I think I'm secretly from a planet where they don't have satire. On a visceral level, I just don't get it.

It seems to me that Goldsmith is not so much writing an actual novel with rounded, consistent characters, as he is using these rather cardboard characters as props for a series of jokes, skits, parodies, and moral lessons. The riding-to-church chapter, for example. What's that about?

So for people like me, who don't enjoy that kind of thing, the whole point of the book is lost. If I go looking for the kind of character development of, say, Emma, I'm just not going to find it.