Ernest Quotes

Gwendoline Fairfax is a prime example of London’s finest fashionable and sophisticated upper-class. She is in love with Ernest (Who is really Jack), and the daughter of Lady Bracknell. Gwendoline is so set on marrying Ernest (who is really Jack) that she is willing to do it even before she meets him in person. Gwendoline’s character challenges the typical Victorian roles where the female is submissive to the male, She is more aggressive in what she wants and going after it. Which is portrayed in parts of the play where she fights the urge to do what she wants and the urge to do what she is told. However, Gwendoline still embodies the Victorian era by being so fixated on marrying someone named Ernest it does not matter to her if the man is a good person morally or not as long as his name is Ernest. We find that Gwendoline instead of facing the truth when she finds out the about Jack she gives herself her own answer, one she can live with, to why he lied to her in the first place about who he really was. Luckily for her, Jacks real name in fact does turn

out to be Ernest (Team).
Cecily Cardew is Jacks ward and lives with him on his estate in the country. She is pupil of Miss Prism her governess. Cecily has lived a more natural life than Gwendoline as she resides in the country and dresses and wears her hair simply as pointed out by Lady Bracknell in Act 3. Cecily imitates Gwendoline in her pursuit of a man named Ernest. Cecily is in love with Ernest due to his reputation giving Cecily an edgier personality, opposed to Gwendoline. Cecily also shows an unwillingness to do or be anything she doesn’t want to be such as when Miss Prism was trying to teach her and she refused because she was bored. Cecily is noted for giving way to her fictional fantasy where she has created an entire world where she and Ernest have been engaged, broken it off, and engaged to be married again all of which she keeps account of in her journal, where she also has letters from “Ernest” that she wrote herself (Parker). Cecily and Alge seem to be the perfect fit for each other in the respect that both have fantasized alternate characters (Team).
Lady Bracknell is the mother of Gwendoline Fairfax and the aunt to Alge, and toward the end of the play also Jack (Ernest).

Lady Bracknell embodies the Victorian matron role with her domineering, snobbish, and lack of compassion characteristics (Orlich 373). Wilde tends to use Lady Bracknell as a stereotype of the upper class where she didn’t care about the type of person one was as long as they appeared to be of importance to society. This is a theme that we see reoccurring in the personality of Gwendoline, backing up the statement Alge made about women always becoming like their mothers in the end. Lady Bracknell’s shallow character is made more clear during the conversation she had with Jack about his childhood and telling him that he need to provide some sense of belonging before she would even consider letting her daughter marry him, completely disregarding the fact that he was lost in a train station

(Team).
Miss Prism is the governess to Cecily. Miss Prism, however, has a past, she used to work for Lady Bracknell’s sister, Mrs. Moncrieff. Prism was taking Mrs. Moncrieff's baby out for air and absent-mindedly put the baby in the handbag and her manuscript in the baby’s pram. Prism also accidentally left the bag with the baby in a cloak room at Victoria railway station. The baby turns out to be Jack, and Jack is actually the nephew of Lady Bracknell and the brother of Alge. Miss Prism is also a romantic for Dr. Chasuble who feels the same way (Team).
Dr. Chasuble does not have much of a role other than his fascination with Miss Prism and that Alge and Jack both want to be christened by him on the same day by the name of Ernest to turn their lies to the girls into truths (Garland 272).
Each of these characters also fit into other categories of characters themselves. These roles have more of a stock character feel and hold a universal mean to the character within itself.
Characters of habit are characters that continuously do the same thing over and over (creatures of habit). Alge has a habit of always eating all the food and then has someone else cover it up and lie for him about what really happened to the food. Dr. Chasuble is supposed to be a man of God, and soley devoted to God, but obviously, spends way too much time flirting with Miss Prism than he should be. Miss Prism herself was so careless she lost a baby and then tried to run from the truth when Lady Bracknell shows up and wants to see her. Jack has a terrible habit of lying and having to carry out elaborate schemes to cover them up by creating ‘Ernest’ (Characterization). Though the play is meant to be a comedy one must note the universal truth that everyone is never who they really seem to be.
A mask tells us more than a face. These disguises intensified his personality.
-Oscar Wilde (Lane 943)
Characters of education, a few of the characters are more educated than the rest, but it seems that the characters with the most education do the most harm. Miss Prism is absent minded and losses a baby. Jack and Alge both are well educated but have created double lives for themselves to run to when they need to get away from their real ones. Lady Bracknell who completely opposes education stick her nose up at anyone that wants to marry Gwendoline but is a “commoner”. (Characterization) It seems the universal truth of characters of education is hypocrisy come in all forms and so it seems does ignorance.
Family characters are predominate in just about every genre and era of literature, there is always one family member that seem to be trying to ruin it for everyone else. In English literature’s case, it is usually the uptight, over baring, wealthy aunt. We see this character present in other novels such as Aunt March in “Little Women” were Jo March is forced to choose between being herself and being what her aunt wants her to be so that she can enjoy the finer