Work record

The Vicar of Wakefield

Name: The Vicar of Wakefield
Author: Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith

1766 · 18th Century · Novel · English

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Abstract

Written: Written c.1761-62; published 1766
Setting: Mid-eighteenth-century England; A country parish and its neighbourhood, England
Author: Oliver Goldsmith
Country: Kingdom of Great Britain
Language: English
Genre: Sentimental novel / domestic comedy
Form: Thirty-two short chapters narrated in the first person
Recommended: Grades 8–12 (Eighteenth-century prose; gentle comedy with a seduction subplot.)

Background. Goldsmith wrote the manuscript in poverty in London; a famous anecdote says Johnson sold it to save his friend from the bailiffs. Its subtitle calls it a tale supposed to be written by the vicar himself.

Content. A kindly parson and his household lose their money and resettle as tenants of a charming rake. A shabby stranger keeps appearing at moments of need. Comic vanities pile up, until the landlord carries off the elder daughter. Then fire, illness and a gaol cell strip the clergyman of everything, yet he preaches to fellow inmates. A rapid series of revelations finally rights every wrong.

Form. Brief chapters with inset ballads, an elegy and a sermon.

Themes. Resignation to Providence, family affection, the folly of social ambition and the power of forgiveness.

Reception. Goethe and generations of Victorian families treasured it; modern critics debate how far the narrator's goodness is gently mocked. The clergyman-narrator is both admirable and gently ridiculous: learned, generous and steadfast, yet fond of his own pamphlets on clerical marriage and easily flattered. His wife and children are drawn with the same affectionate irony, so that readers laugh at the household while loving it, and the later sufferings strike all the harder for that warmth.

For students. Suitable for grades 9-12; discuss Olivia's story with care.

Main characters

Dr Primrose: Narrator and clergyman
Deborah Primrose: His ambitious wife
Olivia and Sophia: Their daughters
Squire Thornhill: Rakish landlord
Sir William Thornhill: Disguised benefactor

Summary

The Vicar of Wakefield, published in 1766, is a short novel narrated by Dr Charles Primrose, a good-hearted, learned and somewhat vain country clergyman. He lives happily with his wife Deborah, who is proud of her housekeeping and ambitious for her daughters, and their six children, including the eldest son George, the beautiful Olivia, the gentle Sophia and the simple Moses. Disaster strikes when the merchant who holds his money goes bankrupt, and the family must move to a poorer parish, where Primrose farms land rented from the young Squire Thornhill. A poor but wise gentleman, Mr Burchell, befriends them and rescues Sophia from drowning. Mrs Primrose's hopes of marrying her daughters above their station lead to comic episodes: the family portrait painted so large it will not fit through the door, Moses sent to market to sell a colt who comes home with a gross of green spectacles, and the vicar himself cheated in turn by the same swindler, Ephraim Jenkinson. More serious troubles follow. The squire seduces Olivia through what she believes is a marriage, and she runs away with him. The vicar searches for her, meets George, now a wandering player, and finally finds Olivia abandoned at an inn and brings her home in forgiveness. Their house burns down, and when the vicar refuses to approve the squire's marriage to another woman, he is thrown into debtors' prison. There, ill and grieving, he preaches to the prisoners and reforms them, and delivers a sermon on the justice of Providence and the hope of heaven. Then everything turns: Burchell is revealed as Sir William Thornhill, the squire's wise uncle; Jenkinson reveals that he procured a real marriage licence, so Olivia is the squire's lawful wife; George marries his sweetheart Arabella Wilmot; Sophia marries Sir William; and the vicar's fortune is restored. Goldsmith's novel, sold for him by Samuel Johnson, according to Boswell, to save him from arrest for debt, became one of the most loved books of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, praised for its picture of a Christian family's patience under trials, its gentle humour and its sentimental warmth, even if its happy ending is deliberately improbable.

Virtues in this work

Fortitude: The vicar bears ruin, fire and prison without despair.
Charity: He forgives Olivia and his enemies and ministers to prisoners.
Humility: His vanity is gently exposed and humbled.

Plot or Argument

Chapters I-III: prosperity and ruin
The vicar's happy family loses its fortune and moves to a humble parish.
Chapters IV-XVI: the new parish
Mr Burchell, Squire Thornhill, the family portrait, Moses and the green spectacles.
Chapters XVII-XXII: Olivia's fall
The squire elopes with Olivia; the vicar searches for her and brings her home.
Chapters XXIII-XXIX: prison
The house burns; the vicar is imprisoned for debt, preaches to the prisoners and gives his sermon on Providence.
Chapters XXX-XXXII: restoration
Burchell is Sir William Thornhill; Olivia's marriage proves valid; all are restored.

Characters

Dr Charles Primrose, narrator
The kindly, learned, slightly vain vicar.
Deborah Primrose, wife
His wife, a proud housekeeper ambitious for her daughters.
Olivia, daughter
The lively elder daughter seduced by the squire.
Sophia, daughter
The gentle younger daughter who marries Sir William.
George, son
The eldest son, a wandering scholar and player.
Moses, son
The bookish son cheated at the fair.
Squire Thornhill, villain
The vicar's landlord, a rake.
Mr Burchell / Sir William Thornhill, benefactor
The squire's wise uncle in disguise.
Ephraim Jenkinson, rogue
A swindler who reforms in prison.

Lessons

Patience under trial
Like Job, the vicar loses wealth, home, health and freedom but keeps his faith.
- List the vicar's losses.
- Compare his prison sermon with Job 1:21.
- Is his patience heroic or passive?
Related across the library
- Lassie Come-Home, Lesson: Faithfulness that keeps going
  Faithfulness that keeps going. Lassie has no map and no master to guide her. She keeps turning south through hunger, sickness and danger because home is where Joe is. Her journey makes loyalty visible as endurance over time.
- The Jew of Malta, Lesson: Hypocrisy
  Hypocrisy. Governor Ferneze uses Christian religion to justify seizing Barabas's wealth.
- Democracy in America, Lesson: Democracy is a social psychology
  Democracy is a social psychology. Tocqueville treats democracy as habits, desires, fears, associations, and forms of attention. Voting is only one part of democratic life.
- Veazie Bank v. Fenno, Lesson: Who checks the taxing power?
  Who checks the taxing power?. Chase holds that judges cannot limit an acknowledged power because it is exercised heavily; the check is the ballot. Nelson, drawing on McCulloch's warning about the power to tax, argues that the federal system itself protects each government's essential functions from the other's taxation.
- Worcester v. Georgia, Lesson: Georgia's claim of sovereignty
  Georgia's claim of sovereignty. Georgia regarded the Cherokee lands as part of its own territory, guaranteed to it by the boundaries of its royal charter and by the 1802 compact in which the United States had promised to extinguish Indian title. The state saw a separate government within its borders as incompatible with its sovereignty and refused to appear before a federal court it believed had no authority over it.
Vanity and ambition
Mrs Primrose's social climbing leads to comic and serious trouble.
- Which episodes mock the family's vanity?
- How does ambition make Olivia vulnerable?
- What does the vicar learn about himself?
Related across the library
- Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, Lesson: Temptation can be survived by the Word
  Temptation can be survived by the Word. During the long trial over the temptation to sell Christ, Bunyan describes texts of Scripture meeting in his mind like opposing forces, the threat to Esau against the promise that whoever comes will not be cast out. He learns to hold on to promises even when feelings point the other way. His Conclusion presents temptation as something that taught him what grace is.
- A Letter Concerning Toleration, Medical lens
  Locke trained in medicine at Oxford, worked with Thomas Sydenham, and served as Shaftesbury's physician, and the Letter repeatedly argues by medical analogy. Health and indolency of body (freedom from pain) appear in his list of civil interests that the state exists to protect. In the passage on whether the magistrate may care for souls, he asks whether a prince could require his subjects to consult only Roman physicians and take no potion or broth not prepared in the Vatican or a Geneva shop, and answers that n...
- Caesar and Christ, Lesson: When a republic outgrows its constitution
  When a republic outgrows its constitution. Durant presents the fall of the Republic as institutional failure: magistracies designed for a city could not govern a Mediterranean empire, and wealth, slavery and soldiers loyal to generals hollowed out the old virtues. Students can trace how each strongman exploited what the previous one had broken.
- On Crimes and Punishments, Lesson: Certainty over severity
  Certainty over severity. Beccaria argues that a mild punishment that is sure to come deters more than a cruel one that may be escaped. Justice should be steady, not savage.
- Oliver Twist, Lesson: Nancy's courage
  Nancy's courage. Nancy was raised among thieves, yet she is the one who saves Oliver. She tells Rose Maylie the truth at the cost of her life and refuses to betray the people she grew up with. Dickens makes her the moral center of the crime plot.
Forgiveness
The vicar receives his fallen daughter home and forgives his enemies.
- How does he greet Olivia?
- Compare the parable of the prodigal son.
- Why does he refuse to approve the squire's new marriage?
Related across the library
- Sartor Resartus, Lesson: Blessedness instead of happiness
  Blessedness instead of happiness. The Everlasting Yea argues that misery comes from inflated claims on life, so that the 'Fraction of Life' is improved by lowering the denominator. In place of happiness Carlyle offers 'Blessedness', found in renunciation, duty and work. The chapter quotes Ecclesiastes and John's Gospel, yet its God is never named in the language of the creeds, and students can weigh both its insight and its limits.
- Democracy in America, Lesson: Democracy is a social psychology
  Democracy is a social psychology. Tocqueville treats democracy as habits, desires, fears, associations, and forms of attention. Voting is only one part of democratic life.
- Lassie Come-Home, Lesson: Faithfulness that keeps going
  Faithfulness that keeps going. Lassie has no map and no master to guide her. She keeps turning south through hunger, sickness and danger because home is where Joe is. Her journey makes loyalty visible as endurance over time.
- The Federalist Papers, Summary
  The Federalist Papers are eighty-five essays written to persuade New York voters to ratify the proposed United States Constitution. Published under the shared pseudonym Publius, they defend a stronger federal union against fears that centralized power would destroy liberty. The essays begin from crisis: the Articles of Confederation have produced weakness, debt, interstate rivalry, diplomatic embarrassment, and vulnerability. Publius argues that union will reduce the danger of faction, foreign manipulation, econ...
- One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Lesson: The brigade as a society
  The brigade as a society. The camp's system makes the brigade answer collectively for its output, so the men police and protect each other. Tyurin's leadership, Pavlo's fairness with the bread, and Fetyukov's isolation show a whole range of human responses to the same pressures.

Context

Written about 1761-62 in London amid Goldsmith's hack work; it reflects Anglican rural life, debtors' prisons and the Georgian marriage market. The 1753 Marriage Act had made clandestine marriages invalid.

Composition

Sold to the bookseller Francis Newbery (by Boswell's account, through Johnson's intervention) and published in 1766.

Reception

Hugely popular, translated widely and admired by Goethe; Victorian readers loved it as a family classic.

Family Faith / Religion Virtue Ethics Money Wealth Class / Society Stoicism Endurance Crime / Punishment

Comparisons

Pride and Prejudice
Another family story of marriage, an elopement and a rescue.
The Pilgrim's Progress
Trials met with faith on the road to the heavenly city.
She Stoops to Conquer
Goldsmith's comedy of mistaken manners.
The Deserted Village
Goldsmith's portrait of the village preacher.

Quotes

Frequently cited

“I was ever of opinion, that the honest man who married and brought up a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only talked of population.”

— Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield, Chapter I (Gutenberg #2667: The Vicar of Wakefield).Quote card

Essay on Burns, Essay On Burns By Thomas Carlyle Edited
been intended for the ministry but money was lacking and he took up school teaching as a temporary occupation In having saved ninety pounds he returned to Edinburgh for study Meanwhile the ministry had become closed to him for reading and thought had undermined his belief in the creed of the Scotch Kirk But Carlyle's reaction from his ancestral beliefs was occasioned by different circumstances from that of Burns Carlyle by deep study and meditation was stirred from the dogmas of the Scotch Kirk but adhered stric...
Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind, Medical Inquiries and Observations, upon the Diseases of the Mind (1812)
they are applied in a proper man- ner The author has omitted referring to the books from which he has obtained some of his facts His reason for doing so was when he began to collect them he did not expect to publish them and of course did not mark the volumes and pages from which they were extracted Since he formed that design he has faithfully preserved references to them both He has suppressed them only be- cause their partial publication would have destroy- ed the uniformity of the work He commits his imperfe...
Personal Memoirs, Assault--The Flag Of Truce--Meeting With Pemberton--Negotiations For
with his relatives in Connecticut until old enough to do for himself when he emigrated to the British West Indies Not long after his settlement in Pennsylvania my grandfather Captain Noah Grant married a Miss Kelly and in he emigrated again this time to Ohio and settled where the town of Deerfield now stands He had now five children including Peter a son by his first marriage My father Jesse R Grant was the second child--oldest son by the second marriage Peter Grant went early to Maysville Kentucky where he was...
Cousin Betty, Final chapter, the Baron's apparent reform
Life cannot go on without much forgetting The family praises the reformed Baron and forgets the deaths of his uncle and brother; the remark prepares the last relapse.
NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., Full Text
NLRB V JONES LAUGHLIN STEEL CORP U S OPINION OF THE COURT CHIEF JUSTICE HUGHES In a proceeding under the National Labor Relations Act of the National Labor Relations Board found that the respondent Jones Laughlin Steel Corporation had violated the act by engaging in unfair labor practices affecting commerce The proceeding was instituted by the Beaver Valley Lodge No affiliated with the Amalgamated Association of Iron Steel and Tin Workers of America a labor organization The unfair labor practices charged were th...

Frequently cited

“The man recovered of the bite, The dog it was that dy’d.”

— Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield, Chapter XVII (Gutenberg #2667: The Vicar of Wakefield).Quote card

Aspects of the Novel, VIII. Pattern and Rhythm
Expansion. That is the idea the novelist must cling to. Not completion. Not rounding off but opening out. Forster's closing preference for rhythm and openness over strict pattern.
The Augsburg Confession, Article I: Of God
sin even now condemning and bringing eternal death upon those not born again through Baptism and the Holy Ghost They Condemn the Pelagians and others who deny that original depravity is sin and who to obscure the glory of Christ's merit and benefits argue that man can be justified before God by his own strength and reason Article III Of the Son of God Also they teach that the Word that is the Son of God did assume the human nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary so that there are two natures the divine an...
Aesop's Fables, Full Text
Boy and the Filberts The Frogs Asking for a King The Laborer and the Snake The Lion the Mouse and the Fox The Horse and Groom The Ass and the Mule The Ass and the Lapdog The Oxen and the Butchers The Shepherd s Boy and the Wolf The Boys and the Frogs The Salt Merchant and His Ass The Mischievous Dog The Goatherd and the Wild Goats The Man and His Two Sweethearts The Sick Stag The Boy and the Nettles The Astronomer The Wolves and the Sheep The Cat and the Birds The Vain Jackdaw The Kid and the Wolf The Old Woman...
The Red Badge of Courage, Chapter IX
The red sun was pasted in the sky like a wafer. The chapter's closing image, set down immediately after Jim Conklin's death and Henry's half-spoken curse at the battlefield.
Walden, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (appended essay)
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The central claim of the essay printed with Walden in the library text, written after Thoreau's night in jail for refusing his tax.

Frequently cited

“When lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds too late that men betray,”

— Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield, Chapter XXIV (Gutenberg #2667: The Vicar of Wakefield).Quote card

The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Chapters 18-19
Fever spreads through the town, children die, Mercy lies near death, and a mob blames Hannah Tupper's witchcraft.
Sermons on the Song of Songs, Summary
Bernard's Sermons on the Song of Songs are among the central monuments of medieval monastic spirituality. They do not offer a continuous modern commentary on every verse. Instead, Bernard lingers over phrases from the biblical love poem and turns them into meditations on the soul's desire for God, the church's relation to Christ, humility, contemplation, temptation, and charity. The erotic language of the Song becomes a disciplined vocabulary for spiritual longing. Bernard speaks to monks who have renounced ordi...
The River War, The Soudan
Nile as a diver is connected with the surface by his air-pipe Without it there is only suffocation Aut Nilus aut nihil The town of Khartoum at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles is the point on which the trade of the south must inevitably converge It is the great spout through which the merchandise collected from a wide area streams northwards to the Mediterranean shore It marks the extreme northern limit of the fertile Soudan Between Khartoum and Assuan the river flows for twelve hundred miles through d...
Paradise Lost, Book IV
at once Indebted and discharged what burden then O had his powerful destiny ordained Me some inferiour Angel I had stood Then happy no unbounded hope had raised Ambition Yet why not some other Power As great might have aspired and me though mean Drawn to his part but other Powers as great Fell not but stand unshaken from within Or from without to all temptations armed Hadst thou the same free will and power to stand Thou hadst whom hast thou then or what to accuse But Heaven s free love dealt equally to all Be t...
The Happy Prince and Other Tales, Source
scarlet cloaks and their clean white pinafores How do you know said the Mathematical Master you have never seen one Ah but we have in our dreams answered the children and the Mathematical Master frowned and looked very severe for he did not approve of children dreaming One night there flew over the city a little Swallow His friends had gone away to Egypt six weeks before but he had stayed behind for he was in love with the most beautiful Reed He had met her early in the spring as he was flying down the river aft...

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

The vicar's gentle vanity as narrator.
Comic episodes of family pride.
Mr Burchell's hints about his identity.
The prison sermon in Chapter XXIX.
The improbable happy ending.

Key terms and names

Vicar: A parish priest of the Church of England.
Debtors' prison: A gaol where those who could not pay debts were held.
Sentimental novel: An eighteenth-century novel valuing feeling, sympathy and virtue in distress.
Providence: God's care and governance of the world.
Monogamist: The vicar's term for his belief that a clergyman should marry only once.

Seminar Questions

Comprehension How does the vicar lose his fortune?
Comprehension Who is Mr Burchell really?
Interpretation How does the vicar's vanity contribute to the family's troubles?
Interpretation What does the prison sermon say about suffering and happiness?
Interpretation Why might Goldsmith make the happy ending so improbable?
Big Question Does God reward patience in this life, or only in the next?

Faith Connections

Job 1:21 (Scripture)
The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.
Luke 15:20 (Scripture)
The father ran to meet the prodigal son, as the vicar receives Olivia.
Matthew 25:36 (Scripture)
I was in prison, and ye came unto me: the vicar's ministry to prisoners.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: A good but vain clergyman loses fortune, home, daughter and freedom; he meets each trial with faith, forgiveness and charity, even ministering in prison; and Providence restores what was lost, so the novel shows patience under suffering vindicated.

Rhetorical device: first-person narrator. The vicar's self-revealing narration lets the reader smile at his vanity while admiring his goodness.

Debate: Resolved: that the vicar's patience is a virtue, not weakness.

Memory Work

I was ever of opinion, that the honest man who married and brought up a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only talked of population.
Chapter I. A famous comic opening sentence.

The man recovered of the bite, The dog it was that dy’d.
Chapter XVII. The twist of the mad-dog elegy.

Writing Prompts

Essay: How does Goldsmith combine comedy and Christian teaching in The Vicar of Wakefield?

Comparison with Pride and Prejudice: Compare Olivia's elopement with Lydia Bennet's and how each family responds.

Creative Prompts

Essay
Is the vicar a Christian hero or a comic figure? Use the prison chapters.
Dialogue
Write the conversation when the vicar finds Olivia at the inn.
Classroom
Stage the family portrait scene or Moses at the fair.

The Vicar of Wakefield

Abstract

Main characters

Summary

Virtues in this work

Plot or Argument

Characters

Lessons

Patience under trial

Vanity and ambition

Forgiveness

Context

Composition

Reception

Comparisons

Quotes

For Students

Reading Guide

Watch for

Key terms and names

Seminar Questions

Faith Connections

Logic and Rhetoric

Memory Work

Writing Prompts

Creative Prompts

Further Reading