Critic Richard Carpenter says, "Far From the Madding Crowd developes...the vividly realized setting of field and farm without the grim majesty of Egdon Heath (in Return of the Native)." Choose a descriptive passage of "grim majesty" from the first 75 pages and post it to this blog as a comment. Then comment on each others posts.
Be sure to check the posts from Far From the Madding Crowd as their setting differs from yours greatly. This should give you a well-rounded sense of Hardy's treatment of setting.
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"The face of the Heath by its mere complexion added half an hour to evening; it could in like manner retard the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely generated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight to a cause of shaking dread." (page one)
ReplyDelete"Around her stretching the vast night atmosphere, whose incomplete darkness in comparison with the total darkness of the heath below it might have represented a venial beside a mortal sin." (page forty)
"She first reached Wildeve's patch, as it was called, a plot of land redeemed from the Heath, and after long and laborious years brought into cultivation. The man who had discovered that it could be tilled died of the labour." (page thirty-nine)
When Hardy is decribing the land in the beginning he says, "The sombre stretch of rounds and hollows seemed to rise and meet the evening gloom in pure sympathy, the heath exhaling darkness as rapidly as the heavens precipitated it. And so the obscurity in the air and the obscurity in the land closed together in a black fraternization towards which each advanced half-way." (page 2)
ReplyDeleteIn Return Hardy uses dark imagery, like blackness and darkness, and frowning and sadden in Katie's quote. While in Far, he describes the settings more delicate, like when he is describing the water in Allie's quote, he says quivering and serenity.
ReplyDeleteBut Hardy has an underlying kind of darkness in both of them, because Far also has the description of blackness, but Hardy uses it more lightly with other happy imagery in Far, when it is all about darkness and mystery in Return.
In describing the heath, Hardy says, "Then Egdon was aroused to reciprocity; for the storm was its lover, and the wind its friend. Then it became a home of strange phantoms; and it was found to be the hitherto unrecognized original of those wild regions of obscurity which are vaguely felt to be compassing us about in midnight dream flight and disaster...It had a lonely face, suggesting tragic possibilities." (page 3)
ReplyDeleteLooking at the responses from Far it seems as though some readers see the setting without "grim majesty" while others do. For instance many talked about the tress and leaves in a lively manner while others see the dead and dry winter creeping in. This leads me to believe that Hardy describes setting in both good and bad lights.
ReplyDelete“The sight of such a flexible bend as that on grim Egdon was quite an apparition…But celestial imperiousness, love, wrath, and fervour had proved to be somewhat thrown away on netherward Egdon. Her power was limited, and the consciousness of this limitation had biassed her development. Egdon was her Hades, and since coming there she had imbibed much of what was dark in its tone, though inwardly and eternally unreconciled thereto.” (pg. 50)
ReplyDeleteI chose this quote because it showed Eustacia true opinion about Egdon Heath. Eustacia deeply hated the Heath, as she called it “her Hades”. To Eustacia the Heath was an unpleasant, depressing, and gloomy place and she wanted nothing more than to leave that place behind once and for all. I chose this quote because it proved what the critic Richard Carpenter meant by describing the Egdon Heath as a “grim majesty” based on the negative feeling Eustacia voiced for her home land.
After viewing the responses from Far From the Madding Crowd it seemed that Carpenter was right. Most seem to see Egdon Heath as a place without "grim majesty". I have not read the Far book, but I believe this occurs because there does not seem to be a character in that book who hates the Heath as much as Eustacia does. Hardy voices a negative or “grim” view of the Heath only because of Eustacia’s strong dislike for her home. Eustacia does everything in her power to leave the place she loathes, but unfortunately ends up trapped in marriage to a man wants the exact opposite.
ReplyDeleteHardy talks about Egdon Heath's geological change and says that, "On the evening under consideration in would have been noticed that, though the gloom had increased sufficiently to confuse the minor features of the heath, the white surface of the rooad remained almost as clear as ever." Page 4.
ReplyDeleteBy reading these posts, i have realised that Hardy describes Egdon Heath grimly, where as in Far, some see the heath withought "grim magesty", while others do. Far is more delicate while discribing the Heath and Return describes it more as dark and sad.
ReplyDelete