Witchcraft in Thomas Hardy’s “The Return of the Native” (1878)

In Thomas Hardy's "The Return of the Native" (1878), Eustacia Vye is attacked by her neighbor when she visits church: "Susan Nunsuch had pricked Miss Vye with a long stocking-needle [...]." Suspecting Eustacia of witchcraft, Susan responds with her own counterspell. Later, wandering the heath near Susan's house, Eustacia is visible "as distanct as a figure in a phantasmagoria", and Susan proceeds to make a beeswax effigy of her enemy, stick it full of needles, and hold it over her fire to melt and burn. In a storm later that night, Eustacia falls into a roaring stream and drowns, but nobody but Hardy's readers knows about Susan's burning of the effigy. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 31 August 2024)