Oscar Wilde Satire

The kind of light entertainment that doesn’t come so much from the situations or characters themselves but from exaggeration, farce is a type of comedy that continues to exist in today’s concept of humor ever since the Restoration period in England. Several contemporary critics have dismissed such type as having no underlying significance or theme. While that may be frequently true for some, other critics have interpreted some of the most popular farcical comedies as to conveying certain social messages. One of the comedies that appealed to such critics was Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Most of the situations in Wilde’s prominent play are exaggerated to the point of absurdity yet they hold an underlying message that mocks Victorian

One example where Wilde shows how English values are backtracked is the scene of Lady Bracknell and her meeting with Jack. Here Lady Bracknell cross-examines Jack extensively on his background. However, Lady Bracknell narrows her questions down to the materialistic side of Jack’s history. She even remains displeased with the location of Jack’s house, calling it the “unfashionable side” (Wilde 27). Furthermore when Jack informs Lady Bracknell that he was found in a handbag on the Brighton line, she reacts by commenting the line as “immaterial” and the lack of wealth on Jack’s part greatly disappoints her (Wilde 29). She goes on to advise him to try and “acquire some relations as soon as possible” (Wilde 30). The oddity of her response is what Wilde uses as a farce to highlight how Lady Bracknell, a supposed upholder of values of society, treats immaterial matters more importantly than family matters. Here, Wilde ridicules British society’s concern for exterior values at the expense of deeper

As mentioned before, Lady Bracknell is a woman who strictly adheres to the rules of upper-class; she demands societal ideals that rely on style, not substance. However, she goes against her words when she tries to justify the engagement between the wealthy Cecily and the broke Algernon, while bluntly refusing to let Jack ask her for Gwendoline’s hand in marriage despite Jack’s financial stability. Lady Bracknell uses social morals to her advantage and this creates much unhappiness in Jack as he reacts by Cecily “cannot marry without [his] consent until she comes of age” (Wilde 97). Another case of her hypocritical nature is when she reveals the true story behind her marriage to Lord Bracknell. She mentions that she “had not fortune of any kind” before marrying Lord Bracknell and that she “never dreamed for a moment of allowing that to stand in [her] way” (Wilde 96). This implies that Lady Bracknell was a fellow social climber herself. However, when she is confronted with Jack, she flatly refuses to approve the marriage mainly because he was found in a handbag. By demonstrating these reversals between word and behavior, Wilde satirizes the vanity of Victorian social morals and