The Return of the Native
Saturday, November 5th was Guy Fawkes Day / Guy Fawkes Night / Bonfire Night in the U.K., and the starting date of Thomas Hardy's 1878 novel, The Return of the Native. Reading The Return of the Native in October 1980 for my teacher, Mr. Peter Ashton, was one of the greatest reading experiences of my life. Mr. Ashton, who died in 2016, was one of my best teachers. October 1980 was a serendipitous confluence of things that made the book a memorable experience, and I have re-read it four times trying to recapture the special feeling it evoked.
My favourite character is Diggory Venn, the itinerant reddleman. He was the spurned-by-love outsider who rejected society and was in turn rejected by society. I really dug that. He was also a quasi-magical figure who kept popping up unexpectedly to nudge the main story line. He made several narrative references to his ‘Mephistophelean’ or diabolical character (referring to his red skin colour, acquired as a dealer in reddle, a dye used to mark sheep) which made him a most interesting fellow. Diggory Venn was seriously misunderstood by everyone, and in the end, the reddleman was the hero of the story.
“What is it you really want, Eustacia?”
“To be loved to madness!”
I think I will re-read it again in 2023, still searching for that October 1980 high.