Topoi Map

The topoi has been laid over a referential layer taken from the first edition of The Return of the Native. As an authorial sketch map, it is not accurate but approximate, symbolising novelistic rather than real world places. The map makes clear that the novel’s action is contained in Egdon or, at the very least, the locality of Egdon. The 'outside' of the novel is expressed through its absence. Through the map, Egdon becomes a synecdoche for region and underlines the sense of Egdon as a self-contained nested world. According to Hardy, 'Under the general name of "Egdon Heath," […] are united or typified heaths of various real names, to the number of at least a dozen; these being virtually one in character and aspect' ('Preface', 1895). While the map symbolises and consolidates the unity of place Hardy imagines and builds into Egdon, it also displays official roads or ways cutting through the expanse of heathland between the houses on the edges.

Mapping the topoi onto the authorial map gives a sense of the relative positions of, and connections between, the various sites on Egdon Heath where the plot unfolds. Clym and Eustacia’s home at Alderworth and Blooms-End, for instance, are at opposite ends of the map. Wildeve and Eustacia also face each other. The topoi also demonstrate not only that the novel is very topographical, but also that we take Egdon on its own terms: it relates only to itself. The geography is local – a contraction of place symbolised, of course, in Clym’s return and ensuing blindness.