An Annotated Map Of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex -The Toast

An Annotated Map Of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex

ByDaniel Mallory Ortberg

on January 12, 2016 in Books

Significant Wessex locations, with their appearances in Hardy’s novels

Bare Peakminster
Jude Fawley’s libido is murdered by a group of remorseless itinerant Methodists heading west.

Rawbrickham
Eustacia Gristlethrust’s pony collapses and dies of sexual grief here.

Reticedston
Clarendon Ditterwad committed a vicious act of physical cruelty under the spreading greenwood tree here one fine spring morning. His son’s growing up into a fine man. Looks like his father, too. Trees grow in the direction you plant them.

Sexlessbury
Sue once called desperately for water here. No one heard. No one came.

Churlhaven
Waggon-loads of bright flowers in scarlet bloom were being steered nimbly into the great hall, covered in bunting and streamers and blue cloth. Village girls with arms full of gay decorations nodded to one workman and another, ascending the great staircase without fear. Bathsheba would never dance again after this day.

Dismal Park
Mrs. Stroppenhurst imprisoned here after smiling in a bakery.

Griefstock
A thriving town of freethinkers who live in fear of their abusive husbands’ eventual return from Australia.

Isle of Choler
It is here that young Graceless Philistine stands up to his vicious schoolmaster and announces to the senseless turnip fields that there is no God.

Reservecombe
After Grimgaw’s death, the Darby family takes refuge here under the iron gaze of the church.

Spleenhurst
Where Suzy Frownsmire murdered her abortionist the year the poppies bloomed twice.

Rancormouth
‘Twas on the town’s green, green haying field that little Dormouse Newson was crushed by the institution of marriage.

Little-Cruelty-To-Animals-On-The-Wold
Wee Bernard Meniscus fails to become a mason’s apprentice and drowns himself in the Little Sorrowing River.

Suicide Newton
Thorncombe Bristlethwaite waited three and one-quarters of an hour before ringing for the sexton at the death of the Lady Edhin. She wasn’t getting any deader, and he wasn’t going to miss the boat-races for anything.

Sorrowchester
Where Frank Trumpet-Major-And-Also-Weeping lost his entire family betting on horses. Lady Trumpet-Major-And-Also-Weeping did not survive the crossing to Newfoundland.

Port Windless
Uuuuuuuuugggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Desertioncester
whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Spiteborough
I don’t know, someone got married and it was terrible

Mallory is an Editor of The Toast.

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+28 Vote up Vote down

anxious_mofo 90p · 481 weeks ago

flings arms around this post

+76 Vote up Vote down

zachariahary 147p · 481 weeks ago

Watched Far From the Madding Crowd with my friends a little while back and none of us have been able to stop using "Farmer Oak put out the fire in her haystack" as a euphemism since.

It's always fun to put one's own self-sabotaging ways in perspective by watching some beautiful Victorians steadfastly resist every possible opportunity to experience even a little joy.

+45 Vote up Vote down

anonymous · 481 weeks ago

Chesterton comparing Meredith and Hardy:

"One of them went upwards through a tangled but living forest to lonely but healthy hills: the other went down to a swamp. Hardy went down to botanise in the swamp, while Meredith climbed towards the sun. Meredith became, at his best, a sort of daintily dressed Walt Whitman: Hardy became a sort of village atheist brooding and blaspheming over the village idiot....

"[The God of] Hardy is almost made personal by the intense feeling that he is poisonous. Nature is always coming in to save Meredith's women; Nature is always coming in to betray and ruin Hardy's. It has been said that if God had not existed it would have been necessary to invent Him. But it is not often, as in Mr. Hardy's case, that it is necessary to invent Him in order to prove how unnecessary (and undesirable) He is. But Mr. Hardy is anthropomorphic out of sheer atheism. He personifies the universe in order to give it a piece of his mind."

1 reply · active 481 weeks ago

+15 Vote up Vote down

chase · 481 weeks ago

Brilliant man! Also, PG Wodehouse once described a very loud noise as 'a sound like Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin."

+27 Vote up Vote down

uranianliterarysociety 134p · 481 weeks ago

Where was Tess Durbeyfield drowned in a sea of dying pheasants? I feel like it was nearish Dismal Park, but I can't bear to revisit.

(GodDAMN that man is the cruelest writer FOR NO GOOD REASON.)

5 replies · active 481 weeks ago

+73 Vote up Vote down

StoatCat 138p · 481 weeks ago

I would like to see a post portraying George RR Martin and Thomas Hardy in a bar brawl over who hates their characters more.

+6 Vote up Vote down

aurorabirdialis 109p · 481 weeks ago

I am here for this post.

+9 Vote up Vote down

OoTheHumanities 121p · 481 weeks ago

Ashfeather Heath, I believe.

+8 Vote up Vote down

uranianliterarysociety 134p · 481 weeks ago

Of COURSE.

+28 Vote up Vote down

cowshark 100p · 481 weeks ago

Does Hardy have fanboys who incessantly argue that Things Were Like That Back Then so it's justified no matter how many examples one comes up with that show Things Could Suck Back Then But It Wasn't 24/7 Fer Chrissakes?

+13 Vote up Vote down

osutein 136p · 481 weeks ago

Rancormouth has lovely gardens.

+8 Vote up Vote down

eviemarie · 481 weeks ago

I wish I had submitted this instead of the drivel I did write (years ago) in my thesis on the landscape of Thomas Hardy!

+30 Vote up Vote down

startmyheart · 481 weeks ago

Crushed by the institution of marriage, you say?

*gazes pensively at engagement ring for several silent minutes*

+20 Vote up Vote down

StoatCat 138p · 481 weeks ago

Hamhamham- Market day was always busy, especially during the popular Pillory Festival Of Justice For Lesser Offences to the Crown

+31 Vote up Vote down

builtahouse 123p · 481 weeks ago

...am I the only one who let out an 8 yr old giggle that no one came in Sexlessbury? Anyone? Just me? Ok, cool.

I was not built for tragedy & thus have warily & successfully avoided Hardy always.

1 reply · active 480 weeks ago

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tinypaperme 106p · 480 weeks ago

Definitely not the only one. In fact I assumed that is exactly what Mallory meant.

+2 Vote up Vote down

Teka Lynn · 481 weeks ago

Sounds about right.

+26 Vote up Vote down

cowshark 100p · 481 weeks ago

If this were about Tom Hardy, everything would have names like Puphaven and Hound-On-Warm-Lap.

2 replies · active 481 weeks ago

+18 Vote up Vote down

saffiedarling 94p · 481 weeks ago

And no-you-don’t-understand-this-is-not-my-kitten-this-is-God’s-child-I-found-in-the-street-shire.

+3 Vote up Vote down

bookwormV 119p · 481 weeks ago

I just learned that Tom hardy is filming something across the road from my place of work on Saturday. If I wanted to attract his attention, acquiring a dog would be my first step. (Sadly, I do not work on Saturdays, and am not inclined to drag myself in just in the hopes of catching a glimpse.)

+16 Vote up Vote down

aurorabirdialis 109p · 481 weeks ago

My deep and perverse love for Thomas Hardy is shining out of me like a stubborn, doomed beacon all over this post.

I am feeling a vague urge to murder an innocent as a result.

4 replies · active 481 weeks ago

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SuiteFranglaise 105p · 481 weeks ago

I love him too - his prose is some of the best poetry. In the vast range of Authorsinthecanonwhocantwritewomancharactersforshitandhatesthem, he is far and away my favourite.

+13 Vote up Vote down

aurorabirdialis 109p · 481 weeks ago

Does he hate women characters , or does he hate the world around them? I've never been able to settle this in my brain.

His prose is truly stunning. I took a history of the English language class years ago, and one of our projects was to take a page from a book and go through and look up the etymological roots for every single word. I did that with a page from the forest scene of Tess (first one I flipped to) and my god. So many beautiful words. My FAVORITE discovery from that project was the word "gossamer"--it comes from "goose summer" and came into usage in Middle English, when it was used to refer to the time of the year that the wild geese are migrating, as that is when you see those dainty, filmy spiderwebs in the grasses in the mornings.

+9 Vote up Vote down

rebeccacityofladies 93p · 481 weeks ago

Maybe I've just been reading the wrong Thomas Hardy, but it's always seemed to me that he's much better at realizing that women are people than most of his contemporaries.

+4 Vote up Vote down

SuiteFranglaise 105p · 481 weeks ago

He was ahead of the curve, but I do think he let some hate shine through. And I'm not talking about the sadism of making so many miserable women characters: his men were clobbered, if not quite to Tess levels. He had a lot of heroes who were really awesome - with no fatal flaws except maybe being a little too nice and too forgiving - and his women were so often so simple-minded and had flaws so deep that part of the heroes' heroism (or curse) was managing to love them nonetheless.

But the only reason I notice it and it riles me more than the contemporary authors I like so much less is because I love Thomas Hardy. And it's not consistent. The Mayor of Casterbridge is one of my favourite books, and that reverses the dynamic; Elizabeth Jane may not be the most interesting heroine in the history of literature, but she's one of the loveliest and most sympathetically drawn, who manages to drum up some tenderness and forgiveness for that poor, nasty sad sack of shit Henchard.

+12 Vote up Vote down

PallasPerilous 111p · 481 weeks ago

I sent this to my once Hardy-obsessed grandmother, and her initial instinct was to reach for her copies of his work because the characters sounded SO familiar, but she was having trouble placing them.

+8 Vote up Vote down

squareflowers · 481 weeks ago

I grew up in Dorset and this is more or less exactly what it was like. Despite it being the 90s/00s. Change happens slowly around those parts.

Of course now Dorset has been given over to embodying the true spirit and corporate values of various luxury biscuit makers, and the gibbets at the crossroads have been replaced by UKIP billboards.

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Invisible_Kiwi 106p · 481 weeks ago

That map is such a confusing mixture of real and made-up places. My favourite are the obviously real towns whose names have been unconvincingly changed.

1 reply · active 481 weeks ago

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bookwormV 119p · 481 weeks ago

Wintoncester!

+2 Vote up Vote down

PolarBearGirl92 · 481 weeks ago

"Little Dormouse Newson" fully embodies everything that made me stop, after Jude and Tess, and swear off reading any more Hardy FOREVER.

+3 Vote up Vote down

elleetoo 36p · 481 weeks ago

I was born in Casterbridge and I endorse this post! Where's Edward Gorey when you need him, eh? ;-(

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