The Victorian novel often focuses on important and relevant issues of the era in which it is written. These issues can range from class, ambition and gender to love, sexuality and desire. Victorian era authors provided insights into these often controversial topics through the characters in their novels. Because of the prevalence of these issues in the Victorian novel, authors often have overlapping points of view and insights. However, in Thomas Hardy's novel The Return of the Native, Hardy expresses his views on desire and romantic love with a unique twist. Hardy explores the ideas of the desire for social status and possession versus romantic desire through the various relationships in the novel; in doing so, it examines the implications of modernity within these relationships. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay There are a number of significant pairings within The Return of the Native. The most obvious of these are Eustacia and Clym, Eustacia and Wildeve, and Thomasin and Diggory Venn. The first, Eustacia and Clym, offers a clear depiction of a marriage motivated by the desire for social success. When Eustacia learns of Clym's return from Paris, she immediately romanticizes her image of him, imagining him as a wealthy man of the world who has the ability to lure her away from the moor, thus elevating her social standing. When Eustacia overhears two men talking about Clym's return to the moor, she immediately begins to fantasize, thinking, "A young, intelligent man was coming to that lonely moor from, of all the contrasting places in the world, Paris. It was like a man from the heaven" (110). Although Eustacia has never met or seen Clym, she assumes that because of his time in Paris he is sophisticated and wealthy, two qualities she values ​​above all others. She vows to form a relationship with Clym and manages to marry him. Eustacia's desire to marry Clym for social progress is similar to a relationship within another well-known Victorian novel: that of Catherine and Edgar Linton in Charlotte Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Just as Eustacia sees Clym as a way to increase her social standing, Catherine sees Edgar as useful in the same capacity. When Nelly questions Catherine's motives for marrying Edgar, she responds by saying, "And he'll be rich, and I'd like to be the greatest woman in the neighborhood, and I'll be proud to have such a husband" (66). Each of these women marries out of a desire for social advancement. Yet, in Return of the Native, Hardy explores the ways in which modernity complicates this type of marriage. The Clym that Eustacia marries is no match for the Clym of her fantasies. Modern and forward-thinking, Clym has little concern for material luxury and wealth, focusing instead on his desire to educate the people of the moors. This interrupts the marriage, as Clym truly loves Eustacia but refuses to compromise his modern ideals. Eustacia's realization that Clym has no intention of returning to Paris with her shatters her image of Clym as a worldly, sophisticated gentleman. He admits his disappointment first to Mrs. Yeobright, saying, “And if I had known then what I know now, that I would be living in this wilderness a month after my marriage, I… would have thought twice before I agreed” ( 239 ). Shortly afterwards, she reveals to Clym that she is appalled by his choice of occupation, telling him: "But it's so terrible – a gorse cutter! And you a man who has lived around the world, and speaks French and knows the world." classics and are suited to what is much better than this" (251).Here, Eustacia's desire for social advancement and wealth is thwarted by Clym's modernity. Eustacia and Damon Wildeve's relationship is drastically different than Eustacia and Clym's. These two characters act as if they are passionately in love, yet it seems that "acting" is the key word in this relationship. Both Damon and Eustacia are unstable and emotional characters, and seem to spend much of the novel acting on whim and attempting to make each other jealous. It's as if possession and competition are the driving forces of this relationship. When Damon and Eustacia meet on the moor after his almost marriage to Thomasin, Eustacia tells Damon that she had heard that he had not married the other woman: "And I knew it was because you loved me more and couldn't do it." "(64). Eustacia's pleasure in Damon's return lies in her "victory" over Thomasin, and not in genuine love for Damon. She practically admits that her affection for Damon is superficial, telling Diggory Venn that, "Not I would have cared about him if there had been a better person around" (93). Eustacia's behavior in this relationship is similar to that of Estella Havisham in Dickens' novel Great Expectations. Both women feel that they exert an almost magnetic about their male companions and see the relationship as a game. Estella and Pip meet after their long separation since childhood, Pip still recognizes the way Estella plays with him, saying: "He still treated me like a boy, but it attracted me" (235). Like Eustacia, Estella's relationship with Pip is primarily a source of entertainment for her, a way of exercising power over him. However, unlike the relationship between Pip and Estella, in Hardy's novel the dynamics of the relationship between Eustacia and Wildeve are double-sided; Eustacia isn't the only player in the game. Damon also sees their relationship as a display of power, or more specifically, possession. Throughout the novel, he oscillates back and forth between Thomasin and Eustacia, using each as a tool to make the other jealous. Hardy's initial description of Wildeve is the most accurate and self-explanatory illustration of his character; Hardy writes: "He was a rather young man, and of the two properties, form and movement, the latter first attracted attention in him. The grace of his movement was singular: it was the pantomime expression of a murderous career." (45). In this relationship, both Eustacia and Damon are motivated not by love, but by the desire to possess each other, to exert their control over each other. As a modern novelist, Hardy does not allow this type of relationship, showing through the definitive end not only of the relationship between Damon and Eustacia, but also of the characters themselves, that modernity denies a relationship of possession. As such, of each of the Victorian novels discussed in this essay, Hardy's The Return of the Native, is the only one that features a couple who have married for love, not for social advancement or control, and who are happy within of this union based on romantic love. That couple is, of course, Thomasin and Diggory Venn. Unlike Bronte and Dickens, Hardy's novel illustrates the modern couple as one whose marriage is based on love and respect, as well as showing the progression of that relationship. At the beginning of the novel, Diggory Venn transports Thomasin to her aunt after her failed marriage attempt with Wildeve. When he meets Captain Vye on the road and the older gentleman asks him if the woman in the wagon is Diggory's wife, he responds by saying, "My wife!...She is above mating with the likes of me." (15). At this point in the novel, it seems that social status will hinder this relationship, especially when the.