The Return Of The Native

In The Return of the Native Hardy once more treats his favourite theme of the mismatched couple with masterly pathos and understatement. Eustacia Vye longs to escape from Egdon Heath but the man she chooses to save her longs to stay. The novelist's account of their struggle, set in the brooding Wessex landscape, opens out into a full-scale study of the tragicomic gulf between the sexes.