Edgon Heath in Thomas Hardy's The Return Of the Native, Study Guides, Projects, Research of English Literature

Download Edgon Heath in Thomas Hardy's The Return Of the Native and more Study Guides, Projects, Research English Literature in PDF only on Docsity! EGDON HEATH IN THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE: THOMAS HARDY COURSE NAME: Novel (18th & 19th Century) (BS ENGLISH) An assignment submitted in 4" semester, section B By SIBTAIN HASSAN (NUML - F18 - 18843) To Dr. Aftab Akram (Sir) At the Institute of English Department National University of Modern Languages (NUML) Islamabad, Pakistan (15" June/2020) Introduction Thomas Hardly OM (1840-1928) was a famous English Victorian era novelist and poet. He is also called the Revolutionary Writer, because he represented Critical Realism and highly criticise Victorian society because of their prideful appearances, class alienation, and the declining status of rural in British as in ‘The Return of the Native’ (1878). Being a revolutionary writer, he challenged the customs, norms of his era because he was aware of his dehumanizing era, sanctity, and rigidity of class distinction. In the reign of Queen Victoria (1837- 1901), the sun never set on the British Empire, (Michael Millgate, Encyclopaedia Britannica, inc., 2020). The pure purpose of literature is to portray the societal life and point out its unjust aspects and through their direction, realize to the reader to aware of those dark aspects of society. As Charles Dickens highlighted the social criticism and exposed Victorian Crime, hypocrisy and class system through his milestone works like Oliver Twist (1837-39), Hard Times (1854), Great Expectations (1860) and George Eliot marginalized the human psychology relations with humanity by her famous work, such as the Middlemarch (1871) and The Mill on the Floss (1860). Thomas Hardy astonishingly penetrated psychological insight and gave a way a stream of consciousness especially the technique of characters thought-process. As the witness of the 19" century his novels vividly pictured the Romanticism blending with critical Realism, and how ecological and psychological echoes affects human nature, (Course Hero, 2017). Thomas Hardy’s novel ‘‘The Return of the Return’? (1878), is one of the finest pieces of writing. This novel has many thematic concerns like at the age of modernity, it is unusual that one of the natives (Clym) return to their countryside homeland, a heath, rather than marching toward the urban life. Because this was the age of industrialization and smoky sky. This novel highlights the hurdles being faced by romantic idealism and how they end up their own created dilemmas. This novel revolves around two young lovers, living soul: “The heath becomes full of watchful intentness. When other things sank brooding to sleep, the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen” (Book.1, Ch.1). By modern critics, this novel is called, ‘The Book of Egdon Heath’. Because the characters been exhibit within heath are controlled by its fate, and Hardy explains every aspect of that heath very keenly. He presents heath in an alive manner from a natural perspective to gothic mood. For example in chapter one, Hardy explains the heath in a very precise and elaborative manner, ‘‘a place perfectly accordant with man's nature.’’ Besides a famous novelist, Hardy also has command on poetry, that’s why the figurative art is so expressive in his work. Egdon Heath and Its Impact on Characters. Same as Charles Darwin’s theory of fittest survival in any community, Thomas Hardy in ‘The Return of the Native’ give heath a natural agency that restrained the characters to live in its territory with open and sharp foresight rather than being rebellious against it. As a result, the character of Eustacia Vye and Damon Wildeve is sentenced to death by that heath, ironically by that dark stormy night, ‘‘Never was harmony more perfect than that between the chaos of her mind and the chaos of the world without, ’’(Book.5, Ch.7, p.360). From a critical point of view, Eustacia was a rebellious and wanted to get freedom from that ‘dark’ and ‘lonely face’ heath. As a product of that time, it reflects the Victorian era in such way that voices were started against her (Queen Victoria) reign because of class stratification and those who stood against Queen, were cut down and their existence vanished same as heath done to Eustacia and Damon, (Isaksen, 2015). From start till the end of the novel Eustacia and Damon, revealed their hatred for heath in their conversation, ‘‘You hate the Heath as much as ever; that I know”, “I do ... ‘Tis my cross, my misery, and will be my death.”’(Book.1, ch.9). Morally Eustacia was the wife of Clym but mentally her intentions were with Damon Wildeve, because of their disliking for heath. Hardy artistically present Eustacia’s coldness psychology toward Egdon such as, “the raw material of a divinity” whose “celestial imperiousness, love, wrath, and fervour had proved to be somewhat thrown away on netherward Egdon.”(Book.1, cp.7) In addition to being rebellious towards heath, her downfall was destined only because of her, her spirit was unable to settle with calmness in Egdon, ‘‘the subtle beauties of the heath were lost to Eustacia’’ (Tokuko) and she was blind for gluttonous life. This is human nature and a well- known result too that those who isolated themselves from the society and dreamed to imagery world, longing for an unattainable place, against the norms of society, will ultimately turn into chaos and ashes. As she had affair with Damon Wildeve, ‘‘she was strange to all such local gathering’’ and ‘‘scarcely appertaining to her sphere’’ And those who respect and adapt to live in Egdon heath would survive as Clym and Thomasin. Though heath has its harsh and severe mood it accepts the Clym, unlike Eustacia. Heath reflects for him as Mother Nature. While working on heath Hardy associated and cherished him with such beautiful words, ‘‘Amber coloured butterflies” and the “Emerald-green grasshoppers,”. For another heath was a place to be escaped but for Clym, it was an ideal place where he got inner satisfaction and healing and the other creatures that live on that heath never scared him, ‘‘Huge flies, ignorant of larders and wire-netting, and quite in a savage state, buzzed-about him without knowing that he was a man..., snakes glided in their most brilliant blue and yellow guise, none of them feared him,”(Book.4, ch.2, p.312). He was so much absorbed in the environment and climate of heath and was soothing for him rather than those who revolted against her cruelty, “Clym had been so inwoven with the heath in his boyhood that hardly anybody could look upon it without thinking of him" (P. 142). Thomasin was an innocent and kind-hearted lady contrary to her husband Damon. She was satisfied at heath though at one place she felt hard in Egdon heath and called it, ‘‘a ridiculous old place,”’ (Book.6, ch.3). Her nature was like Clym, both love to be in natural life rather than busy life of the city and she was not so smart enough like Eustacia, to long for that alienated urban lifestyle of Paris. And she was happy with her simple heath life, ‘‘I am not fit for town life- so very rural and silly as I always have been.’’(p.327) Most interestingly, critically and strangely the hardness of Eustacia’s heart was the same as the heath itself. Because those who did not come under their criteria were rejected by them. Eustacia hates everything related to that heath either her husband also been marked by her to hate, ‘‘I hate her (heath) already.’’(p.244). her soul was like a modern-day woman as they slogan in ‘‘Aurat March’ ‘Mera Jism Meri Marzi’”’ and want ultimate freedom. Egdon Heath was a hellish and dystopian place for Eustacia, ‘‘it is a jail to me.’’(Native, p.146) Her hatred turned into extreme when her husband decided to work as a furze-cutter over the moorland of Egdon. Her elopement with Damon was a great step against the norms of society, especially the barbaric heath. And the glitters of unrealistic and in a cosmopolitan city life desires end them with a tragic death. (Dr. Atef Mohamed Abdallah, 2015) The main concern of Hardy to express the character of Eustacia was the connection between human and nature. People were moving towards urban life and the population of villages was decreasing steadily. The heath might represent the concept that human being has to control his/her desire and look, act, and respond logically. So that consequences might not happen as been observed in the novel. Finally, nature has its own rule and regulations and has many faces either beautiful, charming, or fanciful or at the same time harsh, barbaric and hostile. Dreaming and imagination is itself unique creativity but adopting or accepting reality is also important for a happy life. Nature always heal those who accept them and destroy those who reject it. Thomas Hardy is