Adams, Primrose, and Yorick: 18th-Century Anglican Clergy Compared

Introduction: Three Clergymen and Their Shared Qualities

One of the clearest features shared by Fielding's Adams in Joseph Andrews, Goldsmith's Primrose in The Vicar of Wakefield, and Sterne's Yorick in A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy is the relentlessness that the characters demonstrate — as though by sheer force of will they might manage affairs to a happy conclusion. In spite of their sometimes obtuse qualities, their evident pride, their naivety and innocence, and their ability to bungle their way into all manner of episodic conundrums, their resolute good humor ensures the reader that whatever grace they do possess will be sufficient to make all well by the end of the narrative.

Such is true of all three clergymen, and to the extent that all three represent the pastors of the Church of England in the 18th century, one could surmise that the preachers of English Protestantism were a well-meaning, if not somewhat aloof and self-absorbed, lot. This paper compares the characterization of Adams, Primrose, and Yorick and considers how realistically they represent Church of England clergymen from the period of 1730 to 1780.

Historical Context: Protestant England and the Church of England

By the 18th century, England had transformed from an entirely Roman Catholic country, as it had been a quarter of a millennium earlier. In 1701, the Act of Settlement held that the English monarch must be a Protestant, and wars against the Catholic Spanish monarchy continued (Roberts 4). England's identity as a Protestant nation, with its king as head of the Church of England, was secured. In 1727, King George II ascended the throne, the second monarch of the House of Hanover, whose dynasty would last for nearly two hundred years. Thirteen years later, the now famous "Rule, Britannia!" was penned by James Thomson and scored by Thomas Arne (Fuld 477).

The British identity from this point forward was fused with a righteous spirit of fight, mastery, pride, self-determination, and unwavering ability. England viewed itself as refined, mannerly, educated, moral, and self-sufficient — relying on no foreign bodies, such as Roman authorities in religious matters. Its ships would rule the waves, its colonies would be a source of wealth, and all of this spirit would be imbibed and projected by the Church of England clergy during this time.

Ironically, the writers Fielding, Goldsmith, and Sterne do not take as sterling a view of the Church of England clergy as the clergy themselves were likely inclined to take. While these authors do not outright condemn the antics, demeanor, or activities of this class, they do take the opportunity to playfully rib, satirize, and spoof the fine gentility of these often country-parish types — men so confident in their sense of right and wrong, and so certain they always know the right way forward, that when they utterly fail to recognize what is right before their faces, they afford the reader great amusement.

Goldsmith's Primrose: Prim, Rosy, and Self-Deceived

Goldsmith's Reverend Primrose is a family man: the happily married father of grown children who are not quite matured enough to avoid the pitfalls of false love — pitfalls Primrose will have to deal with before the novel's conclusion. Yet Primrose is also an ironic character, much like Yorick and Adams. He is educated, understands the Protestant ethos, and is concerned about his duties as a preacher, but he so often fails to do the right thing when it comes to his own person and his actual sphere of influence. It is as though he lives entirely in his own head — like Jane Austen's Mr. Collins — and is unable to process the real world directly.

This is the main problem with Primrose, as his very name suggests. He is prim, proper, and delicate like a rose — but a father figure and parish leader needs to be made of sterner stuff in order to lead effectively, make sound decisions, and provide a solid example. Primrose is not made of such stuff. While his Christian name is rather masculine — Charles — and he is noted to be a doctor, his surname betrays his true character. He is prim and rosy and, by his own self-assessment, an "honest man" (Goldsmith 9).

Primrose is also a somewhat unreliable narrator (Nunning 236). That he is unintentionally ironic makes his character all the more enjoyable for the reader, who is meant to delight in absurdities that Primrose himself fails to perceive. For instance, in the opening of the novel, as he describes his hearth — over which he has hung an epitaph for his wife, who is still living, in order to remind her daily of her duties — the reader should immediately sense that Primrose has much of the fool in him (Goldsmith 13). His sheer obliviousness as he condescends to his wife affords the reader no end of amusement, especially for those already inclined toward acerbic comedy. Likewise, the way in which he describes choosing a wife is analogous to the way a woman chooses a dress or a breeder selects a horse: there is little sense of the human about it.

This lack of human sense is what drives all three of these clergymen. With Primrose, the problem is that he is not quite what he imagines himself to be: he is the head of a family, true, but he has not really raised his children. His son he has sent away to school, and his daughter is completely empty-headed — as evidenced by her seduction, which could have been prevented had either parent been more aware of what was transpiring before their very eyes, or had any inclination to correct their daughter's mistaken belief in her own sophistication.

Even so, Goldsmith does not wish to entirely skewer Primrose, for in 18th-century England there remained a great deal of respect for the idea of the clergy, even if the reality was far from ideal. As Zomchick notes, Primrose does not attain the heights of wisdom and leadership he professes to possess because doing so would involve "transgressing the text's sentimental presuppositions and destroying the harmonious domestic idyll that the narrative struggles to maintain" (169). In other words, Goldsmith is reluctant to push Primrose all the way down the path of absurdity and thoroughly impale him upon his own petard of arrogance and smug self-righteousness. Goldsmith backs off just enough to keep his satire gentle and his overall orientation warm and loving. He wants Primrose to have a happy ending and does not portray him in a manner intended to totally satirize all Church of England clergy.

Sterne's Yorick: Pride, Sentimentality, and Reluctant Compassion

The same can be said of Sterne's Yorick in A Sentimental Journey. Yorick is an unmistakable throwback to one of Shakespeare's most famous characters — one who, ironically, is never seen on stage, only spoken of, perhaps with his skull held up for view. This is, of course, a reference to Yorick the dead court jester, whose grave is dug up by gravediggers in Act 5, Scene 1 of Hamlet to make room for the dead Ophelia. Hamlet grieves for himself, for the passing of time, and for Yorick: "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio!" (Shakespeare, 5.1). The name Yorick evokes a flood of emotions, memories, and ideas; by naming his clergyman after Shakespeare's dead court jester, Sterne employs an ironic juxtaposition that provides the reader with both humor and gravitas.

This orientation is even commented upon by Yorick himself when in Paris he seeks a passport and is immediately granted one because he is mistaken for a member of the Court. Sterne's Yorick is simultaneously self-aware and oblivious. He is so entrenched in his own Protestant ideology that when a Catholic monk comes begging at his chambers, his recalcitrant Protestantism virtually erupts, and he subjects the poor monk to a strong dose of verbal combat — suggesting that the monk should pick himself up by his bootstraps and look after his own affairs instead of going from door to door and attempting to take from others what they have worked hard to obtain. Yorick completely fails to understand the monk, his reliance upon Providence, or even the concept of Christian charity. Instead, Yorick's staunch Britishness emerges: the pride of belonging to a great, independent country, of having achieved learning and extended leisure through his own hard work and merits.

Yet Yorick is not without compassion or the capacity for self-criticism, qualities that align him with both Primrose and Adams. As soon as the monk leaves, Yorick becomes aware that he has treated him unjustly. His Christian character emerges from beneath the English Protestant veneer, and he later meets the monk again and exchanges snuff boxes with him in an act of mutual appreciation. There is in this exchange a sign of respect — not only on Yorick's part for the monk, but also on Sterne's part for Yorick. Yorick may offer moments of humor for the reader, but the character represents more than a vehicle for satire. The human condition is evident here as well: pride overrules reason, regret quickly mounts, and feeling drives action.

The sentimentality displayed by Primrose is here matched to a large degree by Yorick. At the same time, the humanness enveloped in their sentimental approach to life provides the reader with rich, humorous moments that are funny precisely because they are true: the fact that both monk and minister carry snuff boxes, for instance, is a joke that reveals the peculiarities of society at that time and the thread of sameness that stretches from one person to another. Though monk and minister are of different lands and religions, they share a fondness for snuff — and that is a human connection and a human touch in the characterization of both. Thus, Sterne gives the reader the same gentle dose of satire that Goldsmith provides, without taking it to the kind of extreme a writer like Swift would.

Conclusion: Satire, Sympathy, and the Anglican Pastoral Ideal

Goldsmith's Primrose, Sterne's Yorick, and Fielding's Adams are three Church of England clergymen who embody 18th-century qualities for which the English clergy were known. Just as Chaucer depicted the Catholic clergy in a wide range of manners and mannerisms in The Canterbury Tales, these authors illuminate aspects of the English Protestant clergy that made them both admirable and susceptible to satire: they were exceptionally well-read, learned, and scholarly in terms of book knowledge. Yet, as the authors point out, their experience in human matters — in what it means simply to be a human living in an age of radical change, as a once-Catholic Europe fractured into a multi-religious network of nations — left a great deal to be desired.

England herself was changing and becoming a mighty European power, soon to be contending with the Napoleonic armies. English pride was a very real thing, and these clergymen represent that pride. They also represent some of the ignorance and innocence that persons who separate themselves from the rest of humanity typically embody. By thrusting their characters into real-world scenarios, Goldsmith, Sterne, and Fielding take the Church of England clergy out of their insulated comfort zones and expose them to actual humanity — offering both affectionate sympathy and pointed satirical critique in equal measure.

Works Cited

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Fielding, Henry. Joseph Andrews. Oxford PDF.

Fuld, James. The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular and Folk. NY: Dover, 2000.

Goldsmith, Oliver. The Vicar of Wakefield. Oxford PDF.

Nunning, Vera. "Unreliable Narration and the Historical Variability of Values and Norms: The Vicar of Wakefield as a Test Case of a Cultural-Historical Narratology." Style, vol. 38, no. 2 (2004): 236–252.

Roberts, Clayton. A History of England. UK: Prentice Hall, 2014.

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/hamlet/hamlet.5.1.html

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Zomchick, John. Family and the Law in Eighteenth-Century Fiction. UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Print.