In the words of Goldsmith “the good are joyful and serene, like travellers who
are going towards home; the wicked but by intervals are happy, like travellers
who are going into exile.” 

Examine the Vicar of Wakefield as a satirical prose
fiction.

Or
Examine the Vicar of Wakefield as allegorical satire and novel of sentimental
genre.
Or
“Here fears are not quelled or hopes are not fulfilled; burlesquing both
sentimental fiction and readers’ expectations.” Examine the perspective from
the main character of the Restoration novel The Vicar of Wakefield.

Goldsmith's novel is allegorical satire and prose fiction embedded with the
characters of sentimental genre, Goldsmith enshrines his novel in engravings
of an everyman Christian in the role of a materialistic clergyman engulfed by
sentimental views of paterfamilias. The abduction of Sophia and imprisonment
of George are further trials to the reconstitution and restoration to the Vicar’s
family. “The joys that fortunes bring, like trifles and decay; Friendship is but a
name and happiness is still an emptier sound”. 

The Christ-like suffering
experience of fatherhood resonates Christ's crucifixion and vicarious
atonement through the resurrection of the Vicar as well as Olivia and furthermore, the
 restoration of George and Sophia.
Goldsmith’s novel is a place where no man is fond of liberty as not to be 
desirous of subjecting the will of some individuals to his own and where virtue
 is always under siege by the likes of Thornhill, a villain motivated less by lust
than like Deborah by an impulse towards tyranny and revenge.
The vicar’s adherence to individualistic spirits to God’s laws reclaim, “ … “ Olivia’s
seduction by the promiscuity and lust of Mr. Thornhill exemplifies the
catastrophic debacle impacted in the world of rigid adherence to principles and
reaches the moral weakness or frailty of the womanhood in Olivia.  The Vicar of Wakefield broad heartedly and open mindedly embraces the returning
 repentant wretched daughter as exclaimed in his assertiveness of dialogue and
action of personae/ ‘His benevolence lies in his rhetoric and his action often
belies what he professes’ …./ 

Firstly, the Vicar storms in remonstrance and
wrathfulness upon Olivia’s escaping the domestic hearth and eloping with the
seductive Squire Thornhill “Bring me my pistols. I’ll pursue the traitor. While
he is on the earth I shall pursue him.” 

Lastly the Vicar settles down in a
 pacified manner to reclaim his lost daughter despite her wretchedness: / “ever
shall this house and this heart be open to a poor returning repentant sinner…
Yes, the wretched sinner shall be welcome to my house and my heart, tho
 stained with ten thousand vices.” /

The Vicar of Wakefield’s dialogue and rhetoric “I only studied my child’s real
happiness” and “my tenderness as a parent shall never influence my integrity
as a man”. His daughters must be killed off in an unsuccessful ploy to obtain his
 freedom and his sons must cheerfully lie in custody with their father; his wife
 must suffer shame and the penury of the situation; Mossess must labour for
the whole family and this stresses the matter of principle. 

Goldsmith's maxim of
‘submission in adversity’ has been metaphorically satirized in the sense of the
disastrous effects of audacious pride associated with the mastery of
fate. Thus, submission in adversity consecrates the Vicar’s stance as "a
 calm spectator of the flames’ whilst sermonizing lectures and preaching
 homilies to families and exhortations to prisoners and the moral
 climax of the action touches its pinnacle in the maxim of the Vicar's: 
“If our rewards are in this world alone, we are then indeed of all men the most
 miserable.”

The Vicar of Wakefield is in stark contrast to the foil of Ephraim Jenkinson and
this is profoundly evidenced in his exclaiming speech after a colossal
 catastrophe infests to pester his family in ruination as in the instances of
 abduction and elopement, murder and violence, crime and imprisonment and
 burning flames. /“May all the curses that ever sunk a soul fall heavily upon the
 murderer of my children/…/ May the flames continue burning all my
possessions…Here they are!--- I have saved my treasures (my little ones)”/

Jenkinson is an allegorical character of evil being defeated by the triumphant
 force of goodness. “Perhaps you’ll think it was generosity that made me do all
 this. To my shame I confess it, my only design was to keep the license and let 
the Squire know that I could prove it upon him whenever I thought proper and
 so make him come down whenever I wanted money.”

Further Reading and Works Consulted

'The Vicar of Wakefield and the Sentimental Novel’ 
David Durant 
University of 
Kentucky, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Summer 1977, Vol. 17, No.
3, Restoration and the Eighteenth Century Summer 1977, pages: 477-491
JSTOR Database George E Haggerty’s Satire and Sentiment In The Vicar of
 Wakefield.