Oscar Wilde's The Importance Of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde is a legendary author who has composed many great plays including The Green Carnation and A Woman of No Importance, however, The Importance of Being Earnest was undoubtedly the most famous of his works. First published in 1930, yet acknowledged since the late 1800s, The Importance of Being Earnest helped to revive the theater tradition of Congreve and Sheridan. The story is a comedic view of romance and the emphasis we place on seemingly trivial articles, such as a name. In this story, contrary to the typical saying, a rose by any other name would not smell as sweet.
Our first scene begins with a confrontation, and the whole story is a man versus confusing women (better known as society) conflict from there on out. Jack Worthing drops by the home of Algernon Moncreiff on a friendly call after being in the country all weekend. Algy is expecting company, his Aunt Augusta Bracknell and cousin Gwendolyn Fairfax. After announcing this to Jack, Jack states his intentions of proposal to Gwendolyn. The confrontation comes about when Algy produces a cigarette case belonging to his comrade, and is inscribed ‘From little Cecily, with her fondest love to her dear Uncle Jack.’ This invokes confusion because Algy has always known Jack to be a Mr. Ernest Worthing. At this, Jack explains that he is leading a double life as Jack Worthing in the country and Ernest Worthing in the city. In the country, Ernest Worthing is his fictional younger brother who is always getting into trouble, thus requiring him to make frequent trips to the city. This way, Ernest Worthing is also seen in town to further promote his existence and an excuse for departure.
Jack proposes to Gwendolyn, who also knows him as Ernest, yet Lady Bracknell vocalizes a slight disconsent. For one thing, “Ernest” is an orphan who was found in a handbag at the cloakroom of a train station, while Gwendolyn’s parents have strong family values. However, Jack and Gwendolyn decide to go on with the wedding. Jack must depart for the country, so he politely excuses his egression. Once in the country, Jack is surprised by the arrival of Algernon, acting as Ernest Worthing. Sensing trouble, Jack does his best to induce the exit of his “younger brother” but it is to no avail. Cecily, always wanting to marry a man by the name of Ernest, falls in love with...
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...en was going to be christened and change his name out of love. He would actually wait seventeen years for Cecily, and that was clearly driven by love. This book made me realize that some people really don’t know what’s good for them. Gwendolyn wasn’t going to marry Jack, even though she loved him and he would be great for her. I’ve never really noticed that much in our society today, but now that I look back at things, people do idiotic things on a daily basis. Take Las Vegas, for instance. People will go to Las Vegas and gamble away their life’s savings, when they didn’t have a reason to gamble to begin with.
I wouldn’t read another book by Oscar Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest was far too boring for me to voluntarily put myself through that kind of agony again. It was comical at some parts; it had an all-around great plot. It just lacked that little extra something to make you intrigued with the author. Perhaps it was the lack of creativity when it came to writing style, or that it was written in play format. Whatever the reason, the thought of another Wilde piece induces nausea. But, hey, if you like drab sentences piled on top of one another, this book is for you!
Algernon falls in love with Cecily, Jack’s niece and Jack is in love with Gwendolen, Algernon’s cousin. Algernon and Jack on the surface seem to be very similar, they have some of the same ideologies, love for their romantic partners and same reaction wh...
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.
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.
Similarly, in “The Importance of Being Earnest”, Jack and Algernon both begin their marital lives based on deception and lies. As a matter of fact, Gwendolen and Algernon both know Jack as Ernest. When Jack proposes to Gwendolen, she becomes overly attached to the idea of marrying someone called Ernest. Gwendolen exclaims: “My ideal has always been to love someone of the name Ernest/There is something in that name that inspires absolute confidence/It is a divine name/It has a music of its own/It produces vibrations” (Wilde 106), and Cecily is of the same opinion “it had always been a girlish dream of mine to love someone whose name was Ernest/I pity any poor married woman whose husband is not called Ernest” (Wilde 116). Jack and Algernon never admits to Gwendolen and Cecily that they are living a double life, their relationships are based on lies. They are more occupied with the name Ernest than the fact of actually being earnest. In spite of leading a deceptive and double life, both men
“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).
Wilde “awoke laughter” in The Importance of Being Earnest. Wilde showed rather than falling in love because you actually liked a person, the people of the Victorian Era fell in love solely on minute details such as physical features, a person’s name, or how much wealth they had. The comedy comes into play when Wilde pokes fun at the process of falling in love, because the characters rush falling in love with the right person, the audience compares the character’s reality with the world’s reality.
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.
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.
Jack, thinking he might have been that very baby, retrieves the bag he was found in as an infant in which Ms. Prism identifies by some distinguishing marks to have been her own. Jack realized the woman that had been teaching his niece was his mother. But then Lady Bracknell explained that she was not, but Lady Bracknell’s poor sister Mrs. Moncrieff was. The irony continues to explain how Jack and Algernon were biological brothers. They were pretending to be earlier to play out their game of Bunburyism.
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.
Two of the main characters, Jack and Algernon, strive to be "Ernest" and "Earnest" in the play, yet they both deceive others to escape lives which they grow tired of. They both hope to marry the girls that they love, yet they are starting the relationship based on false pretence and lies. It is ironic that they both call themselves "Ernest," a name that suggests honesty and sincerity, yet they both create stories to escape something or the other. Jack creates a brother called "Ernest" in the city that he uses as a scape goat' to leave his prim and proper, respectable country life, whereas Algernon creates a friend by the name of "Bunbury" to escape his aunt's high class society parties. He shows his lack of interest in such social events when he tells Jack.
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.