Return of Natives

Characters

Clym Yeobright - The "Native" of the novel's title, Clym is the son of Mrs. Yeobright and the cousin of Thomasin Yeobright. He goes abroad to work as a diamond merchant in Paris, but comes home when he realizes that his ambition is not towards material wealth. He is pursued by Eustacia Vye, and eventually marries her, but their marriage turns sour when her ambition to move to Paris conflicts with his plan to stay on Egdon Heath and teach school. Clym is intelligent, cultured and deeply introspective. He is patient and generous, but also deeply determined, and fierce when angered: it is this determination that leads to his eventual split with his mother, and separation from Eustacia. At the end of the novel, weakened by a degenerative eye condition and by the trauma of losing his mother and Eustacia--for whose deaths he blames himself--he becomes an itinerant preacher, sermonizing about simple moral topics.

Diggory Venn - Throughout most of the novel, Venn works as a semi-nomadic "reddleman": he travels throughout the region selling the dye that farmers use to mark their sheep. As a consequence of his exposure to the dye, his entire body and everything he owns are dyed red. Entirely red, camping out on the heath in his wagon, and emerging mysteriously from time to time, Venn functions as an image of the heath incarnated. He watches over Thomasin Yeobright's interests throughout the novel, but also preserves his own interests: he has long been in love with her, and at the end of the novel they marry. Venn is very clever and insightful, and can be a devious schemer.

Eustacia Vye - Born in the busy port town of Budmouth and transplanted to Egdon Heath to live with her grandfather, Eustacia despises the heath, and searches for a way to escape. However, even as she hates the heath, Eustacia seems in her deep, brooding passion, to be a part of its wild nature. She has an amorous relationship with Damon Wildeve, but enters into a tragic marriage with Clym...