Oscar Wilde’s play, The Importance of Being Earnest is merely a trivial and frivolous exercise in art for art’s sake whilst it illustrates his wit and verbal brilliance; ultimately it has no underlying purpose or meaning. Many people may agree with the statement due to the mockery of gender roles conveyed, however through the themes of class and respect and reputation this statement can be proven incorrect. The wit and verbal brilliance of Oscar Wilde is portrayed through his mockery of the gender roles in the Victorian era and particularly in his portrayal of Lady Bracknell. Through the theme of class along with respect and reputation which are expressed throughout the play show how Wilde’s play does contain an underlying purpose and meaning. The Importance of Being Earnest, in some way seems to a trivial exercise in art for art’s sake and does not deliver a meaning or purpose to the audience. In the text he mocks the gender roles during the Victorian era and by doing this it presents his wit and verbal brilliance as a writer. Wilde writes in a manner such that Lady Bracknell upholds the power over other characters in the text. Lady Bracknell is portrayed to be the leader and in a higher position then Jack and Algernon even though they are men. If this play was to be written …show more content…
In many instances Algernon expresses how the reputation of a woman is important. It is important that women remain under the strict moral codes of the Victorian Era and the way in which Gwendolen presents herself through flirting with men in public is dishonourable. This theme provides the play with meaning about the importance of containing a good reputation within society during this period of history, in relation to women. Therefore, through the theme of respect and reputation presented in The Importance of Being Earnest it conveys how there is an underlying purpose and meaning to Oscar Wilde’s
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.
As the lives of people progress each day, the standard of society changes as well. Each social custom molds our civilization, thus shape our nation. The opportunities that are made available to us actually depend on familiar factors, such as, the era that we’re in, our social class, and our gender. When I read all of our reading materials, I began to realize that I’m gradually aware of how society in general functions. I have learned that, not everyone in our society is catered equally and that there is this glass ceiling that separates us. Using literary lenses in reading these pieces from different authors, I enjoyed reading their works more compared to none. Looking into specific lenses in reading these materials and other literary pieces
In ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, Oscar Wilde’s characters frenetically seek to convey themselves in a society which has an unyielding and distinct set of limitations expected of the individual. The conventions of marriage and love, together with the compulsion of projecting a mask of virtue, causes characters to be trapped in a metaphysical corset which blocks the true expression of the individual to surface. The restrictive nature of these restraints causes characters such as Jack and Algernon to pursue greater liberty and find it within the conception of “Bunbury;” a figurative subordinate façade, which allows them to escape from the overbearing and restricting roles in their society. The contradiction of a character being forced to create another mask to escape from their original façade is illustrative of the superficiality of their society that is fanatical about outward appearances. The characters that are unable to form this secondary façade are despondently imprisoned within their “corset;” forced to twist sincere sentiment to fit the conventions of their society. Cons...
In conclusion, The Importance of Being Earnest strongly focuses on those of the upper class society and the vanity of the aristocrats who place emphasis on trivial matters concerning marriage. Both Algernon and Jack assume the identity of "Ernest" yet ironically, they both are beginning their marital lives based on deception and lies. Lady Bracknell represents the archetypal aristocrat who forces the concept of a marriage based on wealth or status rather than love. Through farce and exaggeration, Wilde satirically reveals the foolish and trivial matters that the upper class society looks upon as being important. As said earlier, a satirical piece usually has a didactic side to it.
Wilde, Oscar. “The Importance of Being Earnest.” Elements of Literature: Fiction, Poetry, Drama. Eds. Robert Scholes, et al. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press, 2010. 1022-1065. Print.
Wilde’s purpose in writing The Importance of Being Earnest was to display the artificial barriers that defined the aristocratic Victorian society, and to show that those particular people cared more about trivial subjects than what was of true value. He was able to portray this message in a comedic way.
The Importance of Being Earnest was one of Wilde’s Victorian melodramas. There are plenty elements of satire, intellectual travesty, a comic take on Victorian manners and an appealing superficial-ness that makes it a light comedy. Behind this charade of humor though lie deeper, more serious undertones. The play is a take at the extreme hypocrisy and cloying moralism’s that were distinct marks of the Victorian era.
In the closing lines of the first act of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest," Algernon remarks, "I love scrapes. They are the only things that are never serious," to which Jack responds, "Oh, that's nonsense Algy. You never talk about anything but nonsense." Algernon caps off this exchange with a proclamation of the purpose of the whole work: "Nobody ever does" (1642). Wilde never allows anything in the work to conclude on a serious note. While Wilde repeatedly proclaims this direction for the play through his characters, he does not tell us the motivation for this direction. He never explains why there is this avoidance of earnestness. The most apparent answer lies in the veiled criticism of Victorian society contained at each level of the play. The quick paradoxical epigrams that form the core of the conversational comedy are pointed at Victorian society. Wilde also abuses the concept of characterization with paradox to create comical characters that expose Victorian deficiencies.
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.
Oscar Wilde stated, in relation to his play The Importance of Being Earnest that “We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.” This reflects the ideas behind the play and the way that Wilde presents his characters, and their actions throughout the course of the play. This philosophy influenced many important themes throughout the play, most notably the presentation of class, as well as Satire and Comic Pairings. Wilde’s presentation of the society he showcases in the play revolves largely around this philosophy of ‘Serious Triviality’, especially in the case of Lady Bracknell, the character that exemplifies Wilde’s philosophy of Serious Triviality in the Importance of Being Earnest.
The satire of 19th century society is prominent in characters like Lady Bracknell, evident in her commentary on Algernon, “He has nothing, but looks everything. What more can one desire?” This contrasted the expectations of 19th century standards but affirmed Wilde’s privileging of artificiality over truth. Furthermore, the play creates a sense of the unstable and subsequently liberating nature of performative identity, most evidently in it denouement. Throughout the play Jack has been using the alter-ego of Ernest in the city, thus creating a performed, fictionalised identity. This practice of “Bunburying”, as Algernon calls it, overturns 19th century standards of identity as being unchanging and based on truth. Wilde utilises the conventions of theatre to satirise these standards, especially through the use of speech prefixes, which reveal who is speaking to the performers of a play, but not to the audience. In ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ there is no character actually called Ernest. Instead, when Lane introduces “Mr Ernest Worthing” an actor playing Jack comes on stage and takes up the title. This falsehood is
Oscar Wilde frames "The Importance of Being Earnest" around the paradoxical epigram, a skewering metaphor for the play's central theme of division of truth and identity that hints at a homosexual subtext. Other targets of Wilde's absurd yet grounded wit are the social conventions of his stuffy Victorian society, which are exposed as a "shallow mask of manners" (1655). Aided by clever wordplay, frantic misunderstanding, and dissonance of knowledge between the characters and the audience, devices that are now staples of contemporary theater and situation comedy, "Earnest" suggests that, especially in "civilized" society, we all lead double lives that force upon us a variety of postures, an idea with which the closeted (until his public charge for sodomy) homosexual Wilde was understandably obsessed.
In the passage from The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde reveals the personality of two protagonists: Jack Worthing, an honest legal judge from Hertfordshire , and Algernon, a witty gentleman belonging to Victorian society. The diction of the passage shows that Jack and Algernon are best friends; Algernon calls Jack as his “old boy”, “my dear boy” (Wilde 90). They also have some similar personalities: humorous, ironic and satiric. The passage starts with the scene Algernon enters cheerily (Wilde 90); he asks Jack about Jack’s proposal to Gwendolen. Jack replies with a sincere exclamation about Gwendolen, and also her mother, Lady Bracknell. He claims that Lady Bracknell is “perfectly unbearable” (Wilde 90); furthermore, Jack compares
The play The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde was written and set during the Victorian era, a time when the desire for social approval and status controlled the rituals, appearances, and attitudes of the middle and upper class. The search for moral recognition in society was the commonly conspired front that masked the people’s selfish ambitions. Oscar Wilde felt strongly towards the reformation he believed his time period needed, having been personally affected by the oppressive Victorian Society about his own sexual exploitations, and wrote The Importance of Being Earnest as an outrageous attack on the faults of society in order to expose its frailty. The play is able to broadcast his
The Importance of Being Earnest is one of the most important plays written by Oscar Wilde. The setting takes place in London during the present time of its production, February 1895 in the Victorian Era. Both main characters, John Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, find an escape from their everyday lives through a pseudonym or false identity. John, usually referred to as Jack, uses the name of Ernest to retreat into the city from his life in the country with his eighteen-year-old ward Cecily. The story begins with Jack informing his friend, Algernon, that he is planning to propose to his first cousin, Gwendolen. Upon hearing this news, Algernon confronts Jack, who he knows as Ernest, with his discover of Cecily. When Jack ultimately tells Algernon about his false identity in the city, Algernon also confesses to having a pseudonym for the country. The plot unravels after Gwendolen accepts Jack’s proposal, under the name of Ernest, and Algernon decides to also use the identity of Ernest to meet Cecily at Jack’s country home. The conflicts arise when everyone ends up at Jack’s home, each knowing each other by a separate name.