The Vicar of Wakefield

The Vicar of Wakefield

CHAPTER ONE

In Chapter ONE, the narrator Dr. Primrose, a country vicar, introduces himself and his family to the reader. He begins by saying that he always believed a man who marries and raises a large family does more good for society than a man who stays single and just talks about having children, and this belief motivated him to marry early in his life. He chose his wife very carefully, not for her looks or glamour but for her practical and lasting qualities, just like choosing a wedding gown for its durability rather than its shine. His wife was a kind, hardworking, and capable woman who was excellent at cooking, pickling, preserving food, and managing the household, though despite all her careful management the family never seemed to get any richer, which the Vicar mentions with gentle amusement. They loved each other deeply and their affection only grew stronger as they aged, living a peaceful and comfortable life in a beautiful house in a pleasant neighbourhood, spending their time visiting rich neighbours, helping the poor, and enjoying simple domestic pleasures, with their greatest adventures being nothing more dramatic than moving from one bedroom to another. They were well known for their hospitality, especially for their gooseberry wine which every visitor praised, and they welcomed distant relatives of all kinds, even the blind, the lame, and the disreputable, because Mrs. Primrose believed that family should always be treated equally, though the Vicar had a clever trick of lending unwanted troublesome relatives a coat, boots, or a horse of small value when they left, knowing they would never return to give it back. The Vicar then describes his six children, starting with George the eldest who was educated at Oxford and intended for a learned profession, followed by Olivia aged eighteen who was strikingly and boldly beautiful like the goddess Hebe, open, lively, and attention-seeking, always wanting many admirers, then Sophia who was quietly and softly beautiful, modest and sensible, preferring to secure the love of one person rather than dazzle many, then Moses educated at home for business, and finally two younger sons born twelve years after Moses. The Vicar proudly compares himself to Count Abensberg who presented his thirty-two children to a king as his greatest treasure, and he considers his six children a gift to the nation. He concludes the chapter by noting that although the children had individual differences, they all shared one fundamental character - they were all equally generous, trusting, simple, and harmless - which sounds like a compliment but is actually Goldsmith's quiet warning to the reader that this family is dangerously innocent and will be easily deceived by the cruel world they are about to enter.

CHAPTER TWO

In Chapter TWO, the Vicar explains that while his wife managed all the household and financial matters, he focused entirely on his religious duties, giving away his entire clerical salary of thirty-five pounds a year to the widows and orphans of clergy because he had a private fortune of fourteen thousand pounds and felt no need for the money himself. He was known throughout the parish as a humble and dedicated vicar without pride, and he made it his personal mission to encourage married men toward temperance and unmarried men toward matrimony, becoming so associated with marriage that people joked about three unusual things in Wakefield - a vicar without pride, young men without wives, and alehouses without customers. The Vicar had one particular obsession however, which was his strong belief in strict monogamy, meaning he believed a clergyman should never remarry after his wife's death, a position he shared with a theologian named Whiston, and he was so passionate about this belief that he wrote tracts defending it which nobody bought, and he even wrote an epitaph praising his wife's virtues and had it framed and hung over the fireplace while she was still very much alive, which he thought served the useful purposes of reminding her of her duties and inspiring her to live up to the praise. It was probably because the Vicar talked about marriage so constantly that his eldest son George fell in love with Miss Arabella Wilmot, the beautiful, innocent, and wealthy daughter of a neighbouring clergyman named Mr. Wilmot, and since the Vicar could offer a good financial settlement, Mr. Wilmot happily agreed to the match, and both families spent several happy months together enjoying music, hunting, dancing, and pleasant courtship activities while preparations for the wedding slowly moved forward. However, disaster struck in two forms almost simultaneously - first, the Vicar unwisely showed his new monogamy tract to Mr. Wilmot, not knowing that Mr. Wilmot was himself at that very time courting a fourth wife and therefore violently opposed to the Vicar's argument, causing a furious theological argument that threatened to break apart the families, and second, a relative pulled the Vicar aside during the heat of this argument to tell him that the merchant in London who held the family's entire fortune had gone bankrupt and fled, leaving them with almost nothing. The relative wisely urged the Vicar to hide this financial ruin until after the wedding so that George could still secure Arabella's fortune, but the Vicar, a man of rigid and uncompromising honesty, absolutely refused to deceive anyone and immediately went and announced the loss to everyone present, the result being that Mr. Wilmot, who had already been looking for a reason to withdraw from the match, promptly broke off the engagement, leaving George heartbroken and the family both penniless and robbed of the alliance that might have saved them, with Goldsmith wryly noting that Mr. Wilmot had one virtue in perfection - prudence - which is "too often the only one that is left us at seventy-two."