Storied Matter: Waste and Waste Lands in Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native

Abstract

“Stories about places are makeshift things. They are composed with the world’s debris.” Michel de Certeau Opening on Guy Fawkes Day, The Return of the Native begins with a conspicuous moment of consumption, of combustion and destruction, of waste on the Egdon waste lands. Indeed, the Fawkes Day bonfires that dot the heath and the surrounding landscape inaugurate the novel’s exploration of the inextricable etymological and thematic relation between consuming and wasting and lay bare the unavoidable fact that every act of consumption is inevitably an act of waste. The waste matter or refuse of the heath—the furze and bracken—is consumed, burned by fire, and reduced to ashes. Waste, it appears, only produces more waste. It is through this language of conflagration and consumption—of firing, burning, and blazing—that The Return of the Native explores the various libidinal energies and investments of its central characters, the story of their wasted lives...