The recurring motif of bonfires in this novel represents passion, secrecy, danger, and the primal instincts of the characters. Bonfires are bright, intense, and have an inherent potential for destruction. Hardy depicts them in lavish detail, employing visual imagery, metaphors, and similes when describing them and the events they point toward. The vivid visual language associated with fire creates a strong impression on the reader. For example, in this passage from Book 1, Chapter 3, Hardy describes a night-time scene on the heath as the Guy Fawkes Night bonfires are set ablaze:
Red suns and tufts of fire one by one began to arise, flecking the whole country round. They were the bonfires of other parishes and hamlets that were engaged in the same sort of commemoration. Some were distant, and stood in a dense atmosphere, so that bundles of pale straw-like beams radiated around them in the shape of a fan. Some were large and near, glowing scarlet-red from the shade, like wounds in a black hide. [...] These tinctured the silent bosom of the clouds above them and lit up their ephemeral caves, which seemed thenceforth to become scalding caldrons.
All of the visual imagery in this passage invokes a starkly contrasted picture of black night and glowing red flame. The bonfires are so intense that they even tint or “tincture” the “caves” of the clouds in the sky, overtaking the entire scene. Hardy evokes the primal with this metaphor of the clouds as "caves." The denizens of the heath have, in a sense, reverted to an ancient state of shelter and flame. The bonfires are also made to seem like an inherent part of the scenery. They sprout from the ground and the sky organically like “red suns and tufts of fire.” Although they've been made by humans, they are also a natural part of the heath's visual landscape.
Hardy furthers this description with the use of visual language in two similes. The fires make the interior of the clouds seem like “scalding caldrons,” and the nearby ones are so bright that they slash through the night like “wounds in a black hide.” The scale of the scene is enormous, as it stretches from “distant” villages to the “bosom” of the sky. The bonfires, which happen regularly throughout the novel, mirror the passionate, often destructive relationships among the characters. They "wound" and "scald" the night as Hardy's characters wound and scald one another.
Hardy associates bonfires in particular with the affair between Eustacia and Wildeve. This pair signal each other for their secret meetings with these fires. The darkness of the heath, the heat of the flames, and the nature of their love affair all become tangled up in this web of images, metaphors and similes. All is hot, dark, primal, and painful in this relationship. For example, in Book 1, Chapter 6, Wildeve and Eustacia meet by a fire:
‘I have come,’ said the man, who was no other than Wildeve. ‘You give me no peace. Why do you not leave me alone? I have seen your bonfire all the evening.’ The words were not without emotion, and retained their level tone as if by a careful equipoise between imminent extremes.
Eustacia and Wildeve cannot help but seek one another out. Wildeve can have “no peace” when Eustacia is around, even though he knows their relationship is immoral. The danger of the bonfire—which always threatens to spread and damage its surroundings—is reflected in this pairing.
The recurring motif of bonfires in this novel represents passion, secrecy, danger, and the primal instincts of the characters. Bonfires are bright, intense, and have an inherent potential for destruction. Hardy depicts them in lavish detail, employing visual imagery, metaphors, and similes when describing them and the events they point toward. The vivid visual language associated with fire creates a strong impression on the reader. For example, in this passage from Book 1, Chapter 3, Hardy describes a night-time scene on the heath as the Guy Fawkes Night bonfires are set ablaze:
Red suns and tufts of fire one by one began to arise, flecking the whole country round. They were the bonfires of other parishes and hamlets that were engaged in the same sort of commemoration. Some were distant, and stood in a dense atmosphere, so that bundles of pale straw-like beams radiated around them in the shape of a fan. Some were large and near, glowing scarlet-red from the shade, like wounds in a black hide. [...] These tinctured the silent bosom of the clouds above them and lit up their ephemeral caves, which seemed thenceforth to become scalding caldrons.
All of the visual imagery in this passage invokes a starkly contrasted picture of black night and glowing red flame. The bonfires are so intense that they even tint or “tincture” the “caves” of the clouds in the sky, overtaking the entire scene. Hardy evokes the primal with this metaphor of the clouds as "caves." The denizens of the heath have, in a sense, reverted to an ancient state of shelter and flame. The bonfires are also made to seem like an inherent part of the scenery. They sprout from the ground and the sky organically like “red suns and tufts of fire.” Although they've been made by humans, they are also a natural part of the heath's visual landscape.
Hardy furthers this description with the use of visual language in two similes. The fires make the interior of the clouds seem like “scalding caldrons,” and the nearby ones are so bright that they slash through the night like “wounds in a black hide.” The scale of the scene is enormous, as it stretches from “distant” villages to the “bosom” of the sky. The bonfires, which happen regularly throughout the novel, mirror the passionate, often destructive relationships among the characters. They "wound" and "scald" the night as Hardy's characters wound and scald one another.
Hardy associates bonfires in particular with the affair between Eustacia and Wildeve. This pair signal each other for their secret meetings with these fires. The darkness of the heath, the heat of the flames, and the nature of their love affair all become tangled up in this web of images, metaphors and similes. All is hot, dark, primal, and painful in this relationship. For example, in Book 1, Chapter 6, Wildeve and Eustacia meet by a fire:
‘I have come,’ said the man, who was no other than Wildeve. ‘You give me no peace. Why do you not leave me alone? I have seen your bonfire all the evening.’ The words were not without emotion, and retained their level tone as if by a careful equipoise between imminent extremes.
Eustacia and Wildeve cannot help but seek one another out. Wildeve can have “no peace” when Eustacia is around, even though he knows their relationship is immoral. The danger of the bonfire—which always threatens to spread and damage its surroundings—is reflected in this pairing.
Eustacia Vye is linked to the imagery of flames, fire and heat throughout the novel. This motif—and the metaphors and similes of fire Hardy uses when it occurs—refers to her inflammatory character. It also gestures to her passionate nature and her tendency to act destructively when out of control. In Book 1, Chapter 7, the narrator comments that:
Assuming that the souls of men and women were visible essences, you could fancy the colour of Eustacia’s soul to be flame-like. The sparks from it that rose into her dark pupils gave the same impression.
The tactile and visual imagery of Eustacia's soul being "flame-like," hot enough to send sparks rising "into her pupils" reinforces the association of her personality with heat. As opposed to other female characters in the novel, Eustacia often publicly expresses anger and discontent. This "heat" is apparently visible in her personal appearance, as well as in her words. Later in Book 1, this image of Eustacia being internally aflame reappears:
‘Ah, my life!’ said Eustacia, with a laugh which unclosed her lips, so that the sun shone into her mouth as into a tulip, and lent it a similar scarlet fire.
The simile in this passage compares the sun shining into Eustacia's mouth to sunlight breaking through the thin petals of a tulip. Both images evoke delicacy and vivacity for the reader. Like a flame, she's pure energy, but like a tulip, she's fragile. Even when Eustacia is a flower, she's still a fire. This description also emphasizes Eustacia's natural beauty and sensuality. Tulips are often associated with sexual love, which aligns with Eustacia's sensual nature.
It is not just her personal "fire" that Hardy focuses on, however. The other motif with which Eustacia is often linked is that of bonfires. Her affair with Damon Wildeve is delineated by clandestine meetings at night around open flames. Eustacia's association with fire, especially given this, is also a subversion of the "darkness" Hardy ascribes to her. She is a character made up of contrasts, like a bonfire burning on the heath—she is firelight and darkness.
In the following passage from Book 1, Chapter 7, Hardy establishes the motif of darkness, which becomes a regular occurrence in The Return of the Native. The narrator employs dark visual imagery and several metaphors and similes referencing darkness to underscore Eustacia Vye's inner turmoil:
Egdon was her Hades, and since coming there she had imbibed much of what was dark in its tone, though inwardly and eternally unreconciled thereto. Her appearance accorded well with this smouldering rebelliousness, and the shady splendour of her beauty was the real surface of the sad and stifled warmth within her.
In this passage, Hardy utilizes the metaphor of Hades—the underworld in Greek mythology—to depict Egdon Heath as a hellish place for Eustacia. The dark imagery used to describe Egdon Heath reflects its effect on Eustacia, as she is "stifled" and "shady" within it. The dark "tone" of the place, which she has "imbibed," refers to the drama, secrets, and danger associated with the heath. The "shady splendour" of Eustacia's beauty likens her visually to the moorland, which is both beautiful and frightening in its darkness.
The motif of darkness also appears in Book 1, Chapter 8. Hardy's narrator further explores the link between darkness and the moor's menacing aspects as Johnny Nunsuch walks home alone at night:
The thorn-bushes which arose in his path from time to time were less satisfactory, for they whistled gloomily, and had a ghastly habit after dark of putting on the shapes of jumping madmen, sprawling giants, and hideous cripples.
In this passage, the tactile and auditory imagery of the heath being filled with "thorn-bushes" and "whistling gloomily" serves to illustrate its eerie, perilous nature. Darkness is linked to the theme of mixed communications and deception in this novel: things not being as they seem in the night is a physical manifestation of this. This sensory language of darkness emanating from the heath itself is also consistent with its effect on Eustacia. There's a sense that the heath is a bad influence on some of those who live on it, "darkening" their lives.
Finally, in Book 4, Chapter 1, Hardy extends the motif of darkness to the cycles of natural life on the moor. He uses a simile to liken the cycles of the year on Egdon Heath to the periods within a day:
It was the one season of the year, and the one weather of the season, in which the heath was gorgeous. This flowering period represented the second or noontide division in the cycle of those superficial changes which alone were possible here; it followed the green or young-fern period, representing the morn, and preceded the brown period, when the heath-bells and ferns would wear the russet tinges of evening; to be in turn displaced by the dark hue of the winter period, representing night.
Here, the "dark hue" of winter refers to both the "dark" season of the year and the darkening of each evening. Hardy describes the natural cycles of life on the moor through visual imagery of blooming and rotting. This makes the moor seem as if it is the central, controlling aspect of life for Hardy's characters, both their clock and their calendar. The moor's darkness is never far away. Even in the "flowering period" of summer, any move away from darkness is "superficial" and temporary.
In the following passage from Book 1, Chapter 7, Hardy establishes the motif of darkness, which becomes a regular occurrence in The Return of the Native. The narrator employs dark visual imagery and several metaphors and similes referencing darkness to underscore Eustacia Vye's inner turmoil:
Egdon was her Hades, and since coming there she had imbibed much of what was dark in its tone, though inwardly and eternally unreconciled thereto. Her appearance accorded well with this smouldering rebelliousness, and the shady splendour of her beauty was the real surface of the sad and stifled warmth within her.
In this passage, Hardy utilizes the metaphor of Hades—the underworld in Greek mythology—to depict Egdon Heath as a hellish place for Eustacia. The dark imagery used to describe Egdon Heath reflects its effect on Eustacia, as she is "stifled" and "shady" within it. The dark "tone" of the place, which she has "imbibed," refers to the drama, secrets, and danger associated with the heath. The "shady splendour" of Eustacia's beauty likens her visually to the moorland, which is both beautiful and frightening in its darkness.
The motif of darkness also appears in Book 1, Chapter 8. Hardy's narrator further explores the link between darkness and the moor's menacing aspects as Johnny Nunsuch walks home alone at night:
The thorn-bushes which arose in his path from time to time were less satisfactory, for they whistled gloomily, and had a ghastly habit after dark of putting on the shapes of jumping madmen, sprawling giants, and hideous cripples.
In this passage, the tactile and auditory imagery of the heath being filled with "thorn-bushes" and "whistling gloomily" serves to illustrate its eerie, perilous nature. Darkness is linked to the theme of mixed communications and deception in this novel: things not being as they seem in the night is a physical manifestation of this. This sensory language of darkness emanating from the heath itself is also consistent with its effect on Eustacia. There's a sense that the heath is a bad influence on some of those who live on it, "darkening" their lives.
Finally, in Book 4, Chapter 1, Hardy extends the motif of darkness to the cycles of natural life on the moor. He uses a simile to liken the cycles of the year on Egdon Heath to the periods within a day:
It was the one season of the year, and the one weather of the season, in which the heath was gorgeous. This flowering period represented the second or noontide division in the cycle of those superficial changes which alone were possible here; it followed the green or young-fern period, representing the morn, and preceded the brown period, when the heath-bells and ferns would wear the russet tinges of evening; to be in turn displaced by the dark hue of the winter period, representing night.
Here, the "dark hue" of winter refers to both the "dark" season of the year and the darkening of each evening. Hardy describes the natural cycles of life on the moor through visual imagery of blooming and rotting. This makes the moor seem as if it is the central, controlling aspect of life for Hardy's characters, both their clock and their calendar. The moor's darkness is never far away. Even in the "flowering period" of summer, any move away from darkness is "superficial" and temporary.
Eustacia Vye is linked to the imagery of flames, fire and heat throughout the novel. This motif—and the metaphors and similes of fire Hardy uses when it occurs—refers to her inflammatory character. It also gestures to her passionate nature and her tendency to act destructively when out of control. In Book 1, Chapter 7, the narrator comments that:
Assuming that the souls of men and women were visible essences, you could fancy the colour of Eustacia’s soul to be flame-like. The sparks from it that rose into her dark pupils gave the same impression.
The tactile and visual imagery of Eustacia's soul being "flame-like," hot enough to send sparks rising "into her pupils" reinforces the association of her personality with heat. As opposed to other female characters in the novel, Eustacia often publicly expresses anger and discontent. This "heat" is apparently visible in her personal appearance, as well as in her words. Later in Book 1, this image of Eustacia being internally aflame reappears:
‘Ah, my life!’ said Eustacia, with a laugh which unclosed her lips, so that the sun shone into her mouth as into a tulip, and lent it a similar scarlet fire.
The simile in this passage compares the sun shining into Eustacia's mouth to sunlight breaking through the thin petals of a tulip. Both images evoke delicacy and vivacity for the reader. Like a flame, she's pure energy, but like a tulip, she's fragile. Even when Eustacia is a flower, she's still a fire. This description also emphasizes Eustacia's natural beauty and sensuality. Tulips are often associated with sexual love, which aligns with Eustacia's sensual nature.
It is not just her personal "fire" that Hardy focuses on, however. The other motif with which Eustacia is often linked is that of bonfires. Her affair with Damon Wildeve is delineated by clandestine meetings at night around open flames. Eustacia's association with fire, especially given this, is also a subversion of the "darkness" Hardy ascribes to her. She is a character made up of contrasts, like a bonfire burning on the heath—she is firelight and darkness.
In the following passage from Book 1, Chapter 7, Hardy establishes the motif of darkness, which becomes a regular occurrence in The Return of the Native. The narrator employs dark visual imagery and several metaphors and similes referencing darkness to underscore Eustacia Vye's inner turmoil:
Egdon was her Hades, and since coming there she had imbibed much of what was dark in its tone, though inwardly and eternally unreconciled thereto. Her appearance accorded well with this smouldering rebelliousness, and the shady splendour of her beauty was the real surface of the sad and stifled warmth within her.
In this passage, Hardy utilizes the metaphor of Hades—the underworld in Greek mythology—to depict Egdon Heath as a hellish place for Eustacia. The dark imagery used to describe Egdon Heath reflects its effect on Eustacia, as she is "stifled" and "shady" within it. The dark "tone" of the place, which she has "imbibed," refers to the drama, secrets, and danger associated with the heath. The "shady splendour" of Eustacia's beauty likens her visually to the moorland, which is both beautiful and frightening in its darkness.
The motif of darkness also appears in Book 1, Chapter 8. Hardy's narrator further explores the link between darkness and the moor's menacing aspects as Johnny Nunsuch walks home alone at night:
The thorn-bushes which arose in his path from time to time were less satisfactory, for they whistled gloomily, and had a ghastly habit after dark of putting on the shapes of jumping madmen, sprawling giants, and hideous cripples.
In this passage, the tactile and auditory imagery of the heath being filled with "thorn-bushes" and "whistling gloomily" serves to illustrate its eerie, perilous nature. Darkness is linked to the theme of mixed communications and deception in this novel: things not being as they seem in the night is a physical manifestation of this. This sensory language of darkness emanating from the heath itself is also consistent with its effect on Eustacia. There's a sense that the heath is a bad influence on some of those who live on it, "darkening" their lives.
Finally, in Book 4, Chapter 1, Hardy extends the motif of darkness to the cycles of natural life on the moor. He uses a simile to liken the cycles of the year on Egdon Heath to the periods within a day:
It was the one season of the year, and the one weather of the season, in which the heath was gorgeous. This flowering period represented the second or noontide division in the cycle of those superficial changes which alone were possible here; it followed the green or young-fern period, representing the morn, and preceded the brown period, when the heath-bells and ferns would wear the russet tinges of evening; to be in turn displaced by the dark hue of the winter period, representing night.
Here, the "dark hue" of winter refers to both the "dark" season of the year and the darkening of each evening. Hardy describes the natural cycles of life on the moor through visual imagery of blooming and rotting. This makes the moor seem as if it is the central, controlling aspect of life for Hardy's characters, both their clock and their calendar. The moor's darkness is never far away. Even in the "flowering period" of summer, any move away from darkness is "superficial" and temporary.
