Wordwind mentioned Hardy's "Return of the Native". I could remember only
description on the first page of the laborer with his hands turned by constant
hard work into hooks. So I looked at some sites with literary criticism. I could
not quite understand the way the word "hermetic" was used.The dictionary gives
the term "magical" but that doesn't quite fit.

Hardy’s landscapes are hermetic: they show us the visible world
as a portrait of the invisible, the word of inner states of being. Hardy not
only observes, but he recreates the demanding spirit of the place; the essence
of the novel is a vital and indispensable ingredient of all his novels, primarily
a product of creativeimagination. Wessex is a symbolic microcosm like
Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha or Joseph Conrad’s Sulaco.