Geographies of Hardy's Wessex

The novels of Thomas Hardy represent a number of different “geographies”—the means by which their various characters and narrators explore places and come to know them. The “geographies” of the characters and narrators in Tess of the d'Urbervilles and The return of the native are examined in this essay. It shows that the “primal” geography of the youthful Tess, and of those who live on Egdon Heath, is represented as circular, and is constructed by more senses than the visual, while that of the reader is linear and wholly visual in its preoccupations with geology, cartography and the picturesque; and it examines the destruction of the “primal” geography in Tess, as she becomes an itinerant labourer. The task of the narrators, in their attempt to mediate between the two geographies, is considered, and it is suggested that this attempt is bound to fail, because the division between them is founded in an idea of history, as of a moment of primal unity and its subsequent differentiation, which is not perceived as open to question.