In ‘The Important of Being Earnest’, Oscar Wilde's ridiculing representation of Victorian Society comments on the ridiculous behavior of the Victorian Society’s inability to recognise the difference between important and unimportant issues. Therefore, Oscar Wilde subverts Victorian values to mock and imply triviality and superficiality. Wilde forces the audience to rethink the importance of their life and how they act while also scrutinizing the ignorance of the characters in upper class society through mocking their morals and obsessive fascinations. Wilde's uses the inversion of what isn’t serious and what is to ridicule Victorian Society. Despite this, Wilde wanted to create something beautiful and superficial. Hence, it would be more accurate to say everything in the play is presented as superficial so perhaps there isn’t a message that needs to be taken seriously. It could be argued that everything in the play is presented as superficial and doesn’t need to be taken seriously as Wilde was interested in art for art’s sake and uses Algernon as his mouth piece, so he is the character we are supposed to pay attention to. However, he has no moral convictions at all. He recognises no duty other then the responsibility to live beautifully. Algernon regards Lane’s views on marriage as ‘somewhat lax’ after Lane remarks casually that he believes it to be ‘a very pleasant state’. Algernon is stating Lane’s views on marriage to be careless. Yet Until Algernon meets and falls in love with Cecily, he has very cynical views on marriage. Surely, the fact he can change his opinion on marriage so suddenly and drastically make it difficult to take him or the play seriously. According to Andrew Scott ‘comic identity, is conceived as a means of r... ... middle of paper ... ...ctually acquires any of the qualities of earnestness. Furthermore, the fact Cecily is so serious about her diary and her relationship with Ernest makes it almost superficial. Overall this indicates that the name Ernest isn’t a very serious matter however, at times taken out of proportion as ultimately it is a very superficial matter taken very serious. To conclude I don’t think the play “The Importance of Being Ernest” should be taken seriously as Wild was interested in art for artsake and beauty. Wilde satirises Victorian Society by inverting serious matters and vise versa. This allows Wilde to comment on to nature of Victorians values and traditional morals by making the audience see them as superficial. The subtitle of the play is "a trivial comedy for serious people." Overall sums up that the play should not be taken seriously and instead enjoyed for its humour.
The idea of absurdity in Victorian times was embraced by some writers and looked down upon by others. Oscar Wilde embraced the absurd whole-heartedly. This is obvious, if not even the theme, of The Importance of Being Earnest. Not only is the word "absurd" used many times in the story, but the ridiculousness of the characters and their roles conveys the ideas of absurdity in the Victorian Era.
“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).
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.
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
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 centers on a young man named Jack, who incidentally has created an alter ego, Ernest, in order to frequent the aristocratic high life of London. Jack has become smitten with an upper class socialite called Gwendolen. While Gwendolen is just as taken with Jack, whom she knows as Ernest, it is much for his name sake. She explains, “My ideal has always been to love some one of the name of Ernest. There is something in that name that inspires absolute confidence” (Earnest Act 1). Gwendolen’s cousin Algernon introduced the starry eyed couple not knowing that Ernest’s character was not a reflection of his given name.
One of the Oscar Wilde’s most loved, well known and successful play ‘The Importance Of Being Earnest’ was written during the summer of 1894 at Worthing, England. It was first performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James’s theatre, London. Jack Worthing, the play’s main character was found and adopted by a wealthy man, Thomas Cardew in a handbag at a railway line where he was accidentally abandoned as a baby. All the respect that has been given to him as acknowledged upper-class Victorian is only because of his adopted father’s wealth. As the protagonist of the play he is expected to be an earnest man to do justice to the title of the play, but it turned out to be that he is nowhere close to that. Wilde has used Jack’s character more to an instrument to represent a set of ideas or attitudes.
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.
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.
The Importance of Being Earnest is a comedy of manners, whereby Oscar Wilde uses satire to ridicule marriage, love and the mentality of the Victorian aristocratic society. It can also be referred to as a satiric comedy. What is a satire and what is Oscar Wilde trying to emphasize by employing it in his play? A satiric comedy ridicules political policies or attacks deviations from social order by making ridiculous, the violators of its standards of morals or manners. Usually, a satiric piece doesn't serve only as a form of criticism, but to correct flaws in the characters or to somehow make them better in the end.
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
‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ is often represented as being a comedy of manners- Wilde defines the text as ‘a trivial comedy for serious people’, which instantly raises questions on the purpose of the play itself. Dr Tracy Sanders states that “the comedy of manners is a style of comedy that reflects the life, ideals and manners of upper class society”, which undoubtedly links to the play. On the surface ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ could be classed as a sophisticated comedy of manners which disregards any sincerity, it is characterised by sarcasm, stock characters and the typical comedic resolution which is marriage. Yet in opposition to this, hidden amongst the humour are underlying principles of the play which arguably portray fundamental elements of darker humour, concerning gender, society, and marriage, which have invoked the questions of the true intention of the play. Many critics have claimed that the play is Wilde’s criticisms of society in the Victorian era and is mainly a sharp attack to convey serious social messages.
Oscar Wilde satires the hypocrisy and stupidity of the strict Victorian aristocracy through the characters in The Importance of Being Earnest. It can be argued that the women of the play usurp the masculine power and this itself is what makes up the comedy as it would have been humorous to a patriarchal audience. Lady Bracknell is the archetypal of the absolute height of a society woman while both Gwendolyn and Cecily’s characters show potential of rivaling this type of power in the future. Arguably, Lady Bracknell is the character who exerts the most power and authority throughout the play. In this sense, the character’s social position within the upper class enables her to usurp the masculine power of the play. The playwright achieves this through the use of comedic techniques such as farce, witty word play and the theme of marriage.
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.