Fleishman is an American educator who has written extensively on the English novel. In the following excerpt, he analyzes the nature of Egdon Heath.
One would search long for a commentator on The Return of the Native who has failed to locate the story of Clym Yeobright and Eustacia Vye in the elaborated space of its landscape. Still it may be said that Egdon Heath has not been recognized as a figure in its own right—in both narrative senses of "figure," as person and as trope. One of the closest observers of the novel, John Paterson, has listed [in his essay "The 'Poetics' of The Return of the Native"] some of the heath's associations: "... it is a stage grand enough to bear the weight of gods and heroes; more specifically still, it is the prison-house.....
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