The Return of the Native

Thomas Hardy’s novel The Return of the Native was published serially in Belgravia magazine in 1878. Its setting, the formidable and unforgiving Egdon Heath, is based on the Wessex region of England where Hardy was born. Hardy provides a map that gives the locations that his love- and grief-driven characters visit as the story unfolds. The novel explores the themes of class, chance, fate, superstition, and social upheaval. This guide references the 2008 Oxford World’s Classics edition.

Plot Summary

Diggory Venn, rejected as a suitor to Thomasin Yeobright because of his low social status, is a reddleman who sells reddle, red ochre, to sheep farmers. A red man in a horse-driven red van, he encounters Captain Drew on the road through Egdon Heath. His van carries Thomasin, asleep, on her way home from a delayed marriage ceremony to Damon Wildeve, keeper of the Quiet Woman inn. (The delay was due to a mistake in the wedding certificate, which readers soon learn Wildeve planned.) The captain, surmising Thomasin’s predicament, shares it with his granddaughter, Eustacia, who has a prior romantic relationship with Wildeve. Mrs. Yeobright, Thomasin’s aunt, eager to salvage Thomasin’s reputation, urges Wildeve to go forward with the marriage, even though her objections prompted the couple’s elopement.