Examples Of Advocacy For Change In Victorian Culture

Wilde’s Advocacy for Change in Victorian Culture
People have the tendency to judge situations and matters according to how society judges the same situation. Oscar Wilde, the playwright of The Importance of Being Earnest, takes these preconceptions in and inverts the practices that we perceive to be true in order to advocate social and political change. By emphasizing these discrepancies in marriage and the social aristocracy, Wilde satirizes Victorian traditions and ultimately advocates change. The Characters in The Importance of Being Earnest melodramatize unlikely matters concerning society and class, which illustrate Wilde’s advocacy for change in these areas of Victorian culture. When Algernon, for example, becomes upset with his servant
Lane, Algernon questions the use of servants “... if the lower orders don’t set us [the wealthy] a good example” (28). Algernon’s thinking goes against the established thinking that high class people should be role models for the lower class. This inversion satirizes the insincerity that is involved in an aristocracy between the elite and the poor. Wilde is accusing the particularly wealthy people for their patronizing towards the less wealthy. When Jack insults Algernon’s aunt, Lady Bracknell, Algernon replies by saying, “ I[he] love hearing my[his] relations abused” (49). Algernon’s attitude to his family is unlike traditional family relations in that his bitterness towards Lady Bracknell refers to his selfish yearning to inherit his family’s wealth, assuming his family members die sooner than he does. Wilde satirizes the custom of aristocracy by reflecting his hate for it in Algernon’s bitterness towards his his family. Since Algernon is eager to inherit his family’s wealth, he could care less about their fates. The way Oscar Wilde illustrates his characters, particularly Algernon, demonstrates his support for change in Victorian society and class division. The lack of seriousness Wilde associates in his characters with marriage in Victorian society reflects his criticism in European styled marriages.
Algernon tells Jack that if Jack and Gwendolen were ever to get married, Jack will “... be very glad to know Bunbury” (36). Algernon is alluding to the purpose of using Bunbury, which is to escape tiresome occasions. Normally, friends would congratulate each other with marriages, but Algernon is pessimistic and assumes there will be a time during the marriage when the spouse will be unfaithful to his or her spouse. Therefore, Wilde criticises European marriages for lacking the faith and integrity that true marriages should have. When Cecily mentions to Algernon that they have already been engaged, she states the engagement was broken off, and, “It would have hardly been a serious engagement if it hadn’t been broken off at least once” (75). In order for her engagement to be serious, Cecily wants her marriage to be broken off, though most people would want their engagements to proceed without interruption. Cecily holds the role of a young and naive stock character in the poem, and so she is lead to believe that her marriage with Algernon will have no troubles, because of her idealistic approach to such situations. It is this naivety that Wilde accuses people, especially in young people, of. He belittles Victorian marriages by portraying such an important issue as though it were something that can be dallied by an inexperienced
little girl. Wilde’s portrayal of the overly amateurish characters in his poem makes clear that he wants change in European marriage. Wilde emphasizes the need for a change in culture through inversions of what people perceive to be true. He does this in the concept of status and class, in which he uses Algernon to display the opposite of what people assume to be true in order to criticize Victorian aristocracy. He also does this with the matter of marriage by questioning the faithfulness of Victorian marriages and the seriousness of each spouse in marriage. Wilde’s experiences and knowledge, therefore, has led him to express his hope for changes in European society by writing his poem as a satire.