Lady Bracknell The Importance Of Being Earnest Literary Analysis

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The Victorian era consisted of many ideals of life that would often be satirized by authors during the period. Oscar Wilde, for example, criticizes the standards of the Victorian age and often depicts the upper middle class as arrogant, as can be seen in Lady Bracknell his play The Importance of Being Earnest. In the play, Wilde often includes epigrammatic lines that the reader may not find of any significant meaning, but with careful consideration of why Wilde chooses to incorporate it into the play, the line comes to portray the shallowness of the Victorian ideals. Lady Bracknell represents the typical Victorian figure in which the Victorian ideals must come first in finding a suitable partner. Wilde’s characterizes Lady Bracknell as a person who only cares about the aesthetics of a person, and if they meet her standards, she approves of them. For instance, …show more content…

What more can one desire?” (Act III, 180), shows the importance of looks to Lady Bracknell, but at the same time, the truth and falsehood in the statement can be seen throughout the play and can be related to a certain extent. The expectations of marrying a man for the upper middle class women usually consists of their looks and status. Jack, who calls himself Ernest in the city, worries that Gwendolen will not love him the same if he were to change his name to Jack. As a result, Gwendolen first shows how she herself conforms to this stereotype when she admits to Jack that “The moment Algernon first mentioned to me that he had a friend called Ernest, I knew I was destined to love you.” (Act I, page 128-129). Before meeting Jack, Gwendolen falls in love with

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