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What is the importance of telling the truth
Changes in Victorian society
Advantages Of Lying
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Status, More Important Than the Truth The Victorian society was more about social status than anything else; if you were from the upper class they live a life of luxury and power. If you were from middle class, most had successful businesses, but did have a lot of political power during this time period. The working class, they struggle to find good jobs and keep food on their tables (Victorian). Lies and deception were used by people in Victorian society to either gain status or not to hurt their standing in society. Oscar Wilde was quoted saying “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth (Oscar)”, I believe this statement is so true for The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar …show more content…
In the first part of the play Jack goes into the city to meet his good friend Algernon at his house. The interesting part is that Algernon only knows Jack by his alternate personality of Ernest Worthing. Algernon thinks that Ernest/Jack is hiding something because of cigarette case that Jack had left the last time he was there. The cigarette case has an inscription and Algernon reads part of it to Jack “From little Cecily with her fondest love (Wilde 120)”, so he confronts Ernest/Jack about who Cecily is. At first Jack tries to say that it was a gift his aunt and makes up a story about it, but then Algernon reads the rest of the inscription to Jack “to her dear Uncle Jack (Wilde 120).” At this point Jack comes clean to Algernon and tells him that his real name is Jack and not Ernest. Algernon tells Jack that he “always suspected you of being a confirmed and secret Bunburyist; I am quite sure of it now (Wilde 121).” Not knowing what a Bunburyist is Jack asks Algernon to explain what that is and he agrees to after Jack explains why he has a different name in the city than in the country. Jack explains since he is the guardian to Cecily, he has to set an example of high moral character. So he decided to make up that he has a younger brother that lives in the city and gets into …show more content…
Gwendolen and her mother Lady Bracknell came to the house and as Algernon was occupying Lady Bracknell attention, Jack took the opportunity to ask Gwendolen to marry him. His plan was if she said yes, he would tell her his real name and kill off his brother so no one would know about his secret. Jack is so happy when Gwendolen says yes, but then he is somewhat concerned after she makes the statement “my ideal has always been to love some one of the name of Ernest (Wilde 128).” I believe Gwendolen was more in love with the name Ernest than with Jack himself. He starts talking about how he does not really like the Ernest and mentions the name Jack and Gwendolen says “Jack? No, there is very little music in the name Jack, if any at all (Wilde 129).” At this Jack realizes that he will have to get christened as Ernest so that would become his legal name, before he marries Gwendolen. As Lady Bracknell comes back into the room Gwendolen tells her of their engagement, where Lady Bracknell becomes very upset because Jack is not on her list of suitable people to marry her daughter. Gwendolen is sent away by her mother so she can question Jack to see if is suitable to marry her daughter. Lady Bracknell seems more concerned about the social status that Jack has than about her daughter being in love and
You, I see from your card, are my Uncle Jack’s brother, my cousin Earnest... (Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest) This dialogue between Algernon and Cecily is very important because Algernon is lying to her which will further the dispute in the next act. Lastly, the third act, along with act, uses situational irony. Throughout the play, Mr.Worthing claims to have a brother.
While this lifestyle would be quite desirable for the average person, Jack Worthing seems to view the pressures of upper class society as overwhelming. He expresses this in the following passage: “When one is placed in the position of guardian, one has to adopt a very high moral tone on all subjects… who lives in the Albany, and gets into the most dreadful scrapes” (Earnest 1738). In an attempt to escape his responsibilities and the stress that comes with them, Jack adopts an alternate identity, allowing him to change his name (to Ernest), his personality, and by extension his social image. For a while, this works marvelously. However, Jack’s deception eventually begins to catch up to him when Cecily insists on meeting the alter ego he has created. This leaves Jack with the need to find a feasible way to make his alternate identity disappear. It seems however, Jack experiences the most pressure through Lady Bracknell and her insistence on denying Jack the privilege of marrying her daughter, Gwendolyn, unless he can produce proof of his high class origins. The pressure is specifically applied when Lady Bracknell says “... I feel
...Lady Bracknell was excited to hear that Cecily has wealth; she almost instantaneously consented to her marriage to Algernon. Wilde uncovers the frivolousness of their proclaimed love by displaying how Lady Bracknell would only consent for
Jack lead a life that would not make most envy him. He suffered from many traumatic events, most of these can in someway be pinned on his Mother. First is the trauma of the mostly untold story of his parents split. Divorces are usually traumatic for the children and this one seems to be no different. Jack obviously has a hard time with it, and hanging on to things associated with his father. When the reader enters the story Jack wants to change his name and religion. Both of these things anger his father. By doing both Jack feels like he is completely severing his contact with his father, who he believes never provided for him or his mother. The divorce can not be blamed solely on Rosemary, as with most splits it had a lot to do with Jack’s father as well. The way the split happened, and the way Jack feels about his father probably can. His mother must have shaped Jack’s opinion about his father, especially since he spent most of his time with her. These feelings lead to opportunities that were missed in the future.
Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest play explores the life and mind of two aristocratic characters who both create imaginary people that they use as an excuse to dodge situations, circumstances, and social interactions that they deem unpleasant. The strict Victorian ideology regarding social interactions and responsibilities of specifically the upper class in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest has led characters wanting to escape their duties, to lead double lives. Dining with relatives during the Victorian era was a very common social ritual which were rather long and tiresome. Algernon Moncrieff, a clever “Bunburyist” has created an imaginary person named “Bunbury” to avoid social interactions with his relatives. He tells his mate Jack in a jokingly but serious manner, “If it wasn’t for Bunbury’s extraordinary bad health, for instance, I wouldn’t be able to dine with you at Willis’s to-night...
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.
Jack makes his alter ego work extremely well until he decides that he wants to ask one of the ladies he has met in the city to be his bride. However, Jack does not realize how important the name Ernest is to the young woman he is going to propose. This is shown when Jack speaks of how easy it will be to get rid of his alternate personality, "If Gwendolen accepts me, I am going to kill my brother” (Abrams 2227). The importance of being earnest, is observed when Jack finds out that his name is in fact Ernest he says to Gwendolen, “I always told you, Gwendolen, my name was Ernest, didn’t I? Well, it is Ernest after all.
Irony in The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde The play The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde is full of irony. Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, the protagonists in the play, get themselves into a complicated situation called Bunburyism (as Algernon refers to it). They pretend to be someone that they are not to escape their daily lives. They lie to the women they admire, and eventually the truth is revealed.
Why Do We Love the Liar?: The Analysis of Algernon from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Jack and Algernon both change their names in order to undertake their double life. Jack changes his name to Ernest and Algernon to Bunbury. Ernest is Jack’s brother who lives in London, the less attractive side. Bunbury is an invalid friend of Algernon. Algernon later adopts the name Ernest, after meeting Jack, so he can meet and propose to a girl.
Wilde expresses the upper class’ desire to escape the social conventions. In the case of the Importance of Being Earnest’s characters, the same desire leads to a refusal to conform by their creation of another parallel life. Both Jack and Algernon use a n imaginary identity to escape their responsibilities. Jack has “always pretended to have a younger brother of the name Earnest, who lives in the Albany, and gets into the most dreadful scrapes” (Wilde 18). Jack uses his double identity to escape from his “position of guardian, [where] one has to adopt a very high moral tone of all subjects” (Wilde 18). By inventing himself another identity, Jack attempts at escaping his reality and responsibilities that come with his status, which reveals the hypocrisy of the upper class during the Victorian era. The privileged were only willing to act according to their standards when they felt like it. The same attitude of the higher class is represented in Algernon’s actions, who invented himself a sick friend, Bunbury, in order “to go down into the country whenever [he] choose[s]” (Wilde 19). Algernon, just like Jack, uses his double-life, to get away from his responsibilities. During the Victorian era, the upper class expected high social standards from its own people, but found ways to escape the same responsibilities associated with heir social
He reveals in the first act that his "name is Ernest in town and Jack in the country..." (Wilde 11). Thus, his associates in town, such as Algernon Moncrieff and girlfriend Gwendolen Fairfax know him as Mr. Ernest Worthing, while his ward Cecily and servants in his country home know him as Jack Worthing. To cover up his “Ernest” persona while in the country, he tells Cecily and his servants that Ernest Worthing is his troubled younger brother. While this use of two names does cause prove to be challenging, Jack’s underlying struggle is that he does not know his family background.
own stuffy Victorian world as Jack. While explaining his presence in town to Algy, Ernest states, “Oh,
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.
Jack is attempting to prove to Algernon that he is not a liar, ¨I'm not a bunburyist at all...¨ 124. Denying the fact that he has a made up brother that he used to get out of certain events, Jack is the definition of a bunburyist. He is taking advantage of his friend’s blindness to the situation to get unnecessary time away from them. Explaining to Lady Bracknell that he cannot attend her dinner party because. ¨… my poor friend Bunbury is very ill again. They seem to think I should be with him.¨ 127. The amount of times Algernon uses his ill, imposure brother bunburying, goes to show how selfish he is. Putting his own personal needs before making an effort to meet with his family. They only see their family when it is beneficial and convenient for