She’s the catalyst for the plot, but I find that I can’t understand her at all. (Read the Wikipedia article for a more complete summary of the plot.)Įustacia Vye puzzles me. Wildeve and Eustacia still love each other and proceed to lead all the other characters down the road to tragedy. She does love him, but she mostly agrees to marry him because she things he’ll take her to Paris in spite of all his assertions that he wants to live a poor, quiet life on Egdon Heath. After throwing him over, Eustacia ensnares Clym Yeobright. And unlike Susan Henchard, all of Eustacia’s problems are chiefly of her own making.Īt the beginning of the novel, Eustacia is toying with the affections of Damon Wildeve-who is actually engaged to another woman. Unlike Sue Bridehead, Eustacia is too selfish to love someone more than herself. Unlike Tess, who works hard to eke out a living, Eustacia doesn’t want to work at all. She feels trapped on Egdon Heath she wants to live a rich life in a city. Unlike those heroines, Eustacia is not a good woman at heart. Early in the novel, she is described thus, “She had the passions and instincts which make a model goddess, that is, those which make not quite a model woman” (Part I, Chapter 7*).
Eustacia is often mentioned in the same breath as Hardy’s other great tragic heroines. I was drawn to The Return of the Native because of Eustacia Vye.
The second half contains the resulting tragedies. Repent at leisure.” The first half of this book is bad marriage after bad marriage. (This statement is also a cliche.) The old saw that kept popping into my head as I read The Return of the Native, by Thomas Hardy, was “Marry in haste. The most irritating thing about cliches is that they are so often true.
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