Tag: Thomas Hardy

I was recently re-watching Harry Potter and wondered if Alan Rickman had ever read an audiobook. In my search I found a reading of Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native. I had never read anything from Hardy. Although it was slow to get going, it got to a point where you both want to turn away, whilst at the same time read on to find out what happens.

With the setting in the heath, I was left thinking about Wuthering Heights and the way that the landscape becomes something of a haunting character throughout. Although there are no ghosts, there are references to Eustacia as a witch. There are also some traumatic deaths.

One of the things that I found intriguing was the setting in Egdon Heath and occupations, such as the reddleman and furze cutter. I am not sure if I read them as extremes based on the distance of time? Like, was Diggory Venn symbolically meant to represent the devil? This strangeness also comes out with his ability to appear all of the sudden all the time? I was left wondering how these things would have been read at the time?

Originally released in serial form, I was left wondering what it might be like to forcibly read a novel of this sort over that period, especially on the train.