Symbolic Significance of Egdon Heath in The Return of the Native
林苏娇
指导老师 李新德
[摘要]:《还乡》是托马斯·哈代的 "性格与环境小说" 之一。本文主要是评论小说中的主要人物与环境----爱格敦荒原----之间的冲突，尤其是游台莎与荒原间的冲突。作为实物，荒原被人们描写成"未受侵犯的"，不可触摸的和不变的；作为象征，它是多变的；
对不同的小说人物而言，它有不同的象征意义。对游台莎，荒原是邪恶的；对克林，荒原是美好的；对托玛沁，荒原是一个安慰的地方；对维恩，荒原是家。根据小说人物对特定场景的需要，作者在不同的时间里描写符合人物性格的不同的景色。同时，爱格敦荒原本身就是最古老的人物。在《还乡》中，游台莎憎恨荒原并且想逃离荒原；克林想改变荒原，而托玛沁和维恩则对它很忠诚；对约布赖特太太来说，她既不爱它也不恨它，她就像是外来者，与荒原格格不入。不论是谁，只要他们想反抗荒原，他们，或多或少，会得到惩罚；反之，他们会有幸福的生活。简而言之，谁背叛自然谁将会迷失。
[关键字]：爱格敦荒原 性格与环境 象征 惩罚
[Abstract]: The Return of the Native is one of Thomas Hardy's "Novels of
Character and Environment". This paper mainly deals with the conflict between
the main characters in the novel and the "Environment"----Egdon Heath,
especially the conflict between Eustacia and the Heath. The Heath as a physical
object is described as "inviolate", untouchable and unalterable by
man, as a symbol it is highly flexible: it becomes what the various characters
want to make of it. It is ugly for Eustacia, beautiful for Clym, comforting
for Thomasin, and home for Venn. And it is described differently by the narrator
at different times, depending on the perspective of the character being focused
on. Besides, Egdon Heath itself is the oldest character. In The Return, Eustacia
hates the Heath and wants to escape from it, Clym wants to change it; while
Thomasin and Venn are faithful to it; but for Mrs. Yeobright, she neither loves
it nor hates it, she is like a denizen. Whoever you are, if you want to rebel
against the Heath, more or less, you will get punishment; on the contrary, you
will be happy on the Heath. In brief, the paper chiefly reveals the theme: those
who rebel against the nature will be lost.
[Key words]: Egdon Heath Character and Environment Symbolism Punishment
Introduction
"The supreme poet of the English Landscape"1
This is the blurb on the back of a lavishly illustrated biography by Timothy
Sullivan that tells us about Thomas Hardy. In the following the writer will
explain this phrase. "Poet" here does not mean only "the writer
of poetry", it certainly also includes Hardy as a novelist. "The English
Landscape" is equally indefinite, for Hardy's work focuses almost exclusively
on his native Dorset and its environs in other western country counties. However,
"the English Landscape" here calls up a notion of a natural rural
environment which is somehow quintessential "English"---a non-urban,
non-industrial England which itself has mythic force in its implication of an
ultimate and irreducible reality: an "essential England". But it is
not even Dorset that Hardy's work represents: it is "Wessex" ---which
Hardy himself in the General Preface to the Wessex Edition of 1912 ambiguously
admits is a "fictitious" construction. He refers to "the horizons
and landscapes of a partly real, partly dream country", later he adds "the
description of these backgrounds has been done from the real, that is to say,
has something real for its basis, however illusively treated."2 So "Wessex"
is an imaginary area, a landscape of the mind, or we may say that Hardy "the
poet" creates an English landscape---"Wessex".
Conclusion
So is the equally characteristic in version by which the particular symbolizes
the universal, through the analysis of the conflict between the main characters
and Egdon Heath and I induce that those who buck against nature lose out. That
is to say, remain quiet within the convention and you will be good, safe and
happy in the long run, though you never have the vivid distress of sympathy
[like Thomasin Yeobright and Diggory Venn]; or, on the ot
