How is the heath portrayed as a character in "Return of the Native"?

Answer 1

"In his July 1895 preface to The Return of the Native, Hardy drew his reader's attention to the character, literary origins, and importance to the story of Egdon Heath (see Norton edition, p. 1), a sketch map of which appeared in the first volume edition of 1878.

A. In Thomas Hardy: The Poetic Structure (1971; rpt. the Modern Critical Interpretations series, ed. Harold Bloom), Jean R. Brooks sees the heath as a catalyst to both the characters and the plot:

Egdon Heath, the resistant matter of the cosmos on which the action takes place, bears, shapes, nourishes, and kills conscious organisms possessed of its striving will without its unconsciousness of suffering. The six main characters take their key from Egdon. They all feel its pull through some affinity of temperament. (Bloom 21)

How does the heath function in the story to test the character of each of the six principals?

B. Avrom Fleishman in "The Buried Giant of Egdon Heath" in Fiction and the Ways of Knowing: Essays on British Novels (1978; rpt. in Bloom) regards Egdon Heath as a figure "in both narrative senses of 'figure,' as a person and as a trope" (Bloom 95). Throughout his poetic and fictional works Hardy exploits this history-laden landscape; here, he shapes the reader's responses to the heath by loading it with associations and connotations. Examine his opening description of it in "A Face on Which Time Makes But Little Impression" (2-5). Stipulate what these multiple associations are, and explain how these point towards the major issues and concerns of the novel.

C. John Patterson in "The 'Poetics' of The Return of the Native" in Modern Fiction Studies 6, 3 (1960) notes that

Egdon Heath itself is altogether transfigured in being juxtaposed with the grisly underworld of the ancients and, though less frequently, with its Christian equivalent. (216)"

"Take, for instance, the example of Egdon Heath, the first "character" introduced into the book. The heath proves physically and psychologically important throughout the novel: characters are defined by their relation to the heath, and the weather patterns of the heath even reflect the inner dramas of the characters. Indeed, it almost seems as if the characters are formed by the heath itself: Diggory Venn, red from head to toe, is an actual embodiment of the muddy earth; Eustacia Vye seems to spring directly from the heath, a part of Rainbarrow itself, when she is first introduced; Wildeve's name might just as well refer to the wind-whipped heath itself. But, importantly, the heath manages to defy definition. It is, in chapter one, "a place perfectly accordant with man's nature." The narrator's descriptions of the heath vary widely throughout the novel, ranging from the sublime to the gothic. There is no possible objectivity about the heath. No reliable statement can be made about it.
For Clym, the heath is beautiful; for Eustacia, it is hateful. The plot of the novel hinges around just this kind of difference in perception. Most of the key plot elements in the novel depend upon misconceptions--most notably, Eustacia's failure to open the door to Mrs. Yeobright, a mistake that leads to the older woman's death--and mistaken perceptions. Clym's eventual near- blindness reflects a kind of deeper internal blindness that afflicts all the main characters in the novel: they do not recognize the truth about each other. Eustacia and Clym misunderstand each other's motives and true ambitions; Venn remains a mystery; Wildeve deceives Thomasin, Eustacia and Clym. The characters remain obscure for the reader, too. When The Return of the Native was first published, contemporary critics criticized the novel for its lack of sympathetic characters. All of the novel's characters prove themselves deeply flawed, or--at the very least--of ambiguous motivation. Clym Yeobright, the novel's intelligent, urbane, generous protagonist, is also, through his impatience and single-minded jealousy, the cause of the novel's great tragedy. Diggory Venn can either be seen as a helpful, kind- hearted guardian or as an underhanded schemer. Similarly, even the antagonistic characters in the novel are not without their redeeming qualities."

"It is significant that Hardy devotes the entire first chapter of his novel to a description of Egdon Heath; even more significant is the way he described it. It is said to be eternally waiting and “unmoved” in its “ancient permanence.” The “storm [is] its lover, and the wind its friend.” “It [has] a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities”; and its characteristic vegetation gives it an “antique brown dress.” Hardy gives animation and a personality to Egdon. Some critics have gone so far as to speak of the heath as one of the main characters in the novel, and in this light other critics suggest that this landscape becomes the personification of the area’s ancient, pagan past, making it small wonder that one of the locals will later accuse one of the main characters, Eustacia Vye, of being a witch.

It helps our reading of the novel to think of Egdon Heath as a symbol. Hardy himself suggests that such a “gaunt waste” with its “chastened sublimity” may come to represent a new ideal of beauty for modern man. But this is, of course, an indirect way of commenting on modern people and their views of the universe. No beings appear in the novel until the second chapter and even then they are not named. At the very least, Egdon is shown to be inhospitable to man, even as it is almost untouched by him.

When human figures do finally appear, they seem insignificant against the backdrop of the indifferent, if not hostile, Egdon. Many times during the course of the story, for instance, Clym will be shown to appear like a tiny insect moving across the face of nature. These elements—the heath as a setting and a symbol, and the way the first people to appear are shown in relation to their surroundings—demonstrate Hardy’s theme: Man lives his life in a universe that is at least indifferent to him and may be hostile."

Answer 2

good