In the following excerpt Webster suggests that according to Hardy, human effort, governed by natural law in a "Chance-guided universe," goes "from one mistake to another, " and this gives the novel its pessimistic and bleak outlook.

The Return of the Native is the most pessimistic of [Hardy's] early novels. From the first description of Egdon Heath until the close of the story, this dreary and unfertile waste seems to symbolize the indifference with which Nature views the pathetic fate of human beings. Occasionally the reader is likely to look upon the long-enduring barrenness and apparent purposelessness of the heath as a sign of its kinship to man, to feel that it is like man, slighted and enduring. More frequently, its somber beauty, which, Hardy tells us, is the only kind of beauty that thinking mankind can any longer appreciate, reminds us that man is of no more...