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Idioms
Definition of Imagery
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After Apple-Picking" contain imagery that engages... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines... read full definition
Key Examples in The Return of the Native
Book 1, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Tent and Screen:
In Book 1, Chapter 1, Hardy paints a vivid picture of Egdon Heath using metaphors of architecture and detailed visual imagery of the sky touching the earth:
Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor. The heaven being spread with this pallid screen, the earth with the darkest vegetation, their meeting-line at the horizon was clearly marked. In such contrast the heath wore the appearance of an instalment of night which had taken up its place before its astronomical hour was come: darkness had to a great extent arrived hereon, while day stood distinct in the sky.
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Explanation and Analysis—The Face of the Heath:
In Book 1, Chapter 1, Hardy begins to outline the novel’s intense preoccupation with the geography and aura of Egdon Heath. This grassland is an area so powerful and affecting it’s almost a character in itself. In the following passage, the narrator personifies the heath, uses hyperbolic language, and employs vivid imagery to bring it to life for the reader:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The face of the heath by its mere complexion added half-an-hour to eve; it could in like manner retard the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely generated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight to a cause of shaking and dread.
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Book 1, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—White-Headed:
In Book 1, Chapter 2, Thomas Hardy employs both a simile and several instances of sensory language to depict Captain Vye, Eustacia's grandfather, walking along the road to Egdon:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Along the road walked an old man. He was white-headed as a mountain, bowed in the shoulders, and faded in general aspect. He wore a glazed hat, an ancient boat-cloak, and shoes; his brass buttons bearing an anchor upon their face. In his hand was a silver-headed walking-stick, which he used as a veritable third leg, perseveringly dotting the ground with its point at every few inches interval.
Book 1, Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—First Tall Flame:
In Book 1, Chapter 3, Hardy uses metaphors of clothing and contrasting visual imagery to create a vivid, primitive scene as the first bonfires are lit on Guy Fawkes night in Egdon:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The first tall flame from Blackbarrow sprang into the sky, attracting all eyes that had been fixed on the distant conflagrations back to their own attempt in the same kind. The cheerful blaze streaked the inner surface of the human circle—now increased by other stragglers, male and female—with its own gold livery, and even overlaid the dark turf around with a lively luminousness, which softened off into obscurity where the barrow rounded downwards out of sight.
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Explanation and Analysis—Bonfires:
The recurring motif of bonfires in this novel represents passion, secrecy, danger, and the primal instincts of the characters. Bonfires are bright, intense, and have an inherent potential for destruction. Hardy depicts them in lavish detail, employing visual imagery, metaphors, and similes when describing them and the events they point toward. The vivid visual language associated with fire creates a strong impression on the reader. For example, in this passage from Book 1, Chapter 3, Hardy describes a night-time scene on the heath as the Guy Fawkes Night bonfires are set ablaze:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Red suns and tufts of fire one by one began to arise, flecking the whole country round. They were the bonfires of other parishes and hamlets that were engaged in the same sort of commemoration. Some were distant, and stood in a dense atmosphere, so that bundles of pale straw-like beams radiated around them in the shape of a fan. Some were large and near, glowing scarlet-red from the shade, like wounds in a black hide. [...] These tinctured the silent bosom of the clouds above them and lit up their ephemeral caves, which seemed thenceforth to become scalding caldrons.
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Book 1, Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—A Profile:
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:
Unlock with LitCharts A+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.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Bonfires:
The recurring motif of bonfires in this novel represents passion, secrecy, danger, and the primal instincts of the characters. Bonfires are bright, intense, and have an inherent potential for destruction. Hardy depicts them in lavish detail, employing visual imagery, metaphors, and similes when describing them and the events they point toward. The vivid visual language associated with fire creates a strong impression on the reader. For example, in this passage from Book 1, Chapter 3, Hardy describes a night-time scene on the heath as the Guy Fawkes Night bonfires are set ablaze:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Red suns and tufts of fire one by one began to arise, flecking the whole country round. They were the bonfires of other parishes and hamlets that were engaged in the same sort of commemoration. Some were distant, and stood in a dense atmosphere, so that bundles of pale straw-like beams radiated around them in the shape of a fan. Some were large and near, glowing scarlet-red from the shade, like wounds in a black hide. [...] These tinctured the silent bosom of the clouds above them and lit up their ephemeral caves, which seemed thenceforth to become scalding caldrons.
Related Themes:
Book 1, Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Eustacia and Thomasin:
In The Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy paints vivid character portraits of two starkly different women, Eustacia Vye and Thomasin Yeobright. These characters are foils for each other, each emphasizing the traits of the other through their contrasting natures. Their differences are apparent not only in their characters, but also in the imagery and metaphors Hardy uses to describe them physically. Describing Eustacia in Book 1, Chapter 7, Hardy writes:
Unlock with LitCharts A+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. [...] There would have been the same inequality of lot, the same heaping up of favours here, of contumely there, the same generosity before justice, the same perpetual dilemmas, the same captious alternation of caresses and blows as we endure now. She was in person full-limbed and somewhat heavy; without ruddiness, as without pallor; and soft to the touch as a cloud.
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Explanation and Analysis—Flame-Like:
Eustacia Vye is linked to the imagery of flames, fire and heat throughout the novel. This motif—and the metaphors and similes of fire Hardy uses when it occurs—refers to her inflammatory character. It also gestures to her passionate nature and her tendency to act destructively when out of control. In Book 1, Chapter 7, the narrator comments that:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Assuming that the souls of men and women were visible essences, you could fancy the colour of Eustacia’s soul to be flame-like. The sparks from it that rose into her dark pupils gave the same impression.
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Explanation and Analysis—Eustacia's Many Things:
In Book 1, Chapter 7, Hardy employs allusions, imagery, metaphors, and similes to help the narrative introduce Eustacia Vye. All this hyperbolic language gives an intense and somewhat mocking introduction to her physical beauty:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Her presence brought memories of Bourbon roses, rubies, tropical midnights, and eclipses of the sun; her moods recalled lotus-eaters, the march in ‘Athalie;' her motions, the ebb and flow of the sea; her voice, the viola. In a dim light, and with a slight rearrangement of her hair, her general figure might have stood for that of either of the higher female deities. The new moon behind her head, an old helmet upon it, a diadem of accidental dewdrops round her brow, would have been adjuncts sufficient to strike the note of Artemis, Athena, or Hera respectively [...]
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Explanation and Analysis—Darkness:
In the following passage from Book 1, Chapter 7, Hardy establishes the motif of darkness, which becomes a regular occurrence in The Return of the Native. The narrator employs dark visual imagery and several metaphors and similes referencing darkness to underscore Eustacia Vye's inner turmoil:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Egdon was her Hades, and since coming there she had imbibed much of what was dark in its tone, though inwardly and eternally unreconciled thereto. Her appearance accorded well with this smouldering rebelliousness, and the shady splendour of her beauty was the real surface of the sad and stifled warmth within her.
Related Themes:
Book 1, Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Darkness:
In the following passage from Book 1, Chapter 7, Hardy establishes the motif of darkness, which becomes a regular occurrence in The Return of the Native. The narrator employs dark visual imagery and several metaphors and similes referencing darkness to underscore Eustacia Vye's inner turmoil:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Egdon was her Hades, and since coming there she had imbibed much of what was dark in its tone, though inwardly and eternally unreconciled thereto. Her appearance accorded well with this smouldering rebelliousness, and the shady splendour of her beauty was the real surface of the sad and stifled warmth within her.
Related Themes:
Book 1, Chapter 10
Explanation and Analysis—Flame-Like:
Eustacia Vye is linked to the imagery of flames, fire and heat throughout the novel. This motif—and the metaphors and similes of fire Hardy uses when it occurs—refers to her inflammatory character. It also gestures to her passionate nature and her tendency to act destructively when out of control. In Book 1, Chapter 7, the narrator comments that:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Assuming that the souls of men and women were visible essences, you could fancy the colour of Eustacia’s soul to be flame-like. The sparks from it that rose into her dark pupils gave the same impression.
Related Themes:
Book 2, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Thomasin and the Pigeons:
In Book 2, Chapter 2 of The Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy uses visual and tactile imagery to depict Thomasin's strength of character in the face of her as-yet-unrealized marriage. As Thomasin busies herself with a mundane task in her aunt’s apple-loft, Hardy's narrator describes the scene:
Unlock with LitCharts A+The loft was lighted by a semicircular hole, through which the pigeons crept to their lodgings in the same high quarters of the premises; and from this hole the sun shone in a bright yellow patch upon the figure of the maiden as she knelt and plunged her naked arms into the soft brown fern, which, from its abundance, was used on Egdon in packing away stores of all kinds.
Related Themes:
Book 2, Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Eustacia's Dream:
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:
Unlock with LitCharts A+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.
Book 2, Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—The Settle:
In Book 2, Chapter 6, Hardy utilizes rich visual and tactile imagery, a metaphor of Paradise, and similes describing protection to depict the inviting scene of an Egdon Christmas party. His description of the “settle,” a type of wooden bench traditionally placed by the fire, offers a sense of warmth and safety. This is juxtaposed with the harsh conditions outside, as the narrator relates:
Unlock with LitCharts A+At the other side of the chimney stood the settle, which is the necessary supplement to a fire so open that nothing less than a strong breeze will carry up the smoke. It is, to the hearths of old-fashioned cavernous fireplaces, what the east belt of trees is to the exposed country estate, or the north wall to the garden. Outside the settle candles gutter, locks of hair wave, young women shiver, and old men sneeze. Inside is Paradise.
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Book 2, Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Moloch, Mephistopheles :
In Book 2, Chapter 7 of The Return of the Native, Hardy employs visual imagery and allusion to convey the emotional state of Eustacia as she runs into Diggory Venn on the heath. Eustacia leaves her house in Egdon:
Unlock with LitCharts A+[...] full of a passionate and indescribable solicitude for one to whom she was not even a name, she went forth into the amplitude of tanned wild around her, restless as Ahasuerus the Jew. She was about half a mile from her residence when she beheld a sinister redness arising from a ravine a little way in advance—dull and lurid like a flame in sunlight. It was neither Moloch nor Mephistopheles, but Diggory Venn.
Related Themes:
Book 2, Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Eustacia and Thomasin:
In The Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy paints vivid character portraits of two starkly different women, Eustacia Vye and Thomasin Yeobright. These characters are foils for each other, each emphasizing the traits of the other through their contrasting natures. Their differences are apparent not only in their characters, but also in the imagery and metaphors Hardy uses to describe them physically. Describing Eustacia in Book 1, Chapter 7, Hardy writes:
Unlock with LitCharts A+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. [...] There would have been the same inequality of lot, the same heaping up of favours here, of contumely there, the same generosity before justice, the same perpetual dilemmas, the same captious alternation of caresses and blows as we endure now. She was in person full-limbed and somewhat heavy; without ruddiness, as without pallor; and soft to the touch as a cloud.
Related Themes:
Book 3, Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Long Dark Prongs:
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:
Unlock with LitCharts A+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.
Related Themes:
Book 4, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Darkness:
In the following passage from Book 1, Chapter 7, Hardy establishes the motif of darkness, which becomes a regular occurrence in The Return of the Native. The narrator employs dark visual imagery and several metaphors and similes referencing darkness to underscore Eustacia Vye's inner turmoil:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Egdon was her Hades, and since coming there she had imbibed much of what was dark in its tone, though inwardly and eternally unreconciled thereto. Her appearance accorded well with this smouldering rebelliousness, and the shady splendour of her beauty was the real surface of the sad and stifled warmth within her.
Related Themes:
Book 5, Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Pestilent Blast:
In the following passage from Book 5, Chapter 1, Hardy employs hyperbolic language, tactile imagery, and a simile of disease to convey Eustacia's profound guilt and shame at keeping secrets from Clym:
Unlock with LitCharts A+There escaped from Eustacia one of those shivering sighs which used to shake her like a pestilent blast. She had not yet told.
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Book 5, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Iron Bars:
In this piece of dialogue from Book 5, Chapter 2, Hardy conveys the heartbreaking dramatic irony of Clym Yeobright's confusion and grief about his mother. He does so using visual imagery, pathos, and a simile of imprisonment:
Unlock with LitCharts A+‘If there was one thing wanting to bewilder me it was this incomprehensible thing!… Diggory, if we, who remain alive, were only allowed to hold conversation with the dead—just once, a bare minute, even through a screen of iron bars, as with persons in prison—what we might learn! How many who now ride smiling would hide their heads!
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Book 6, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Heath's Hollow:
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:
Unlock with LitCharts A+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.
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