... of emotional response, the ultimate fate of Tess, scion of once-proud aristocratic family brought low by Hardy's twin enemies of humanity (Time and Chance), arouses more pity and fear in a modern reader than does Henchard's. Somewhere between the two on my emotional response scale lies Eustacia in The Return of the Native, for her fate results from the very twentieth-century error of marrying entirely the wrong person. A dazzling figure from the beau monde of the ... Parisian boulevards, Clym is gradually diminished in her estimation as he pursues the goal of becoming a rural schoolmast...

• Word Count: 1167
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate