Hardy compared to Homer as having written a “classic”
Hardy’s The Return of the Native is being advanced as a “classic.” Most
critics I’ve read consider it his best novel. But how does he stack up
against Homer? Homer writes about heroes at the dawn of civilization.
His heroes deal with gods and goddesses and possess enormous courage and
prowess.
Hardy’s Clym Yeobright was born on Egdon Heath, a spread out primitive
farming community. He left it to become a successful diamond merchant
in the city (Paris) and then returned to teach the village children.
The confused Eustacia Vye hates living on the heath and wants to move
the city. She hopes Clym will take her there. Meanwhile Clym’s cousin
Thomasin, content to live on the heath but in love with the flashy
Wildeve hopes he will stay with her on the heath. Wildeve however is in
love with Eustacia, will take her to the city but she is by this time in
love with Clym. Clym studies night and day to become a teacher, nearly
blinds himself in the process and so takes up a job as a furze-cuter.
Eustacia has married Clym hoping to convince him to take her away from
Egdon Heath. Confusion ensues, Eustacia she agrees to run off with
Wildeve but can’t go through with it and throws herself in Shadwater
Weir. Wildeve jumps in to save her and they both drown. Clym settles
back into the local community and becomes a preacher, but he won’t
really be preaching what he has experienced in the city. Thomasin
marries a local dairy farmer and is presumably happy with him. He is
very happy with her. Clym has no one.
It is only because of his publisher’s urging that Hardy allows Thomasin
to end up happily married to Diggory Venn. He wanted her to end up a
solitary widow.
Just as Homer wrote about heroes at the dawn of civilization, Hardy
wrote about village life perhaps not a the literal dawn of large cities,
but something like that. Clym went off to the city but wished to return
to his village. Eustacia had heard about the city and wants to live
there. Thomasin is happy in her village. This in effect, according to
Hardy is a pitiful situation. Hardy writes well, but he isn’t
interested in warfare or heroes. He is very much taken with pitiful
people, Tess, Jude, the Mayor of Casterbridge.
So can anything of Hardy’s be considered a classic? Surely not in a
Homeric heroic sense, but his novels compare well with some of the
tragedies of the citified Sophocles, Euripides Aeschylus which were
based upon Homeric themes. The Greek playwrights however are
constrained to write on Homeric themes. Hardy on the other hand has no
Homeric thoughts and sees only the pitiful effects of an unjust and
uncaring civilization.