The Return of the Native

An old man walks down the road, supported by his walking stick. A man of substance and authority, he might be a naval officer. He peers ahead and sees a peculiarly lurid red van. The driver, who walks beside the van, is himself red from top to toe, a “reddleman” who supplies reddle, a red ochre, used by farmers to mark their sheep. The narrator describes him as a “nearly perished link between obsolete forms of life and those which generally prevail” (13). Venn is young, well dressed in corduroy, fit in figure, and with “a certain well-to-do air” (14) that causes one to wonder why he has chosen this occupation.

The old man looks in the van and sees a woman inside. He asks if she might be the girl from Blooms-End about whom there is gossip. Venn does not wish to discuss it; he says he will end the conversation and rest for the night. The old man walks on. As Venn looks out into the darkness, he sees the figure of a woman illuminated against the sky. On top of a barrow, she stands out among the many people gathered there that evening. She captures Venn’s attention and imagination as she vanishes into the darkness.

A group of boys and men form sticks into a pyramid and set it alight, creating an immense bonfire. This is happening in parishes and hamlets throughout the region as part of an annual ceremony held on November 5, celebrating the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, when Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up Parliament and kill the king for suppression of Roman Catholics in England. The celebration’s origin is long forgotten, but the practice of lighting a fire to rebel against winter is now custom.

Locals are drawn to the bonfire: Master Fairway the turf cutter; Humphrey the furze cutter; old Olly Dowden; Susan Nunsuch, who believes in witches; and Granfer Cantle and his unmarried 31-year-old son, Christian, who is destined to a sad life because he was born at the dark of the moon. As their fire wanes, they observe a fire at the captain’s house at Mistover, so bright it seems near though far away.

The jovial group dances and sings. The conversation turns to the young couple who were supposed to be married at the church before Mrs. Yeobright, the aunt of the bride, forbade it. Her niece, Tamsin Yeobright, was marrying Wildeve, an engineer by education but the proprietor of the Quiet Woman inn by trade, a profession beneath him. They eloped in defiance of the aunt. The locals talk of gathering at the Quiet Woman after the bonfire to sing to the newly married couple and lament Tamsin didn’t wait for her cousin, Clym Yeobright, to return from Paris.

Venn approaches the fire to ask for directions. The sight of him, all red, frightens them, reminding them of a death’s head or devil. Soon after he leaves, a widow with a superior air comes to the fire. She announces she is crossing the heath to greet her niece in her new home. They say they are going to sing to them but will cut through the furze rather than follow the road.

Mrs. Yeobright and Olly leave the group and start down the road, discussing Tamsin’s marriage to Wildeve. Olly raises the issue of Wildeve’s worthiness, marked down from an engineer to an innkeeper, but Mrs. Yeobright expresses her acceptance of Tamsin’s wishes. They part with a reminder from Olly that Wildeve owes her husband a bottle of wine for the marriage. Mrs. Yeobright, about to enter the inn, recognizes Venn as Diggory Venn, son of a dairyman. He informs her that her niece is not inside with her new husband but rather in his van. Mrs. Yeobright looks in the van and sees the sleeping Thomasin, who awakens, begins to sob, and asks where she is. She says she will walk to the inn and asks Venn to stop the horses. Mrs. Yeobright asks Venn why he left his father’s business of dairy farming, and he replies, “Well, I did” (42). He departs, and Mrs. Yeobright sternly asks Thomasin for an explanation.

Thomasin explains there was a problem with the license, and they could not be married that day. She felt ill, decided to come back alone, and asked Venn to help her. They go inside the inn and find Wildeve there, an attractive young man, especially to women. Wildeve explains the mix-up with the marriage license and confirms his intention to marry Thomasin. The group from the bonfire arrives at the inn, and Wildeve goes out to greet them and gives them mead without telling them about the failed wedding. Granfer Cantle tells stories of Mr. Yeobright, his dexterity as a musician, their respect for him in the community, his falling ill, never recovering, and dying.

The bonfire still burning at Captain Drew’s shows through the open window. All the rest of the bonfires have burned out, and they attribute its burning to his dark-eyed, haughty granddaughter, whom some consider a witch. When the group leaves, Wildeve spies a bottle of wine on the mantel and remembers Olly’s husband. On the way to deliver the bottle, he looks up, sees the bonfire still burning, and murmurs, “Still waiting, are you, my lady!” (53). He leaves the bottle on a table in the dark Dowden cottage and, instead of turning toward home, turns toward the bonfire.

The bonfire continues to burn brightly at Blackbarrow, revealing the woman Venn saw earlier against the sky. She has a telescope in her hand, turned toward the inn. A boy, Johnny, feeds the fire. An old man, her grandfather, who walked with Venn in the afternoon, approaches the fire. We finally learn the woman’s name: Eustacia. The grandfather laments using so much fuel, and she says it’s for Johnny, revealing her manipulative method with men as she tempts the young boy with the promise of a crooked sixpence.

Eustacia sends the boy away when he hears the noise of something falling in the pond, a hop-frog, a sign of rain. A second splash in the pond indicates a signal. Wildeve is there. Eustacia arranged this assignation with the bonfire, the anniversary of a meeting a year before on November 5. She already knows from her grandfather the marriage did not take place. Her grandfather learned about it earlier in the day on his walk. Wildeve, drawn by the bonfire, declares he came again, even though he meant to cut it off. She has shown her power. Wildeve has come meet to her. Although she refuses to allow him to kiss or even shake her hand, Eustacia loves him.

Eustacia Vye, with flowing raven hair and mysterious pagan air, is out of place in Egdon Heath. The untimely death of her father, a bandmaster in Budmouth, led to her refuge in her grandfather’s home in Egdon Heath. Her greatest desire is “to be loved to madness” (69). Fidelity for its own sake means nothing to her. She has no illusions about marriage or Wildeve. She idealizes Wildeve for want of anyone better.

Johnny Nunsuch, the boy who fed the bonfire, departs for his home. Frightened by the thorn bushes, imagining them to be full of madmen, giants, and cripples, he circles back to ask Eustacia to accompany him. He encounters two people, hides under a bank, overhears the conversation, and decides not to interrupt. He encounters a red van parked in a pit. He looks in and sees Venn darning a stocking. Venn hears the horses and leaves the van. Johnny tells him he is coming home from Miss Vye’s bonfire.

The boy has injured his hand, and Venn binds the wound. When Johnny becomes dizzy, he invites him to sit. Johnny asks if Venn will carry him away in one of his bags, and he replies that all reddlemen do is sell reddle. When Johnny asks if he was born that way, he replies that he could be white in six months. Venn comments that he observed the fire, and Johnny says he left when a frog jumped in the pond. Venn says frogs don’t jump at this time of year. The boy tells him about the conversation between Eustacia and the man, that the man didn’t marry the other woman, that he likes Eustacia best, and that he will come to see her at Blackbarrow again.

Venn, hearing the secret, slaps his hand against the van so hard that it scares Johnny. He asks how Eustacia responded, but the boy says he “can’t mind” (76) and wants to go home. Venn leads him out of the pit and toward the road home.

Superstitions surround reddlemen, who are suspected of being criminals. Mothers scare their children by saying Venn is coming for them. Venn lives like a gypsy but scorns gypsies and is “more decently born and brought up” than cattle-drovers or peddlers (77). He feels sadness as he darns the stocking, recalls his trip that afternoon, takes out a brown paper packet from his leather pouch, and reads a letter from Thomasin Yeobright in which she respectfully tells him why she cannot marry him, even though she places him in a category with her cousin Clym. Her aunt wants her to marry a professional man.

Until this day, Venn had not seen Thomasin since the arrival of the letter. He assumes from Johnny’s report that Wildeve didn’t go through with the marriage because of Eustacia. For the next five nights, he goes back to the same spot to see if they meet. One week after the bonfire assignation, he sees the outline of a female figure and a man and creeps along to get close enough to overhear their conversation.

Wildeve says he must marry Thomasin to save her reputation and claims the license was the reason the marriage didn’t take place. Eustacia asks whether she is the reason they didn’t marry. She asks if he loves her, and he cites her faults—too tall, too do-nothing, and too melancholy. Eustacia resumes her walk, and he follows. She tells him he will love her all his life. Wildeve asks if she will go with him to America. She says she needs time. They walk on. Venn decides to go see Eustacia for the sake of “My Tamsie” (85).

The next morning, Venn man traverses the heath toward Captain Drew’s cottage, at a social disadvantage to call on the gentleman. Drew recognizes him as his companion on the road and invites him inside. Eustacia is still asleep, so he goes outside to wait for her. When she appears, she assesses him and asks him to walk with her. Venn tells her Wildeve might not marry Thomasin, and Eustacia is the only person who can change that.

When Eustacia protests she doesn’t know Wildeve, Venn tells her he overheard her meeting with Wildeve the night before by Blackbarrow. Venn man pleads the case for Thomasin, but Eustacia states she will not be displaced by an inferior woman. Wildeve was hers first. Venn offers her an alternative. He knows she considers Egdon Heath a jail. He can get her a job in Budmouth as a companion to a lady. Eustacia spurns his offer. Venn leaves. Now Eustacia wants Wildeve more than ever. Gossip does not frighten her.

Venn, despondent because Eustacia is so determined to pursue Wildeve, sees Mrs. Yeobright walking toward the Quiet Woman. He senses her anxiety over Thomasin’s marriage, and he decides to tell her that he proposed to Thomasin offering himself as an alternative. Mrs. Yeobright confirms Thomasin was correct in rejecting him, but it gives her an idea for her confrontation with Wildeve. She tells him Thomasin has another proposal but refuses to name the suitor. Mrs. Yeobright presses him to do the right thing toward her family. Wildeve says he is willing to give Thomasin up and will give his decision about the marriage in a couple days. The conversation sends him back to Eustacia’s home that evening. He tells her Thomasin has another offer and asks Eustacia to come away with him. She says she needs more time to consider and wonders if she was only interested in Wildeve because he belonged to someone else. She thinks, “What was a man worth who a woman inferior to herself did not value?” (99). She acknowledges that recognizing Wildeve’s mediocrity is an admission of her folly in wanting him. She agrees to give Wildeve an answer “Monday week,” but her passion for him now fades. Her grandfather comes home with an alternative: Clym Yeobright will return home from Paris for Christmas.