Irony in the Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield

¶ … Failure of Family: The Irony of the Vicar of Wakefield

Tolstoy states that every happy family is the same (Tolstoy 1). He says this because happiness is the effect of a life well lived and not of any other cause, which is also the philosophy of Plato (Plato 47). Unhappy families, however, are unhappy mainly because they have failed to live well, or virtuously. That is the case of the Primrose family in The Vicar of Wakefield: the family undergoes terrible misfortunes mainly because it fails to live for the good or to understand its own place in the world. The primary responsibility for the misfortune falls on the parents who fail to recognize their own faults and do not raise their children correctly. The parents also fail to realize who they are in social terms and thus deceive themselves as to their actual social value. This paper will show how the failure of family in Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield is what causes the misfortune to happen in the novel and how it is only through rescue outside the family that happiness and order are restored.

A good family is one that is humble and virtuous and does not simply talk about how good it is to be humble and virtuous as Dr. Primrose does at the beginning of the novel (Goldsmith 1). A real family interacts with one another, is patient with one another, suffers wrongdoings, and does not go around judging others. It does not promote arrogance, but faithfully adheres to lessons passed down to it from generation to generation (Rollins). Yet the Primrose family hardly interacts except to lecture one another. It does not patiently accept wrongs. It is judgmental. And it is not very bright. It is disconnected with the past and its only focus is on the immediate incidents within the immediate family's own history -- as related by Dr. Primrose. The fact that the father of the family does not ever really raise his children (his son he sends off to school and his daughters are empty-headed) shows that he does not fulfill his duty as a father. He thinks that he is a good man just because he marries and has children, which he says is what an "honest man" should do (Goldsmith 1). But it can be seen that Dr. Primrose views himself as an "honest man" first and then looks at his actions to support his assumption. Instead, he should look at his actions to see whether he is an honest man. He is backwards and unreliable as a narrator (Nunning 236).

To some extent, Dr. Primrose is like Mr. Collins in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. They both might mean well but their actions show them to be ridiculous to anyone with a grasp of good sense. As Zomchick states, Dr. Primrose cannot be the leader he should be "in his own family without transgressing the text's sentimental presuppositions and destroying the harmonious domestic idyll that the narrative struggles to maintain" (Zomchick 169). In this sense, the whole family dynamic is set up around pretensions, self-deception and sentimentality. And it all stems from Dr. Primrose who is a naive individual when it comes to what the real world is all about.

So while a good family is one in which everyone understands his role and does his duty, the Primrose family fails to comprehend the basic nature of family. Family gives more than it takes (Rollins), but the Primrose family is all about taking honor for itself that it is not due. For example, Dr. Primrose calls himself honest without giving any evidence for this claim. His daughter calls herself well-trained in converting "free thinkers" yet the evidence shown suggests just the opposite (Goldsmith 21). And the mother and father hardly have any real interaction with their children. A good mother, for instance, has a strong relationship with her daughters and loves them unconditionally (Rollins), but this is not the case with Mrs. Primrose. She has to be "prepped" by Dr. Primrose to accept the return of her daughter after the latter runs away. A good Christian mother would not do that if she followed the advice of St. Paul. When it comes to parents, St. Paul says, "But if any man have not care of his own, and especially of those of his house, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel" (I Tim. 5:8). Thus, one could argue that Mr. And Mrs. Primrose do not even act like Christian parents to some extent. This may be argued in the case of Olivia, who is not given this knowledge or understanding. Instead, her parents accept that she knows what she is doing when she speaks of converting a man who does not share her faith (Goldsmith 21). It is a moment of poor parenting on their part.

In fact, the delusion is evident from the beginning. Immediately he begins his story, Primrose states that a good wife will provide clothes and food for the family and that this is his wife's best quality that she is able to do this. But there is more to being a wife and mother than simply cooking in the kitchen and sewing. There is also more to being a good father than preaching from a pulpit and telling others to be virtuous. Part of what it takes to be a good father is to raise your children to know right from wrong and this is not what happens in the story, as the family cannot tell good people from bad people at all (as is evident in their seduction by a man who has evil plans). So when they fall apart and have to be rescued by an outsider, it is not surprising.

The fact that Primrose is not who he thinks he is also evident from the beginning. He thinks of himself as masculine and good (Goldsmith 1), and indeed he is given two distinguished titles -- Reverend and Doctor -- and an august Christian name, Charles. His surname Primrose, however, is not very masculine. Prim is a term that is similar to prudish -- which means overly proper -- and is often associated with a woman, as in a "prim and proper lady." Rose is a flower and has a feminine association. So, as head of church and family, the Vicar should be a manly sort of man. Yet his name alone tells the reader that he is fastidious and full of affectation. The latter quality is one that leads to personal deception, and thus the reader should be on guard against being deceived by Primrose's own assessment of himself as an "honest man" (Goldsmith 1) who considers himself well-educated. As, Prof. Ahmad states in his lecture, Dr. Primrose is an unintentionally ironic character, who can easily deceive the reader about what is happening in the story because he is so well-intentioned. Yet, the astute reader who has good sense will find humor in the ironies that Dr. Primrose unintentionally displays (Goldsmith 3).

Dr. Primrose shows how oblivious he is to good sense, when he praises himself for being read by "a happy few" when the tracts that he writes fail to sell well (Goldsmith 3). He then goes on to talk about composing an epitaph for his wife even though she is still very much alive and in it he talks about how she is "obedient unto death," even though this cannot even possibly have been proven true, since she still has much life to live. It is as though Primrose is browbeating his wife, though he probably does not realize it because with this great epitaph he is actually singing his own praises. He is saying, "Look at what a wonderful woman I married -- I am so intelligent to have married such a great one, and I will never marry another one even if she dies because I am a strict monogamist." The joke is apparent: he does not understand the meaning of monogamy at all. He also does not understand how a husband should behave, or what St. Paul says about being a husband. St. Paul states, "Husbands, love your wives" (Eph 5:25). Hanging a sign over a chimney reminding one's wife to be good is not an indication of real love but rather of a superiority complex. What kind of a husband would do such a thing? One who is either aware of the great joke and does it out of loving affection, or one who is unaware of the humor of the act and does it with all seriousness because he is, like Mr. Collins of Pride and Prejudice, a pompous buffoon without any sense of self.

Part of the reason for Primrose's self-deception comes from the fact that his country life is so tranquil and peaceful for so long. For twenty years he and his family sit by the fire-side and have their "adventures" but they never really have any complications. They face no challenges. One of the lessons that Paul Tough talks about in How Children Succeed is that children need challenges and obstacles. In this way, later on in life, they are ready to meet real-life challenges and can "draw on reserves of self-confidence" (Tough 37). This lesson can be applied to The Vicar of Wakefield because in it there are no challenges or obstacles for so long. Dr. Primrose is drawing on self-confidence that is deceptive because it has never really been tested. When it does become tested with all of the misfortunes that befall the family, that is when his life becomes "real" -- but in becoming "real" through affliction it loses its humor. The irony fades away for straight narrative, making the novel to go from one from to another in a space of chapters.

For example, the novel opens with exposition by the narrator about his family, which gives the reader background information about his wife and son and daughters. It also reveals something about the narrator, in particular that he has a good impression of himself and his way of raising a family. His comments about his daughters' dispositions being largely affected by their physical appearances is especially telling of his own way of looking at things: he views men and women differently and holds them to different standards. His son he sends to Oxford. His daughters are only thought of in terms of finding a suitable mate. This connects with his theory in the first sentence of the novel that an honest man should marry and have a family. The Vicar is consistent.

But the novel is less consistent, even though its structure is that of a basic plot. For example, the second chapter begins with the very ironic tone that implies that the author is making jokes at his narrator without his narrator even realizing it. Then, in the third chapter, the humorous tone is given up for more exposition about the misfortunes that befall the family on the day that the Vicar's son is to marry. These misfortunes and the Vicar's reaction to them tell the reader that the Vicar conforms to the prim and proper code that he promotes in the first two chapters. But there is no indication of what the rest of the family feels about it. The father in Goldsmith's novel communicates with his children in snatches, as one might find a father communicating in a sitcom. For instance, the Vicar discusses with his wife and daughter Olivia the merits of her being able to convert a "free-thinker," because she is well-read in books of controversy such as Robinson Crusoe and "Thwackum and Square," (Goldsmith 21). Here is more ironic humor for the reader but whether it is intentional on the Vicar's part is not important because it is for a satirical jest that it is made by the author and the perceptive reader will pick up on it.

Still, the novel jumps from melodrama to satire to ironic humor to straightforward exposition from chapter to chapter, thus making its form somewhat deceptive. While it does have the structuralism of a basic plot, its overall construction in terms of form makes it so that the reader must pay attention to how the ironic character of Dr. Primrose is presented. The simpleness of Dr. Primrose and his self-deception is part of what causes problems for the family especially regarding Olivia who runs off with Mr. Thornhill. Her character is similar to Lydia who runs off with George Wickham in Pride and Prejudice. Though their ages are different, the family circumstances are somewhat similar in that the mother is encouraging of the daughter in both cases because the mother wants to see the daughters have husbands. And in both cases, the father is aloof regarding the matter. In Pride and Prejudice the father does not often talk to Lydia or care for her the same way he cares for Elizabeth and he even states that this is a fault of his at the end of the novel. However, in The Vicar of Wakefield, the father is so simple that he accepts or at least does not debate the issue of whether his daughter Olivia is prepared to discuss serious religious matters with a "free-thinker," and instead urges the family toward the "gooseberry pie" -- which is consistent with how he thinks and acts when he talks about his wife's virtues (Goldsmith 2). He says that she is a good reader even though she cannot spell very well, but that most importantly she is a good cook. It appears that the Vicar cares more about his stomach than whether or not the women in his house have any sense. This shows again when instead of challenging his wife and daughter regarding their claims of converting lost souls, he changes the subject to pie (Goldsmith 22). This may be because the Vicar himself has little to say when it comes to having actual sense. As is seen when he has visitors, it appears that for all of his lectures and sermons on "temperance, simplicity, and contentment," no one in his parish appears to pay them any mind (Goldsmith 27). Perhaps the reason for this is that the character of Primrose is too prim and rosy to be taken seriously by anyone. That he takes himself so seriously is what makes him such an ironic character.

Also, the fact that the salvation of the family comes from outside the family, through Sir William or Fortune if it may be called so, shows that the family of the Vicar cannot arrive at a happy conclusion through its own virtues. First, the head of the household does not really know who he is, and in this sense the novel may be read as a satire of country manners. Second, the women of the novel do not have much sense (Goldsmith 21). Third, the family itself is not believable as a family but rather as an ironic family that is used for the sake of melodrama at times (which fits the form of the novel in terms of basic plot) and for satire at other times (which fits the ironic tone of the novel). Sometimes there is exposition that provides background to the characters and incidents to help piece the chapters together. But the fact that the family itself falls apart reflects the way that the novel in its relationship between form and content falls apart. The novel itself, whether intentionally or unintentionally, may be viewed ironically in the sense that its main character never undergoes any sort of character development or experiences a character arc. He paints himself as being full of life but in reality he is flat and this is seen in the way he tells his story: it is all told after the fact without much detail about particular events. It does not really get into the inner workings of things or probe the nature of things like one might expect a religious person to do. It is not particularly reflective or contemplative. Yet the Vicar himself is always preaching about this or that virtue or saying how this or that ought to be. The ironic thing is, first, that no one listens to him, which he himself acknowledges (Goldsmith 31); and, second, he does not appear to ever reflect on himself or on his own failings.

The fact that Primrose becomes helpless when his family collapses indicates that he is not up to the task of really being who he says he is. He is too much of a person who thinks he knows everything to really be of any use to anyone. This is clear when Primrose discusses with his daughter about Mr. Thornhill, who is responsible for seducing many women and marrying them by the same priest (Goldsmith 62). Dr. Primrose declares that the priest must be denounced publicly and hanged, but as soon as his daughter states that she has been sworn to secrecy, Primrose relents and says, essentially, "Oh, well, in that case it is all right because if you swear to keep a secret it is most important that you not break your promise." This sentence appears to be so ridiculous that the reader has to stop. Does Primrose really think it is better to allow a man who has deceived everyone to go on deceiving everyone because of a promise of secrecy? Isn't this as bad as participating in the deception? What does Primrose base this logic on? The Bible. And yet the Bible says not to make oaths or swear. So it appears that Primrose does not even understand what he is about.