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, and tropical midnights; her moods recalled lotus eaters and the march in 'Athalie;' her motions, the ebb and flow of the sea; her voice, the viola." (Hardy 75) Such a nature can not coincide with her provincial position and this leads her to a feeling of victimization. She blames Fate, God, or a hostile universe and her delusions of both grandeur and destruction will eventually lead her to her doom. The source of Eustacia's predicament is her "Italian" (in a literary sense) nature, her presence as a resented outsider, a rebel, a nonconformist. She is a native of fashionable Budmouth and had been forced to move to Egdon Heath; thus, in her brain was "juxtaposed the strangest assortment of ideas from old time and from new. There is no middle distance in her perspective: romantic recollections o
The conflicting interests of Yeobright and Eustacia lead to the destruction of the happiness each had planned for themselves. Yeobright's idealistic plan for a school in Egdon Heath can not coexist with Eustacia's romantic dream of being swept away to Paris. Eustacia had known of Clym's plan when she married him, but once again she had let her passion overcome her reasoning. When even Clym's plan is delayed by his eye injury, Eustacia rails at fate while Clym (literally and figuratively) sings a song and accepts it. Eustacia says "God! if I were a man in such a position I would curse rather than sing." To which Yeobright replies "Now, don't you suppose, my inexperienced girl, that I cannot rebel, in high Promethean fashion, against the gods and fate as well as you." (Hardy 289) Clym accepts his reality while Eustacia denies hers. f sunny afternoons on an esplanade, with military bands, officers, and gallants around stood like gilded letters upon the dark tablet of surrounding Egdon." (Hardy 76) Like Don Quixote (although not in a military sense), her mind is "full of nothing but enchantments, quarrels, battles, challenges, wounds, complaints, amours, torments and abundance of stuff and impossibilities." She is bored with her existence and she is incompatible with her community. Thus, from her very beginning, Eustacia feels like she has been wronged; she feels like she is missing something. The chain of events that will lead to the catastrophe at the end of the novel will directly results from Eustacia's refusal to accept her own free will (and thus her own reality and her ability to change it). Her endless haranguing of Fate - as well as her capitulation to it will proceed to its natural conclusion - that is, those who refuse to accept their own power to control their own destiny will ultimately be destroyed by their ineptitude. The breach between Clym's mother, Mrs. Yeobright, and Eustacia had resulted from the chaos caused by the misplacement of coins by Diggory Venn (who won them from Wildeve, who won them from C
Some common words found in the essay are:
Egdon Heath, Paris Eustacia, Eustacia God, Don Quixote, Saul Bonaparte, Eustacia Clym, Fate God, Clym Eustacia, Heaven Hardy, Eustacia Clym's, egdon heath, clym yeobright, accept own, paris eustacia, blames fate, clym door, clym's plan, yeobright eustacia,
Approximate Word count = 1382
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
