The Vicar of Wakefield Themes

The overarching moral of The Vicar of Wakefield, uniting all Dr. Primrose’s adventures, successes, and failures, is the importance of humility and acceptance in the face of life’s challenges. Dr. Primrose’s goodness stems precisely from his willingness to accept his situation and strive to make the best of it, urging his family to do the same, however unjust his suffers may seem to him. Indeed, when he makes things worse it is because of…

The universal potential for redemption in each and every human being is central to the moral philosophy of Dr. Primrose, the novel, and Goldsmith himself. While Dr. Primrose is a paragon of goodness, at worst guilty of mostly harmless instances of pride, he remains utterly faithful to the possibility of redemption for the very wicked. Though this is primarily a Christian principle, for Dr. Primrose it extends into all aspects of secular life and…

The tension between equality and justice and their expression—or lack thereof—in the law is central to The Vicar of Wakefield, as many of the tragedies and misadventures that befall Dr. Primrose and his family are the result of the law’s failed or imperfect deliverance of those ideals, particularly Dr. Primrose’s imprisonment for his debts. While a faithful, law-abiding citizen and patriot of Britain, Dr. Primrose cannot deny the many great and small ways in…

At the beginning of The Vicar of Wakefield, Dr. Primrose lives a contented life in a home he and his family have hardly ever been away from, a sense of belonging which they find together again only after many travels, adventures, and hardships. Drawing on Goldsmith’s own life, their departures and eventual returns serve to argue that no matter how much of the world one can see and experience, true belonging is found at…