Echoes of the Corporeal: The Relational Ontology of Body and Nature in 'The Return of the Native'

This paper explores the interaction between affect and corporeality in Thomas Hardy’s (1840-1928) The Return of the Native (1878) with an inclusion of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body. Defined as the dynamic relation between bodies and environments that transcends linguistic structures, affect restructures the borders between corporeal perception and external nature. The Victorian understanding of the body-mind dichotomy is reexamined through positioning Hardy’s characters and nature on a permeable plane where sensory experiences melt distinctions between the subject and the object. The paper discusses the face as the primary sensory gate, while the way Hardy’s depiction of characters like Eustacia Vye and Clym Yeobright reveals an intricate interconnection between the corporeal and the elements of nature is exemplified. Senses such as vision and hearing underscore the fluidity of perception in the novel, and the heath itself emerges to be a living, affective entity intertwined with the human existence. By framing perception as an embodied process, the paper studies Hardy’s narrative as a sphere of affective exchanges that challenge Cartesian dualism. It offers a depiction of materiality and the corporeal existing within a relational ontology.