Some literary context for The Return of the Native

Clym Yeobright, returning from Paris to his small hometown Wessex village in Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native, is like someone who wandered in from a George Eliot novel - tired of the flashy trappings of big-city life he wants to live in a small seaside town (Budmouth - aka Bath?) and "make a difference" by running a school for working-class boys (like many in his village) and reject opportunities to make money (he'd run a diamond shop in Paris and is tired of the frivolity) - so how's it gonna work out now that he's passionately in love w/ the village beauty, Eustacia Vye, who seems to be a character just waiting for an Edith Wharton novel: small-town girl far more sophisticated and beautiful than anyone else in her environs arouses the wrath and jealousy of many (some villagers even think she's a witch - in one of the stranger scenes in this odd novel a villager stabs her with a knitting needle during a church service to extract a drop of her blood) - she immediately latches on to the returned Clym as her ticket out - but now that he's made it clear he's not going back to Paris, what prospects do they have? And, to make matters more complex, Clym is in love, so to speak, with two women - Eustacia, whom he meets in many clandestine trysts on the heath, a la a Bronte novel, and his mother - who despises Eustacia and lets Clym know it - despises her out of jealousy no doubt and also because she is a threat, not that she can take Clym away but that she can prevent him from attaining his fortune, whatever than may be - a little anticipation of Lawrence here, as Clym is torn between his passion for Eustacia and his devotion to his mother.