Egdon Heath - Egdon Heath in Hardy's Writing

Egdon Heath in Hardy's Writing

In The Return of the Native Egdon Heath forms a symbol for the cosmic world of mankind, and is, like man, "slighted and enduring." In the preface to the novel, Hardy describes what the location means to him: "It is pleasant to dream that some spot in the extensive tract whose south-western quarter is here described may be the heath of that traditionary King of Wessex – Lear." Millgate suggests the moors of Wuthering Heights as a close analogy (Thomas Hardy: His Career as a Novelist, 1971, p. 131), although Hardy's symbolic use of the landscape is more insistent, and underpinned by appeals to classical mythology (e.g. the Prometheus or Icarus myths) and consciously Latinized vocabulary.

Hence Egdon Heath is another example of Hardy's landscape reflecting the permanent human condition. In the novel, he says:

"The untameable, Ishmaelitish thing that Egdon now was it had always been. Civilization was its enemy: and ever since the beginning of vegetation its soil had worn the same antique brown dress, the natural and invariable garment of the particular formation. . . . The great inviolate place had an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim." —Book First, chapter 1

To those characters like Clym Yeobright who understand the heath, and by implication man's essentially subordinate place in nature, Egdon is home, a place to be loved. For those in Promethean revolt, like Eustacia Vye, it is a prison offering only the illusion of escape.

Hardy's relationship with the landscape has been examined at length by critics, and Egdon Heath is one of the most frequently cited and best known.