The passionate Eustacia Vye feels herself imprisoned in the wild, isolated Egdon Heath ("`Tis my cross… and will be my death"), and although she longs for a love that will free her from it, her marriage only serves to trap her deeper within it. Her husband, Clem Yeobright, is the native of the novel’s title, returned from Paris with a scheme for educating the heath-folk. Though Hardy’s story is one of fatally tangled relationships, the greatest effect upon the reader is made by
Egdon Heath itself: "The storm was its lover, and the wind its friend."