The Vicar's Daughter
1872
The Vicar's Daughter is a novel by George MacDonald, first published in 1872. It follows Ethelwyn Percivale as she navigates love, marriage, and family while reflecting on her identity and aspirations. Set in Scotland, the story explores the complexities of familial relationships and societal expectations, particularly through Ethelwyn's introspective narration and her interactions with her parents. The book is notable for its themes of fidelity and the struggles of emerging adulthood within a Christian context.
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“It Was a lovely spring morning, and the sun was shining gloriously. I knew that the rain of the last night must be glittering on the grass and the young leaves; and I heard the birds singing as if they knew far more than mere human beings, and believed a great deal more than they knew. Nobody will persuade me that the birds don't mean it; that they sing from any thing else than gladness of heart.””
— George MacDonald
“My teacher taught me that the way for me to help others was not to tell them their duty, but myself to learn of Him who bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. As””
— George MacDonald
“There is a certain amount of the queenly element in every woman, so that she cannot feel perfectly at ease without something to govern, however small and however troublesome her queendom may be. At my fathers, I had every ministration and all comforts, but no responsibilities and no rule. I could not help feeling idle.””
— George MacDonald
“His heart, he said, had been the guide of his intellect." "That is just what I would fain believe. But, O Wynnie! the pity of it if that story should not be true, after all!" "Ah, my love!" I cried, "that very word makes me surer than ever that it cannot but be true. Let us go on putting it to the hardest test; let us try it until it crumbles in our hands,”
— George MacDonald
“she always administered her charity with some view to the value of the probable return,”
— George MacDonald
“But the man of independent feeling, except he be thus your friend, will not unlikely resent your compassion, while the beggar will accept it chiefly as a pledge for something more to be got from you; and so it will tend to keep him in beggary.””
— George MacDonald
“He heard me through in silence, for it was a rule with him never to interrupt a narrator. He used to say, "You will generally get at more, and in a better fashion, if you let any narrative take its own devious course, without the interruption of requested explanations. By the time it is over, you will find the questions you wanted to ask mostly vanished.””
— George MacDonald
“I am pretty sure that if she had been one of us, that is, one of his own, he would have taken sharper measures with her; but he said we must never attempt to treat other people's children as our own, for they are not our own. We did not love them enough, he said, to make severity safe either for them or for us.””
— George MacDonald
