Intrinsic to the construction of an identity is the external presentation or performance of selfhood. Therefore, performance and selfhood are implicitly connected. However, the extent to which external performance is employed and its impact on the internal sense of selfhood has been presented both positively and negatively. Oscar Wilde represents identity as performative in his play ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ (1895), and suggests society should embrace the artifice of performative identity. In contrast, Mark Ravenhill, whose play ‘Handbag’ (1998) is a response to Wilde’s, also regards crucial aspects of identity as performative but criticises society for using it as a vehicle for consumerism. ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ is a comedy …show more content…
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
Everyone has a poker face. Everyone has a bunbury. Everyone keeps secrets, and everyone lies. The question is, how does one tell if another is truthful about their intentions? There are many different cases in which one will lie about who they really are, but there is no telling when it is okay and if they can be forgiven. In many different stories that were read in Late British Literature this semester, we have characters that keep secrets from friends and loved ones. The simple truth is, people’s words are often different from the truth.
The plot of the importance of being Earnest starts off with Jack and Algernon as wealthy bachelors, with Jack at the beginning of the play is known to Algernon as Ernest lives a very good life in the country providing
Oscar Wildes ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’’ is believed by many to be his most genius work and certainly has withstood the test of time. The play is set in London during the 1890’s in which time frame aristocracy and upper class held the majority of the countries wealth. Many of the comical aspects question the morals of the upper class in which he satirises throughout the play. One method of this, for instance is through one of the main protagonist, Algernon Moncrieff. Algernon is an upper class individual who is oblivious to the world around him in such an exaggerated manner that it makes his character comically adjusted for Wildes own views.
Oscar Wilde’s, “The Importance of Being Earnest”, play carefully uses satire as a didactic tool to mask the underlying social commentary with the help of comedy through characters theme and dialogue. Wilde uses satire to ridicule class and wealth, marriage and the ignorance of the Victorian Age. Audiences are continually amused by Wilde’s use of linguistic and comic devices such as double entendre, puns, paradox and epigrams, especially in the case of social commentary and didactic lessons. Characters portrayed in the play such as Jack, Cecily, Algernon and Lady Bracknell, allow Wilde to express his opinions on the social problems during the Victorian Age.
The Importance of Being Earnest is regarded as one of the most successful plays written by Oscar Wilde, a great 19th century playwright. Oscar Wilde deals with something unique about his contemporary age in this drama. It addresses Victorian social issues, French theatre, farce, social drama and melodrama. All these factors influenced the structure of the play in a large scale. This play is basically a Victorian satirical drama showcasing the social, political, economic and religious structural changes that affected 18th century England. It was the time when British Empire had captured most part of the world including Oscar Wilde’s homeland, Ireland. The aristocrats of England had become dominant over the middle and poor class people and Wilde wrote plays with the motivation to encourage people to think against the English aristocracy and artificiality.
“Ignorance is like a delicate fruit; touch it, and the bloom is gone,” engraves Oscar Wilde as he sets the literary table with a bountiful demonstration of Victorian satire. “The Importance of Being Earnest” is evidently a comic critic of late Victorian value (Schmidt 5). Brought into this world from Dublin, Ireland, to well-heeled parents in 1854. Wilde received an opportunity for social improvement when graduating from Oxford University, after receiving a financial scholarship that gave him a first hand account of the upper crust society lifestyle which allowed him to acquire material to poke fun at (Moss 179). Wilde shows his characters as if they knew that people where watching them. By doing that he caused the audience to feel that the actors had authentic regret about their characters actions (Foster 19).
Identity and social class can be closely tied together. Identity is the part of a person that makes up who he/she is. Social class has been known ever since the late eighteenth century. In the play, The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, Miss Prism’s identity of knowledge and education leads her into the middle class; while in the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, the monster’s identity leads him into no social class at all, in which he becomes excluded from society. Also, in the play, Fences by August Wilson, Troy’s identity of being an African American male leads in a conflicting struggle with society and with his relationships in his family. Much of literature and artwork can depict this idea of identity and how society places
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.
Satire in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. "The Importance of Being Earnest" is a play by Oscar Wilde, set in the late 1800's. His actors are playing upper class citizens who are very self-absorbed. The play is set amongst upper class, wealthy people. They appear not to work and are concerned with their own pleasure.
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.
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 unveiled.
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.
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.
In the play, Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde ridicules and identifies the negative aspects of Victorian society through comedic dialogue. He uses characters with ridiculous personalities to demonstrate his idea of Victorian life. By making absurd scenes with foolish characters, it is his way of mocking the Victorian lifestyle passive aggressively.
The Importance of Being Earnest is a play written by Oscar Wilde during the Victorian era. It is a farcical comedy in which the main characters live and maintain a fictional persona to escape their responsibilities. To which Oscar Wilde uses secondary characters within the play such as Lady Bracknell to humorously make her the tool of the conflict and much of the satire. She is the first and foremost a symbol of Victorian earnests and the unhappiness it brings as a result. Lady Bracknell was specially designed to represent Wilde’s opinion of the upper Victorian class repressiveness and traditional negativity. Hence minor characters such as Lady Bracknell play essential roles as they help both the plot and support the themes with assistance