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Foreshadowing
Genre
Explanation and Analysis:
The Vicar of Wakefield can be classified as a sentimental novel. This is a genre that was popular during the 18th century, and other notable examples of sentimental novels include Manon Lescaut, Tristram Shandy, and The Sorrows of Young Werther. Accentuating tenderness, sentimental novels dwell on the emotional responses of characters and attempt to produce emotional responses in readers. The sentimental and sensitive nature of The Vicar of Wakefield can be found in its earnest tone, gripping mood, and the idealized rural setting. Additionally, multiple chapters contain long passages in which the vicar sets forth his righteous morals as well as allegorical elegies, ballads, and stories told by characters.
It can be worth posing the question of whether Goldsmith is purposefully trying to satirize the conventions of the sentimental novel. Dr. Primrose's unabashed, at times rather pathetic, earnestness as narrator gives the novel a potential undertone of irony. His earnest tone paired with the melodramatic mood makes it possible to wonder whether the novel contains some degree of satire—and whether Goldsmith uses this to mock the emotional excess of the genre. However, it is ambiguous how sincere Goldsmith himself is as author, and therefore unclear how much of the novel is truly ironic. In writing The Vicar of Wakefield, he may have intended to perfectly comply with the genre's conventions, but he may also have sought to satirize its sentimentality.
