Oscar Wilde The Importance Of Being Earnest Food Essay

In his play, The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde highlights the foolishness of the Victorian upper-class lifestyle by the use of food throughout the story. Food serves as one of the most relevant matters that the characters of the play act ridiculously towards in comparison to other more usually significant topics and situations. Wilde is able to place food in each act while having his characters converse over it, making the scene entertaining to watch play out. This banter showcases the characters’ personalities while emitting an interpretation of how their high-class society is not as proper or serious as it is assumed to be.
Early on within the first act, a character named Algernon makes it clear that he is very serious in regards

Unlike what most people would do in their situation, like go chase after the women and try to get them back, Algernon is the first to start eating muffins. Jack points out that it seems unfitting for him to eat so calmly at a time like this. Algernon rebukes this saying, “Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably be on my cuffs… When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me. Indeed, when I am in really great trouble, as anyone who knows me will intimately tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink” (41). This confirms that Algernon does find great comfort within food and does use it to help him under stressful circumstances. When Jack comments on how he wishes Algernon would leave already, Algernon is almost dumbfounded and insists “You can’t possibly ask me to go without having some dinner. It’s absurd. I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that” (42), furthermore demonstrating the importance of food and of manners, since no polite and high-standard person would force another to leave without offering