Hardy’s Return of the Native is a novel whose grandiose landscape, dark and almost supernatural themes and the fatal downfall of its protagonists easily draw comparisons with Aristotle’s definition of a successful tragedy.  Indeed, it is clear that of the features noted by Aristotle as features of the tragic genre, the vast majority can be found within Hardy’s work. What is less apparent, however, is whether the presence of, and the ability to identify, moments of catharsis, peripeteia, anagnorisis, hermatia and catastrophe, are enough for Hardy’s novel to be seen as a true and successful member of the tragic genre.

It must be considered whether one’s ability to feature-spot is enough to qualify, or whether a genuine tragedy should be more than the sum of its parts. It is equally necessary to consider whether a successful tragedy depends on the extent in which the features are integrated into the plot, are consequential to each other, and even how much they succeed in convincing, and brining about a response, from the reader.

Eustacia Vye, elevated to almost Deistic status by Hardy’s comparisons with Helen of Troy or Aphrodite, her ill-fated attempts to escape the heath, and her subsequent drowning into the “boiling caldron” of the weir, allow obvious attempts to be made to cast her as the tragic hero in the mould of Hamlet and Antigone. Her fall from the heights of Egdon Heath upon Black Barrow, where she first appears, certainly appears to provide the catastrophic elements prescribed by Aristotle.

Her Hermatia, it can be said, lies in her unwavering desire to escape The Heath, as well as her reliance on the pursuit of passion in order to achieve this. When this ambition leads to her disastrous marriage to Clym, her motives made explicit as she explodes; “If I had known then what I know now, that I should be living in this wild heath a month after my marriage, I–I should have thought twice before agreeing.”

In this respect, it would appear that with Eustacia in prime position to act out the role of tragic hero from the outset. With the Hermatia instilled within her by Hardy her downfall becomes guaranteed and all other elements seem to fall into place. Peripeteia can be assumed in Eustacia’s refusal to open the door to her mother-in-law, thus dooming their marriage, Clym’s sudden realization of this follows along neatly after to provide the Anagnorisis to seal her fate.

However, perhaps it is in such clear successes that Return of the Native’s status as a successful tragedy meets its flaws. While the novel is certainly capable of ‘ticking the boxes’ in the tragic tradition, these features are simply too contrived to ever allow it to be anything more than the “…too studied and self-conscious an imitation of classical tragedy”, noted by John Paterson. In fact, Return of the Native could be seen almost as a caricatured tragedy, containing all the distinguishing features, but in such an overblown and “excessive” way as to ultimately fail in its purpose.

Eustacia, though ostensibly “the raw material of a divinity”, is, within the limits of the novel’s setting and the constraints of the plot, given precious opportunity is given to justify such comparisons. Instead, we are left with impressions of hyperbole, and a sense of almost absurd grandiosity which does Hardy little credit. As noted by Paterson, she and other major characters are “seldom equal to the sublime world they are asked to occupy”.

The elevation of Eustacia to the divine, along with Clym and Wildeve’s inadequacy in filling their anointed roles, consequently gives the impression of contrivance rather than of necessity. Eustacia desires to escape The Heath simply because Hardy requires it, and given the lofty role as Goddess of Egdon simply because the requirements of the tragic genre dictate it.

They appear less as genuine victims of catastrophe or their fate products of hermatia, than as dubious pawns, their actions determined by what Paterson called “the needs of a tyrannical plot”. While it has been said by many authors in reference to their work that they simply create the characters, with the plot developing consequently, in the case of Hardy’s Return of the Native, the opposite appears to be true.

Hardy’s use of his characters as mere “tragic and symbolic or conceptual machinery” is also painfully apparent in the way in which the presence of ‘fate’, and, by extension, the author, is so heavy-handedly exerted over the plot. “The day you (Eustacia) shut the door against my mother and killed her.”, referred to by Clym in book 5, chapter 3 is a good example. Without this single event, it is wholly possible that Eustacia would continue to endure the tedium of her marriage, that Wildeve would never have found opportunity to continue his relations with her, and that ultimately neither would have met their fate in the weir.

The fact that the plot’s central topping point is, at the end of the day, accidental significantly diminishes Return of The Native’s claim to the tragic genre. While fate undoubtedly comes into play in Aristotelian tragedy, through the requirement for peripeteia, it is equally established that the tragic hero’s hermatia; tragic flaw, must be directly linked to their downfall. As noted by Paterson, Hardy’s novel simply lacks the “terrific and terrifying logic of cause and effect that marks out the greatest exercises in this line”.

Eustacia’s drowning cannot provide catharsis simply because the link between it and her hermatia are so ambiguously linked. It cannot provide cleansing or renewal because it is not clear that the event was ever more than the result of a chain of accidents over which she has no control. Even if this were not the case, the protagonist has by this stage been elevated to such heights to appear at best remote, and at worst, absurdly detached from the concerns of the reader.

Perhaps the final blow against the success of Return of the Native as a tragedy is that Hardy’s audience would never have accepted one. Even if the dubious nature of Hardy’s characterization, the over-extended role of fate within the plot, and the unsatisfying lack of catharsis are given the benefit of the doubt, the readership’s demand for a sixth book in the series - a happy ending - leads the novel far from conventions of the tragic genre.

Regardless of authorial intent (Hardy himself despaired at demand for the final book) Return of the Native must be judged as a whole, with this late addition considered. To compare with greats of Aristotle and Shakespeare, a truly tragic work must encompass the fall of a tragic hero, in catastrophic circumstances, as a direct consequence of a protagonist’s fatal flaw. It is this link, and the sense that all the players within the novel’s chain of events have finally met their just deserts, which is the key to catharsis.

While Hardy’s provision of this, and thus the deliverance of successful tragedy, in the death of Eustacia and Wildeve is at least superficially present, no such conclusion is apparent in the social rehabilitation of the previously neglected Reddleman, nor in the remarriage of the bereaved widow Thomasin. These additions fatally undermine an already dubious characterisation and sense of cause-and-effect, leading it far from the stateliness of Hamlet or Othello and dangerously close to melodramatic Victorian soap-opera. Forced to pander to the expectations of a tyrannical audience and by the pen of a tyrannical author, Hardy’s Return of the Native, for all its other merits, never amounts to more than the sum of its tragic parts.