A Psychoanalytic Reading of Eustacia Vye: Exploring the Philosophy of Hardy’s Tragic Heroine

Abstract

This research examines Eustacia Vye, the tragic protagonist from Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native (1878), through a psychoanalytic perspective, drawing on Sigmund Freud’s principles of the id, ego, and superego. Eustacia’s character embodies the profound internal conflicts that emerge when an individual’s desires, reality, and moral consciousness collide. The analysis examines Eustacia’s powerful id-led impulses – her longing for escape, passion, and satisfaction – which dictate her choices and steer her into challenging circumstances. This research is qualitative in nature and descriptive in design. Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, proposed in his works The Introduction of Psychoanalysis (1917) and The Ego and the Id (1923) is taken as a theoretical framework. The study highlights the complexities of human psyche in Hardy’s work, illustrating how the failure to reconcile desire, reality, and morality can result in devastating consequences.