An Ecofeminist Interpretation Of The Return Of The Native

Thomas Hardy is a famous novelist, poet and great realistic writer in the 19th century in Britain who is known as Shakespeare in English novels. Hardy’s "novels of Character and Environment" have a considerable important position in British literary history. Hardy is good at combining woman and nature that is the trait of his novels and also the focus of his attention. He believes that the nature and woman can not be separated from each other, which means nature is the homeland of woman and woman is the embodiment of nature. The Return of the Native is the first woman and nature tragedy novel that tells a story between woman with man and nature on the background of Egdon Heath.The ecofeminist is the result of combining feminist movement and ecological movement, which links woman and nature closely that leads to reinterpret society and nature world. Ecofeminist proposes that woman is oppressed by man and nature is also oppressed by human beings which illustrates both of them being persecutors under the rule of patriarchal society. So woman should be liberated thoroughly and nature should get rid of the oppressed fate to reconstruct human society. Reading Hardy’s novel The Return of the Native from the perspective of ecofeminism can discover the thought of ecofeminism running through the whole novel, show the connections of woman and nature and their own fates, and find the root of the tragedy.The paper contains four chapters. Chapter one is a brief introduction of Thomas Hardy and his novel The Return of the Native and related research literature interviews. Chapter two refers to the development and main viewpoints of the ecofeminism. Chapter three is the main body of the whole paper that uses ecofeminism to analyze the relationships of women and nature, dissect the connections of men and nature and elaborate the relations of men and women. The key point is to analyze characters having the conscious of Ecofeminism:Eustacia, Thomasin and Mrs. Yeobright, who can reflect the position of female in the society and nature. With abandoning the conventions of patriarchy, we analyze the status and functions of men in nature. The aim of chapter four is the analysis of the reasons of the character’s tragedy in the environment of nature and society. The last part concludes the connections of persons with persons and nature, and how woman die away and stand up in the male world and in nature, which aims at appealing to human beings to establish harmonious development and to advocate the new thought of ecofeminism.