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Oscar Wilde an ideal husband and society
Oscar Wilde an ideal husband and society
Oscar wilde importance of being earnest social
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Marriage in The Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest is a play by Oscar Wilde. Oscar describes his play as A Trivia comedy for serious people. The protagonists in the play maintains being fictitious in order to escape burdensome social obligations. The play is lighthearted with flippant comments and offhand jokes, however the play contains serious undertones and social commentary about marriage and the society. Oscar Wilde in his plat portrays marriage in the Victorian Era as arranged for the upper class. Lady Bracknell is not ready to give her daughters hand in marriage to Earnest because of his social class and because he told her that he was found in a Victorian railroad station and has no idea who his biological parents are. Oscar Wilde explores the topic of marriage at length in his play. Marriage is a primary force motivating the plot of the play and a subject of speculation. The debate in the play is to whether marriage is pleasant or unpleasant.
It is obvious in the play that the theme of marriage is evident. This theme continues through the play evident from Act 1 whereby Earnest Worthing announces to his best friend Algernon Moncrieff that he was going to ask for his Cousin Gwendolen Fairfax’s hand in marriage. He proposes to Gwendolen and she enthusiastically accepts but only with a man named Earnest and not Jack which was Earnest Worthing’s real name. Her mother is against it and she puts it very clear to Gwendolen that her engagement can only be informed to her through her and her father and she is not engaged to anyone. She says “Pardon me, you are not engaged to anyone. When you do become engaged to someone I, or your father, should his health permit him will inform you of the fact. An engag...
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...rton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Peter Simmons. 10th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2010. Print.
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Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest. Peter Raby, ed. Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays. London: Oxford University Press, 1995. 247-307.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Michael Patrick Gillespie, Editor. Norton Critical Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007.
Wilde, Oscar, and Joseph Bristow. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Print.
Ruddick, Nicholas. "'The Peculiar Quality of My Genius': Degeneration, Decadence, and Dorian Gray in 1890-91." Oscar Wilde: The Man, His Writings, and His World. New York: AMS, 2003. 125-37. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Jessica Bomarito and Russel Whitaker. Vol. 164. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Artemis Literary Sources. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.
flawed character in order to make him relatable to all classes. Oscar Wilde’s work is considered
Reinert, Otto. (1956). Satiric Strategy in the Importance of Being Earnest. College English, Vol. 18, No. 1.
Throughout The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde plays around with the standard expectations along with the absence of compassion of a Victorian society in the 1890’s, he demonstrates this through several genres of comedy such as Melodrama, Comedy of Manners, Farce, dark humour and Irony, as well as portraying the themes, death and illness, in this play in a brilliance of unusual amount of references.
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.
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.
Wilde, Oscar. "The Importance of Being Earnest." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt.
Duggan, Patrick. "The Conflict Between Aestheticism and Morality in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray." Boston University Arts and Sciences Writing Program. Boston University, 2008-2009. Web. 23 May 2014. http://www.bu.edu/writingprogram/journal/past-issues/issue-1/duggan/
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McGlinn, Colin. A. Ethics, Evil and Fiction. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1997. Pearson, Hesketh. A. Oscar Wilde: His Life and Wit.
One major theme of The Importance of Being Earnest is the nature of marriage. Throughout the entire play, marriage and morality serve as the catalyst for the play, inspiring the plot and raising speculation about the moral character of each person. Throughout the entire play, the characters are constantly worried about who they are going to marry and why they would marry them. This theme is the most prevalent theme throughout the entire play and shows what impact marriage had on a Victorian society. This essay will prove that marriage is the theme of this play.
Guy, Josephine M. "Self-Plagiarism, Creativity and Craftsmanship in Oscar Wilde." English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, vol. 41, no. 1, Jan. 1998, pp. 6-23.