American Turns inThe Return of the Native: Part II

Abstract In The Return of the Native, Hardy creates an analogy between Egdon Heath and Emerson's version of North America, elaborating it throughout the novel. Its development includes a technical response: moments of dissolution and absorption occur in narrative perspective as the gap between nature and the narrator's consciousness dissolves when he both contains and is contained by the land he imagines. The symbolic strands issuing from the opening supply some of the novel's most memorable writing, as well as the visionary ground (both premise and setting) of Hardy's (in)decisive turn to tragedy. Derived from American Romanticism, this symbolism of unconditioned inwardness ironically conditions representation, setting, point of view, and narrative design in The Return of the Native.