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Abstract
Eustacia Vye is the heroine of The Return of the Native. She is the most impressive figure of the book. If Sue Bridehead of Jude the Obscure is the subtlest of Hardy's female characters, Eustacia has the deepest force. There is no doubt about the supreme success of the character of Eustacia. In her dark beauty Hardy has pointed one of his most memorable portraits. The present paper is aimed to study the character of Eustacia Vye.
Keywords: heroine, fate, chance, family, suffering
Introduction
Eustacia Vye was the raw material of divinity. On olymp us she would have done well with a little preparation. She had the passions and instincts which make a model goddess, that is, those which make not quite a model woman." 2 It has been suggested that Eustacia belongs essentially to the class of which Madame Bovary is the type. "The similarities between Emma and Eustacia are, indeed, clear enough; the tragedy of each of them consist in the disillusionment which reality brings for their romantic dreams of happiness unconnected with reality. But this, after all, is no uncommon theme; it is frequently met within literature as in life; and there is no need to seek in Flaubert for an explanation of Hardy's choice of it. The aim of the two novelists is, in fact, quiet different." 3
Eustacia Vye's Family Background
In chapter VII of book First Hardy has given an account of Eustacia's parents. She was the daughter of the bandmaster of a regiment. Her father was a fine musician - who met his future wife during her trip thither with her father the Captain, a man of good family. The marriage was scarcely in accord with the old man's wishes, for the bandmaster's pockets were as light as his occupation. But the musician did his best; adopted his wife's name, made England permanently his home, too great trouble with his child 's education, the expenses of which were defrayed by the grandfather, and throve as the chief local musician till her mother's death when he left off thriving, drank, and died also. The girl was left to the care of her grandfather, who, since three of his ribs became broken in a shipwreck, had lived in...