Arguably, the most important scene from Hardy's masterpiece is the one in which Eustacia will not open the door to her mother-in-law.  Mrs. Yeobright takes this as her son's rejection of her after she had put away her pride to go visit him. She dies, alone and fatigued in a field, and her death sets in motion the tragic events near the book's ending (Wildeve's drowning death and Eustacia's accidental or suicidal death).  While Clym is left with his life and strives to make use of himself, the reader is still left with Hardy's fatalistic, depressing view of the world at the novel's end.