The Return of the Native

Eustacia lives apart from the community on Egdon Heath. Her deceased father was a bandmaster in Budmouth, and she has come to live with her grandfather, Captain Drew, at Mistover. We first see her etched against the sky on November 5: “Her extraordinary fixity, her conspicuous loneliness, her heedlessness of night, betokened among other things an utter absence of fear” (54). She possesses two tools, a telescope that allows her to spy upon her environment and an hourglass that allows her to measure time. This is a woman who controls and dominates, aware of her charm and her ability to manipulate the men around her.

Eustacia has been involved for some time, at least since November 5 the previous year, in a clandestine relationship with Damon Wildeve, keeper of the Quiet Woman inn. She has reckless disdain for societal norms. On this November 5 night, she reveals her character as she builds a bonfire to signal Wildeve. She has discovered that he didn’t marry the woman he was supposed to marry. He sends the signal for their meetings, two successive stones cast into the pond, and when he appears she tells him, “Damon, you are not worthy of me: I see it, and yet I love you” (63).