ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author breaks from a longstanding critical tradition and reexamines Hardy from a radically new vantage point: as a popular novelist participating in a complex transatlantic literary culture. When re-read through the lens of transatlantic sensation, The Return of the Native sheds its insularity and emerges as an anti-regionalist text that promotes transatlantic reading communities. When we strip away the baggage of preexisting criticism and consider the facts of initial publication, it is not hard to read The Return of the Nativea novel that follows the star-crossed lovers Eustacia Vye and Damon Wildeve from their respective ill-fated marriages to Clym and Thomasin Yeobright until their untimely deaths in a spectacular stormas sensational. Reviewers at the Atlantic Monthly concurred with British counterparts, albeit more subtly, praising Hardy's "ingenuity in devising unheard-of incidents and wild and memorable scenes" in an early review.
