex, filling at present in the rural world the place which, during the last century, the dodo occupied in the world of animals. He is a curious, interesting and nearly perished link between obsolete forms of life and those which generally prevail.” In other words, Venn persists in his work despite the fact that the trade—and the entire way of life it represents—is becoming “obsolete” in the face of industrialization. Moreover, the several community celebrations that take place throughout the novel (like the Guy Fawkes Day bonfire and the May Day festival) are important, long-held rituals that connect characters with one another and with their shared heritage.
That said, Clym’s return from Paris (a modernized city) poses a threat to the traditional way of life in Egdon Heath. Although Clym does not like Paris well enough to return to it, he does want to open a school in Egdon and educate its inhabitants—in effect, he wants to modernize them. However, Egdon and its inhabitants refuse to be modernized. When Clym suggests to Fairway, one of the locals, that he wants to start a school in Egdon, Fairway remarks that “he’ll never carry it out.” Indeed, Fairway turns out to be correct; Clym begins to lose his eyesight and never manages to recover. Instead, like the other residents of Egdon, he makes his living off the land as a furze-cutter—that is, someone who harvests furze, a plant to feed livestock. As such, Egdon remains untouched by the modern world. Not only that, but it also claims a so-called “modern man,” in the form of Clym, as one of its own. In this way, The Return of the Native advocates for the continued existence of places like Egdon Heath, a rural town that’s managed to resist modern influences and hold onto its time-honored traditions.
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Modernity vs. Tradition ThemeTracker
Modernity vs. Tradition Quotes in The Return of the Native
Eustacia Vye was the raw material of a divinity. On Olympus she would have done well with a little preparation. She had the passions and instincts which make a model goddess, that is, those which make not quite a model woman. Had it been possible for the earth and mankind to be entirely in her grasp for a while, she had handled the distaff, the spindle, and the shears at her own free will, few in the world would have noticed the change of government. There would have been the same inequality of lot, the same heaping up of favors here, of contumely there, the same generosity before justice, the same perpetual dilemmas, the same captious alteration of caresses and blows that we endure now.
To be loved to madness—such was her great desire. Love was to her the one cordial which could drive away the eating loneliness of her days. And she seemed to long for the abstraction called passionate love more than for any particular lover.
“The place he’s been living at is Paris,” said Humphrey, “and they tell me ’tis where the king’s head was cut off years ago. My poor mother used to tell me about that business. ‘Hummy,’ she used to say, ‘I was a young maid then, and as I was at home ironing Mother’s caps one afternoon the parson came in and said, “They’ve cut the king’s head off, Jane; and what ’twill be next God knows.’”
On Egdon there was no absolute hour of the day. The time at any moment was a number of varying doctrines professed by the different hamlets, some of them having originally grown up from a common root, and then become divided by secession, some having been alien from the beginning. West Egdon believed in Blooms-End time, East Egdon in the time of the Quiet Woman Inn. Grandfer Cantle’s watch had numbered many followers in years gone by, but since he had grown older faiths were shaken. Thus, the mummers having gathered hither from scattered points each came with his own tenets on early and late; and they waited a little longer as a compromise.
The face was well shaped, even excellently. But the mind within was beginning to use it as a mere waste tablet whereon to trace its idiosyncrasies as they developed themselves. The beauty here visible would in no long time be ruthlessly over-run by its parasite, thought, which might just as well have fed upon a plainer exterior where there was nothing it could harm. Had Heaven preserved Yeobright from a wearing habit of meditation, people would have said, “A handsome man.” Had his brain unfolded under sharper contours they would have said, “A thoughtful man.” But an inner strenuousness was preying upon an outer symmetry, and they rated his look as singular.
“I found that I was trying to be like people who had hardly anything in common with myself. I was endeavouring to put off one sort of life for another sort of life, which was not better than the life I had known before. It was simply different.”
“There is no chance of getting rich. But with my system of education, which is as new as it is true, I shall do a great deal of good to my fellow-creatures.”
“Dreams, dreams! If there had been any system left to be invented they would have found it out at the universities long before this time.”
It was bitterly plain to Eustacia that he did not care much about social failure; and the proud fair woman bowed her head and wept in sick despair at thought of the blasting effect upon her own life of that mood and condition in him. Then she came forward.
“I would starve rather than do it!” she exclaimed vehemently. “And you can sing! I will go and live with my grandfather again!”
The story of the deaths of Eustacia and Wildeve was told throughout Egdon, and far beyond, for many weeks and months. All the known incidents of their love were enlarged, distorted, touched up, and modified, till the original reality bore slight resemblance to the counterfeit presentation by surrounding tongues.
He left alone creeds and systems of philosophy, finding enough and more than enough to occupy his tongue in the opinions and actions common to all good men. Some believed him, and some believed not; some said that his words were commonplace, others complained of his want of theological doctrine; while others again remarked that it was well enough for a man to take to preaching who could not see to do anything else. But everywhere he was kindly received, for the story of his life had become generally known.
