This article attacks the usual social approach to Thomas Hardy's work, considering the way the text interacts with the psychology of the reader to arouse and exploit a mood of fear. Following the plot of The Return of the Native, but with reference to other works in the Hardy canon, it suggests how the structure of the book, its extraordinary coincidences, the mood of doom which hangs over the landscape, and the frequent manipulation of the plot to create anxiety, meshes with the characters of the protagonists who all fear the worst even before they have reason to. The paper also looks at the way this fear is at once heightened and compensated by the pleasures life offers, which are at once so attractive but so dangerous. The social reading of the text is seen as an alibi, glossing a much deeper pessimism.