The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
Published 1878 · 496 pages · 127,384 words · about 9 hours at an average pace · Drama, Literary Fiction, Victorian Literature
How hard is The Return of the Native to read?
The Return of the Native scores 60 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 65 out of 100
- Victorian literary prose with extensive nature vocabulary and dialect. Heath terminology throughout.
- Sentence structure: 65 out of 100
- Hardy elaborate descriptive style at its peak. Extended passages of landscape description.
- Abstraction: 62 out of 100
- Philosophical themes of fate and nature embedded in tragic plot. The heath as cosmic force.
- Information density: 60 out of 100
- Dense descriptive passages. Psychological analysis through setting and action.
- Narrative indirection: 52 out of 100
- Omniscient narration with classical tragic structure. Hardy guides interpretation clearly.
- Symbolic density: 75 out of 100
- Egdon Heath as central symbol pervading every scene. Dense natural symbolism throughout.
- Ironic distance: 50 out of 100
- Hardy tragic sympathy combined with ironic perspective on characters romantic illusions.
- Resolution withholding: 40 out of 100
- Tragic resolution clear though sixth book adds qualified happiness. Deaths are definitive.
- Structural complexity: 62 out of 100
- Five-book structure modeled on classical tragedy. Unity of time and place.
How The Return of the Native is regarded
The Return of the Native holds a literary regard score of 87 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.