One of the most Influential playwrights of the 19th Century was writer and poet Oscar Wilde. From a very young age Oscar excelled above his classmates because he grew up in an intellectual environment. Some of his greatest influences were his parents, Swinburne, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. One of his most well known works was The Importance of Being Earnest, which he wrote in August of 1894. Today he is remembered for his daring social commentary.
Oscar was born on October 16th 1854 under the birthname Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde in Dublin, Ireland. Oscar’s parents were an important influence on him. His mother, Jane Wilde, was a nationalist Irish poet who went by the pen name Speranza. Both his mother and his father, Sir William Wilde, were educated people. His father was an ear and eye doctor, who had many intellectual interests. Oscar was the youngest of three children; he and his older brother were encouraged to listen party dialogue in the salon of their home. The Wilde children were exposed to different languages through their French bonne and German governess. At age nine, Oscar’s parents sent him to Portora Royal Boarding School. He then attended Trinity College in Dublin with a royal scholarship.
While at Trinity, he studied Greek literature, which would greatly influence his writing later on. His tutor, J.P. Mahaffy, with whom he worked on the book Social Life in Greece, introduced Wilde to the ancient Greek writings of Euripides, Plato and Aristotle. Not only did Wilde enjoy studying these great philosophical and literary masters, he excelled at it, and was awarded the Berkeley Gold Medal, the University's highest award in Greek. Wilde was also introduced to what would become a topic of many lectures, p...
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... Channel website. Apr 04 2014, 11:09http://www.biography.com/people/oscar-wilde-9531078.
6. C. D. Merriman for Jalic Inc. Copyright Jalic Inc. 2008. http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/
Periodicals
7. Lalonde, Jeremy. "A 'Revolutionary Outrage': The Importance Of Being Earnest As Social Criticism." Modern Drama 4 (2005): 659. Project MUSE. Web. 21 May 2014.
8. Shaw, George Bernard, Karl Beckson, and B. C. Southam. "PART 15: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST: Chapter 73: George Bernard Shaw On The Importance Of Being Earnest." Oscar Wilde (Routledge) (1997): 221-222. Literary Reference Center. Web. 21 May 2014.
9. Wells, H. G., Karl Beckson, and B. C. Southam. "PART 15: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST: Chapter 69: H. G. Wells On The Importance Of Being Earnest." Oscar Wilde (Routledge) (1997): 213. Literary Reference Center. Web. 21 May 2014.
AThe Importance of Being Earnest a play written by Oscar Wilde is set in England in the late Victorian era. Wilde uses obvious situational and dramatic irony within the play to satirize his time period. According to Roger Sale in Being Ernest the title has a double meaning to it and is certainly another example of satire used by Wilde. With a comedic approach, Wilde ridicules the absurdities of the character’s courtship rituals, their false faces, and their secrets. (Sale, 478)
Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” epitomizes the idiosyncrasy of the Victorian society through satire and wit. Throughout the play Wilde criticizes the common perception of the mid seventeenth through early eighteenth century culture, “Prudish, hypocritical, stuffy and narrow minded”. With his quintessential characters and intricate situations Wilde configures the perfect depiction of the carless irrationality of social life, the frivolity of the wealthy, the importance of money, and the lack of reverence for marriage often manifested by those in this era. Wilde also jabs at the Victorian convention to uphold the appearance of decency in order to hide the cruel, indignant and manipulative attitudes of the time. Through setting, characters, comedy, and a great deal of drama Oscar Wilde portrays his views on the elitist of his time.
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.
The wit of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest stems from his place in society and his views of it. He mocks the Victorian aristocracy through his statements and satirising of marriage dependent on social class and wealth, the careful implantation of comedic techniques which add to the effect of the message Wilde aims for the society to take into consideration and the ignorance portrayed by the Victorian society. These socially acceptable mockeries allow the audience to laugh at the satirical social statements while learning a didactic lesson about the current society issues. Through Wilde’s satirical wit, he completes the educational tales he was aiming for, emphasising to readers the insaneness that society can be and its rules.
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.
Foster, Richard. “Wilde as Parodist: A Second Look at The Importance of Being Earnest” In College English, Vol. 18, no. 1, October, 1956: pp. 18-23.
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.
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.
This served as a push of determination for him. He did not mind being different, for it allowed him to stand out from the many other people battling for fame. However, his works had more personality than those of many other people then. This is made evident by the plethora of conversation in his writings. Wilde liked to add a sprinkle of reminiscence to his works as well (Henderson
The story of The Picture of Dorian Gray seems to predict Wilde’s own life in some fashion. The following year, 1892, his first play Lady Windermere’s Fan came into the metaphorical spotlight, and was received with critical acclaim and popularity. This gave Wilde the drive to continue writing plays, and
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
Oscar Wilde was born in October 16, 1854, in the mid era of the Victorian period—which was when Queen Victoria ruled. Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 to 1901.While she ruined Britain, the nation rise than never before, and no one thought that she was capable of doing that. “The Victorian era was both good and bad due to the rise and fall of the empires and many pointless wars were fought. During that time, culture and technology improved greatly” (Anne Shepherd, “Overview of the Victorian Era”). During this time period of English, England was facing countless major changes, in the way people lived and thought during this era. Today, Victorian society is mostly known as practicing strict religious or moral behavior, authoritarian, preoccupied with the way they look and being respectable. They were extremely harsh in discipline and order at all times. Determination became a usual Victorian quality, and was part of Victorian lifestyle such as religion, literature and human behavior. However, Victorian has its perks, for example they were biased, contradictory, pretense, they cared a lot of about what economic or social rank a person is, and people were not allowed to express their sexuality. Oscar Wilde was seen as an icon of the Victorian age. In his plays and writings, he uses wit, intelligence and humor. Because of his sexuality he suffered substantially the humiliation and embarrassment of imprisonment. He was married and had an affair with a man, which back then was an act of vulgarity and grossness. But, that was not what Oscar Wilde was only known for; he is remembered for criticizing the social life of the Victorian era, his wit and his amazing skills of writing. Oscar Wilde poem “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” typifies the Vi...
Wilde, Oscar. "The Importance of Being Earnest." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt.
Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ is a beautifully constructed depiction of nineteenth century Victorian life. The quirky and often irreverent situations presented were often witty and amusing but in many instances revealed a biting critique of traditional expectations and behaviour. Wilde arguably would have used the play to showcase his literary prowess and it is to what extent that Wilde used the play as a platform or used the play to expose hypocritical values that would be questioned by both contemporary and modern audiences.