Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest

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Recommended: The double life in the importance of being earnest

In Oscar Wilde’s satire, The Importance of Being Earnest, he engages the audience with a profound amount of conflicting dialogue starting with the title. The importance of being Ernest is quite a different meaning than the importance of being earnest. Wilde demonstrates a considerable amount of wit to unfold the importance of being both Ernest and earnest.

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.

As the story proceeds it is revealed to Algernon that Ernest is in truth Jack and the ward of a young lady by the name Cecily, whom Algernon develops a curiosity about. Jack tells Algernon how he created his troubled younger brother’s persona , Ernest, so that he can escape from the country in order to be in the city, Algernon describes his own deceitful creation of an invalid that he refers to as Bunbury, which he uses as a noble pardon to dismiss himself from the city to the country.

Algernon, excuses himself on an important visit to an urgently ill, and quite fictional, Bunbury, to visit with Cecily. When introduced he explains that he is Jack’s misguided brother Ernest. Cecily, all too excited about meeting Ernest, is immediately fawning over Algern...

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...ational Bibliography. Web. 26 April 2014.

Lalonde, Jeremy. "A "Revolutionary Outrage": "The Importance Of Being Earnest" As Social Criticism." Modern Drama 48.4 (2005): 659-676. Academic Search Complete. Web. 28 April 2014.

Raby, Peter. "The Origins Of The Importance Of Being Earnest." Modern Drama 37.1 (1994): 139-147. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 27 April 2014.

Felicia J. Ruf. "The Importance of Being Earnest (review)." Theatre Journal 63.3 (2011): 462-464. Project MUSE. Web. 26 April. 2014. .

Sale, Roger. "Being Earnest." The Hudson Review 56.3 (2003): 475-84. JSTOR. Web. 26 Apr. 2014.

Walkley, A. B., Karl Beckson, and B. C. Southam. "PART 15: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST: Chapter 74: A. B. Walkley, On The Importance Of Being Earnest." Oscar Wilde (Routledge) (1997): 223-225. Literary Reference Center. Web. 1 May 2014.

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