Both Uses of
ascetic
in
The Return of the Native
- The most thorough-going ascetic could feel that he had a natural right to wander on Egdon:
Chpt 1 *ascetic = someone who practices self-denial
- That waggery of fate which started Clive as a writing clerk, Gay as a linen-draper, Keats as a surgeon, and a thousand others in a thousand other odd ways, banished the wild and ascetic heath lad to a trade whose sole concern was with the especial symbols of self-indulgence and vainglory.†
Chpt 3
Definition:
-
(ascetic) someone who practices self-denial (often to encourage spiritual growth); or relating to such self-denial
or:
severely plain (without decoration)