The character of Eustacia

The Character of Eustacia Eustacia Vye of Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native is a figure dominated by powerful emotions, to a degree that they overwhelm her already tenuous grip on the reality of Egdon Heath. This inability to grasp her situation, and thus her impotence to change it, derives from her nature as an outsider and as a “foreigner” to the heath. “Her presence bought memories of such things as Bourbon roses, rubies, …showed first 75 words of 1324 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1324 total…she has never been free. She believes that she is being held captive in a place that she is too good for. She looks for someone to release her from her torment, someone to love her – and to free her – but neither Clym nor Wildeve can do it. Suicide is the only recourse left to a woman who had never accepted her situation and had never believed that she had the power to change it.