A) Clym Yeobright

The Hero of the Novel

Clym Yeobright is the hero of the novel. When the story begins he is thirty three-years old. It is his return urn
which the novel celebrates. He is young and he is attractive enough to make Eustasia fall in love with him at first
sight. He has a significant place in the galaxy of Hardy's tragic characters, like Jude, Henchard, Gabriel Oak and
many others. That Hardy himself looked with love upon the figure of Clym is revealed by his Saying that Clym is,
"the nicest among my characters."

His Simplicity: Lack of Ambition

Clym's father was an humble farmer, but his mother, Mrs. Yeobright, the daughter of a Curate came of a superior
family. Clym has inherited the native simpli'city of his father. "Like him", says Mrs. Yeobright, "you are getting
weary of doing well." In him, we find an inborn love for simplicity. The sophistications of life are not liked by him. "I
cannot enjoy delicacies", he says, "good things are wasted upon me." Another notable trait of Clym's character is
his lack of ambition. As the manager of a diamond establishment in Paris, he had lived in the midst of a highly
refined and ambitious circle; had be been ambitious, he would have striven hard to attain worldly success. But his
inborn love of simplicity and lack of ambition drew his back to his native health.

Relentless and Self-Centred

From his father, Clym has also inherited his self-sacrificing nature, his willingness to work for the welfare of
others, and his tenderness and kindness. From his mother, he has inherited his egotism and relentlessness. Thus
heredity has played a significant role in contributing to the tragedy of his life by bestowing upon him contradictory
qualities. It is for this reason that he is such a source of unhappiness and pain for Mrs. Yeobright, for Eustacia
and for himself. Simple and unambitious, Clym is also egotistical; tenderness and kindness of heart is strangely
blended in him with firmness. "You will find", says Mrs. Yeobright to Eustacia, "though he is as gentle as a child
with you now; he can be as hard as steel."

A Promising Boy

As a child, Clym was promising. Much was expected of him. He had made himself known to many as an artist
and a scholar, and, "an individual whose fame spreads three or four thousand yards in the time taken by the fame
of others similarly situated to travel six or eight hundred, must, of necessity, have something in him." "It was
evident that if he was to be crowned with success in life, it would be in an original way, and if doomed to march to
his ruin, he would do so in an original manner." All expected great things from him, it was certain that he would
not remain in the circumstances in which he was born.

His Unpractical Idealism

Clym, the young man going to Paris appeared to take a step towards a successful life, but in Hardy life offers only
to deny. Clym's idealism and his unpractical nature are his ruin. He' leaves his job and begins his mission of
educating and improving the people of Egdon. The relatively advanced intellect of Clym only hastens his
misfortunes. He is a man much before his time. "Tlie rural world was not ripe for him. A man should be only
partially before his time ........ In the interest of renown, the fonvardness should lie chiefly in the capacity to
handle things." Clym's unpractical idealism prevents him from seeing and realising that the people of Egdon are
not yet ripe for a favourable response to the changes contemplated by him.

Lacks Sense of Proportion

Clym does not possess well-proportioned mind of a prudent and successful man. He is carried away by his own
theories and pre-conceived notions. Therefore Clym, "Preaching to Egdon folk that they might rise to a serene
comprehensiveness without going through the process of enriching themselves, was not unlike arguing to ancient
Chaldeans that in ascending from earth to the pure Empyrean it was not necessary to pass first into the
intervening heaven of ether." Had Clym been less idealistic and more practical, he would have been mediocre,
but more successful and happy. With the intuitive grasp of a woman, Eustacia gives a correct estimate of Clym's
lack of proportion : "He is an enthusiast about ideas and careless about outward things." His enthusiasm about
ideas prompts him to leave his business as something idle, vain and effeminate, and lunch his noble mission of
educating the Egdon-folk. Clym's sincerity is not to be doubted, but it is a misplaced and misdirected sincerity. "I
get up every morning and see the whole creation groaning and travailing in pain, as St. Paul says, and yet there
am I, trafficking in glittering splendours with wealthy women and titled libertines, and pandering to the meanest
vanities........ I, who have health and strength enough for anything." He, therefore, gives up his job, and returns to
Egdon to do his duty towards the suffering humanity of Egdon with such tragic consequences. Such people can
hardly do well in life.
Countenance of the Future

The inner struggle of Clym....... the struggle between the opposing forces of simplicity and egotism, tenderness
and obstinacy......has left its impression on his face also. He is torn within. In him "an inner strenuousness was
preying upon an outer symmetry and they rated his look as singular." Thought, that disease of the flesh, slowly
but steadily and relentlessly, casts wrinkles on his face. "The mind within was beginning to use it as a mere
waste-tablet on which to trace its idiosyncracies as they developed themselves." His is a face indicative not of the
years passed, but of the experiences encountered: it conveys, "less the idea of so many years as its age, than of
so much experience as its store." His is a face that foreshadows the countenance of the generations to come: "In
Clym Yeobright's face could be dimly seen the typical countenance of the future...... Tlie view of life as a thing to
be put up with replacing that zest for existence which was so intense in early civilization, must ultimately enter so
thoroughly into the constitution of the advanced races that its facial expression will become accepted as a new
artistic departure ..... Wlial the Greeks only suspected we know well, what their Aeschylus imagined our nursery
children feel.... The lineaments which will get embodies in ideals based upon this recognition will probably be akin
to those of Yeobright .... His features were attractive in the light of symbols as sounds intrinsically common
become attractive in language, and as shapes intrinsically simple become interesting in writing. His face,
interested one not as a picture, but as a page ; not by what it was, but by what it recorded .... As for his look, it
was a natural cheerfulness striving against depression from without and not quite succeeding. Tlie look
suggested isolation, but it revealed something more. As is usual with bright natures, the dirt that lies
ignominiously chained within an ephemeral human carcass shown out of him like a ray."

His Tragic Grandeur

Clym's idealism is the tragic flaw in his character. His good qualities as well as his shortcomings owe their origin
to this idealistic strain. His simplicity, his desire to be of use to others, his wholehearted dedication to his cause,
his kindness and tenderness, his spirit of self-sacrifice, all result from his idealism, and from it also result his
impracticability, obstinancy, and lack of balance. The tragic flaw in Clym's character, combined with such "chance'
events as his marriage with Eustacia, loss of eyesight, Eustacia's meeting with Wildeve, and the "closed-door'
scene, paves the way for his ruin. As miseries after miseries are heaped upon him, he rises to the grandeur of a
tragic hero. His words spoken at the death of his mother show the fortitude and calm of a man who has risen
above human pleasure and pain: "if there is any justice in God let Him kill me now. He has nearly blinded me, but
that is not enough. If he would only strike me with more pain, I would believe in Him." Similarly, when Eustacia
also dies, Clym says : "They say that a time comes when men laugh at misery through long acquaintance with it.
Surely that time will soon come to me." On such occasions, Clym acquires a grandeur and majesty which
reminds us of the lonely grandeur of Egdon Heath of and majesty which reminds us of the lonely grandeur of
Egdon Heath of which Clym is the child or of King Lear in Shakespeare's well-known tragedy.