"Queen of night," Eustacia, who is a native of the fashionable seaside resort of Budmouth and whose non-English father gives her an appearance that is slightly exotic, is ever an outsider on Egdon Heath. Her grandfather's house is isolated physically, and she keeps herself apart from the heath dwellers by her walks alone and her frequent nightly excursions to the summit of Rainbarrow. She has a kind of contempt for the natives, as shown, for example, in her condescension to Charley in allowing him to hold her hand in payment for the part she wants to play in the Christmas mumming.
They, in turn, look upon her as unfriendly and too proud; Mrs. Yeobright tells Clym she is idle and probably wanton. Susan Nunsuch even thinks of her as a witch. Unlike Clym, whom the heath folk can at least fathom in part, Eustacia is beyond their comprehension. Only Charley has really had any opportunity to get to know her.
Her view of life is as foreign to the heath as her person: "in Eustacia's brain were juxtaposed the strangest assortment of ideas, from old time and from new. There was no middle distance in her perspective: romantic recollections of sunny afternoons on an esplanade, with military bands, officers, and gallants around, stood like gilded letters upon the dark tablet of surrounding Egdon." She is a hedonist (a pleasure-seeker) for whom love as an end in itself is the greatest pleasure: "To be loved to madness — such was her great desire."
And she takes perverse pleasure in being unconventional in small ways. Hardy uses several phrases to describe her reaction to life, among the most striking of which is "smoldering rebelliousness."
