Gender as a Farce

The two texts that most exemplify the rapidly changing structure and function of the gender in the Victorian age are Barchester Towers, and The Importance of Being Earnest. These texts yield an interesting digression as Barchester Towers takes its subject material so seriously, while Wilde crafts an almost fully satirical play.

In Barchester Towers, the main dramatic dichotomy is that between the Low Church and High church, being represented by Slope and the Proudies, and by Grantley, Harding, and Arabin, respectively. One of the main rivalries, however, is between two members of the Low Church: Mrs. Proudie and Mr. Slope. They are ostensibly dueling for the job of bishop, because although Mr. Proudie has the position, he is as Dr. Grantley says, “absolutely a coward” (Part I, 167). Mrs. Proudie’s influence is seen before this however, at nearly the beginning of the novel, “A new sofa had been introduced, a horrid chintz affair…but on the sofa they also found Mrs. Proudie, an innovation for which a precedent might in vain be sought in all the annals of the Barchester bishopric!” (Part I, 34). Here Dr. Grantley and is going to visit Mr. Proudie in his “office” for the first time, and are astounded to see that everything has been redecorated, which is seen by them as a punishable (or at least to be looked down upon) offense in itself, but when they actually see Mrs. Proudie sitting in her husband’s room, they cannot even believe their eyes. This scene is extremely important because it shows how much power Mrs. Proudie truly has over her husband, that not only does she shape the way that his entire life looks, but that she will also be there, lurking in the shadows, waiting to give her private counsel after other have made thei...

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...in general. The main critique that I can muster about Barchester Towers is that none of its characters have this same openness, this willingness to tell the truth to each other, even if it is a truth veiled in lies. Each work, Barchester Towers and The Importance of Being Earnest deal with gender relations in very similar ways, but because of the reticence of the main characters in Trollope, the narrative takes somewhere near 500 pages to eventually come to their ends, while Wilde crafts and equal, if not more telling critique of gender norms with a much shorter, much more approachable work. In truth, each of these works is very much a product of its environment, which considerably dates Towers while keeping Earnest afloat, but each of them retain their importance when trying to figure out the gender dynamic as it relates to the Victorian age, during and after.