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Critical summary of the essay the importance of being earnest
Critical appreciation of the importance of being earnest
Critical summary of the essay the importance of being earnest
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Names are just labels used to distinguish one person from another. Your name has no effect on character or fate. Changing your name won’t create a new life for you. Attempting to escape your life is impossible because everywhere you go, your real life follows. This was the major dilemma that Jack Worthing faced in Oscar Wilde’s play ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’. In the countryside Jack was known by his real name, Jack, but in the city he was known as Earnest. His attempts to live a double life proved too much for him to handle and soon became complete chaos. This scenario made me propose the question ‘Is it possible to escape your life and fate?’ In other words, should people just embrace the life they’re given or is it justified to try and create a new life for yourself. Jack’s fate and his awkward confessions of living a double life shows that Oscar Wilde didn’t think living two lives would end up in your benefit. …show more content…
When Jack was first caught in his lie he awkwardly says “Gwendolen- Cecily- it is very painful for me to to forced to speak the truth...I will tell you quite frankly that I have no brother Earnest.” (Wilde Act II. Scene 1. Line 6). This embarrassing confession is Wilde’s way of making a point: that living a double life almost always ends up terribly awkward and inconvenient. Lies become exposed more often than they remain
In his Enigmas of Identity, Peter Brooks describes the “transactional nature of the self,” where individual identity is created through its relationship with others (Brooks 23). Identity is forged through “transpersonal networks”, moving beyond the individual or the personal (23). Identity is not static, but a continuous “project,” asking in what ways one stays the same, changes and grows (15). In Arthur Conan Doyle’ “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” identity and its transactional, malleable nature play a significant role. In each narrative, the identities of those protagonists hold shape shifting capabilities, and mistaken or lost individual identities are major themes.
Oscar Wildes ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’’ is believed by many to be his most genius work and certainly has withstood the test of time. The play is set in London during the 1890’s in which time frame aristocracy and upper class held the majority of the countries wealth. Many of the comical aspects question the morals of the upper class in which he satirises throughout the play. One method of this, for instance is through one of the main protagonist, Algernon Moncrieff. Algernon is an upper class individual who is oblivious to the world around him in such an exaggerated manner that it makes his character comically adjusted for Wildes own views.
Wilde’s didactic satire delves deep into the problems of society, highlighting to the audience all the flaws of human beings and their social obligations while keeping it light-hearted and enjoyable for audiences. The author’s mockery and satire of society, as seen in his play, is most likely stemmed from his lack of acceptance and frustration at the society he believes to be ‘proper’. Readers today laugh at the situations portrayed because they are satirical and humourous, but they also question the motives behind the character “Earnest” because they see that “earnest”, meaning seriousness or sincerity, is the one thing the characters most certainly do not portray. However, towards the end of the play, when all has come out, Jack states that “I’ve now realized for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest” (Wilde 2000, p.358), which may in fact be the most blatantly satirical line of the play, and a great summation of the lies the play relied on. This explores Wilde’s use of double entendre as Jack lives a double life, alongside the use of an elaborate p...
Molière’s play “Tartuffe and Oscar Wilde’s play “The Importance of Being Earnest” both demonstrate a comical portrait of hypocrisy. In “Tartuffe”, the main character Tartuffe is seen as a religious hypocrite who takes advantage of Orgon’s wealth and agrees to marry his daughter, Mariane against her wishes. In “The Importance of Being Earnest”, Jack and Algernon both lie about their identity to get the woman of their dreams. The authors use the concept of double personalities in the play to reveal the deceit and lies to represent the theme of hypocrisy. In fact, hypocrisy is not only displayed in the characters but in the play as a whole. Additionally, the plays are both hypocrital in ways that they do not follow the structure of comedy.
By doing that he caused the audience to feel that the actors had authentic regret about their characters actions (Foster 19). Two adolescent women who incorrectly consider the men’s names to be Ernest, and who are passionate about the men for this very reason, think highly of both Jack and Algernon. In relating the story of mix-ups and mistaken identities, the ideals and manners of the Victorian society are satirized in a comedy where the characters "treat all the trivial things of life seriously and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality"(Wilde, Oscar). Oscar Wilde’s amusing scenes often take their source in societal satire and unconventional (Baselga 15). All the way through his play, The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde satirizes education, women, and morality.
In Oscar Wilde’s drama The Importance of Being Earnest, he uses light-hearted tones and humor to poke fun at British high society while handling the serious theme of truth and the true identity of who is really “Earnest.” Truth as theme is most significantly portrayed through the women characters, Gwendolen and Cecily but to present serious themes comically, Wilde portrays women to be the weaker sex of society, despite the seriousness of the subject—the identity of the men they want to marry.
In essence, this comedy of manners does have traces of movement from distress to happiness as all the characters within the play were either involved in ‘good’ or ‘bad’ affairs. But despite this, in the resolution Jack learnt from his mistakes which resulted in happiness for him and Gwendolyn as she got married to a person named Earnest. Similarly, Cecily also got married which resulted in celebration, but as Algernon didn’t tell her the truth about his name he hadn’t reformed in the process which indicates that he did stay ‘bad’. Likewise, Lady Bracknell also stayed distressed when she was not part of any comic resolution. As this is the case, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ does conform to this model, but this movement from ‘good’ to ‘bad’ is dependent on the different characters that Wilde has constructed and the situations that they went through.
Victorian Comedy The Victorian Era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from June 20th, 1837 until her death on January 22nd, 1901. The Importance of Being Earnest, a trivial comedy for serious people, is a play by Oscar Wilde set in the Victorian Era. First performed on February 14th 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London. It is a comedy in which the protagonists maintains a fictitious persons to escape burdensome social obligations. The Importance of Being Earnest.
One example where Wilde shows how English values are backtracked is the scene of Lady Bracknell and her meeting with Jack. Here Lady Bracknell cross-examines Jack extensively on his background. However, Lady Bracknell narrows her questions down to the materialistic side of Jack’s history. She even remains displeased with the location of Jack’s house, calling it the “unfashionable side” (Wilde 27). Furthermore when Jack informs Lady Bracknell that he was found in a handbag on the Brighton line, she reacts by commenting the line as “immaterial” and the lack of wealth on Jack’s part greatly disappoints her (Wilde 29).
The play The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde is full of irony. Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, the protagonists in the play, get themselves into a complicated situation called Bunburyism (as Algernon refers to it). They pretend to be someone that they are not to escape their daily lives. They lie to the women they admire and eventually the truth is unveiled.
Both Cecily and Gwendolen realize that the men that they are infatuated with are lying about being Ernest. The entire situation is resolved in the end as Jack is revealed to actually be Ernest as well as have a brother. The Importance of Being Earnest, one of Wilde’s most popular work is also one of his plays that, “...most exactly accomplish what they attempt, without sacrificing any part of themselves”
Humans often alter their reality in order to accomplish their purposes, whatever they may be. This idea is blatant in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. While it is a rather comedic play, Wilde puts forth the idea of appearances vs. reality through the two main male characters, Jack and Algernon. The two men change their names and other areas of their everyday life in order to adopt a different lifestyle. The two men, in an attempt to escape reality, change their names, their attitudes, and, consequently, their lifestyle.
The Importance of Being Earnest appears to be a conventional 19th century farce. False identities, prohibited engagements, domineering mothers, lost children are typical of almost every farce. However, this is only on the surface in Wilde's play. His parody works at two levels- on the one hand he ridicules the manners of the high society and on the other he satirises the human condition in general. The characters in The Importance of Being Earnest assume false identities in order to achieve their goals but do not interfere with the others' lives. The double life led by Algernon, Jack, and Cecily (through her diary) is simply another means by which they liberate themselves from the repressive norms of society. They have the freedom to create themselves and use their double identities to give themselves the opportunity to show opposite sides of their characters. They mock every custom of the society and challenge its values. This creates not only the comic effect of the play but also makes the audience think of the serious things of life.
Both Algernon and Jack assume the identity of "Ernest" yet ironically, they both plan on starting their married life with a lie. Lady Bracknell represents the typical aristocrat who focuses the idea of marriage on social and economic status. She believes that if the men trying to marry these girls are not of proper background, there is to be no engagement. Through this major exaggeration, Wilde satirically reveals the irrational and insignificant matters that the upper class society uses to view
Here, Jack must explain to Algernon why he is calling his niece Cecily his aunt and why his alter ego is actually Earnest and that Jack is his true identity. Another comical situation is when Jack returns to the country and tells everyone that his "brother" Earnest has been killed by severe chill when, unbeknownst to him, Algernon has come to the country that very day claiming to be Earnest. It is exciting to see how the characters will get themselves out of the middle of the confusion. In the end, the characters discover who they really are, and as luck would have it, they are brothers who were separated during their childhood. Jack discovers that his name has actually been Earnest all along: "I've realized for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest" (Wilde 1924).