Discuss how Hardy introduces the characters of the three women, how their fates are intertwined and what importance they have in the rest of the novel.

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Discuss how Hardy introduces the characters of the three women, how their fates are intertwined and what importance they have in the rest of the novel.

The Return of the Native is set in the vast and gloomy Egdon Heath, and is based around the small community that inhabits it. To Hardy, the Heath itself is a character and the first two chapters of the novel are dedicated to it, in the first not a single human appears and in the second, Hardy persists to leave his characters nameless. However, in spite of the fact that the main characters are yet to be identified the routes of their lives are foreshadowed by the foreboding quality of the Heath.

The first eleven chapters make up the 'Book First', 'The Three Women', those three women being Eustacia Vye, Thomasin Yeobright and Mrs.Yeobright.

Eustacia Vye is a highly strung, coldly passionate and self-involved young lady who desperately craves the glamour and intensity of the life she was forced to leave behind in Budmouth. She is first introduced, unnamed, in chapter two, when she is seen by Diggory Venn on the mount of the Heath on bonfire