Oscar Wilde is known as a comedic playwright to much of the world, although his plays address issues with contemporary society in a nonchalant way by turning these issues into a joke. In The Importance Of Being Earnest Wilde uses irony and mockery to ridicule the narcissistic attitude of the victorian aristocracy as well as to expose their hypocrisy, ridiculous social norms, and their sheer stupidity that results in a myriad of silly and funny situations.…
While reading Oscar Wilde’s story “The Importance of Being Earnest” I can see that the play is about a debate of pleasant and unpleasant marriage. Wilde explores sincerity in his play by really gearing the play around the word “earnest”. In the play both women wanted to marry a person named “earnest” because they thought that it actually meant to be sincere, responsible, and earnest. The play presents many scenes of sincerity versus hypocrisy. For example, when Lady Bracknell asks Jack about Cecily with the intention to judge her as a wife for Algernon, while Lady Bracknell notices Cecily after she found out about her money. But, also the men characters play having a double life or secret life. Both men Jack and Algernon make up a fake…
Through the play, “we are made to share Wilde’s view of the ludicrous and sinister realities behind the fashionable façade of an over-civilized society where nothing serious is considered serious and nothing trivial trivial” (Reinert 17). In the interactions between people who subscribe to Victorianism, such as Gwendolen and Cecily, the trivial matter of addressing each other while having a conversation is turned into a manner of enormous social importance. In contrast, in the interactions between people who subscribe to Bunburyism, or the total rejection of Victorianism, matters as serious as pretending to have a dead brother Ernest or sick friend Bunbury are treated lightly. Gwendolen and Cecily’s Victorianism leads them to become enraged at each other without reason, while Jack and Algernon’s Bunburyism very nearly leads to their mutual loss of the women whom they love. In this way, Wilde shows that moral ideals should lie in the middle between Bunburyism and Victorianism because of the consequences of taking both ideas of extremes (Reinert 18). Jack sums up the moral best in the last line of the play when he proclaims that he has “now realized the vital Importance of Being Earnest” (Earnest 313). Through this play, Wilde states that the key to success is to simply behave without thought for social…
Cited: Wilde, Oscar. N.p.: n.p., n.d. The Importance of Being Earnest. Project Gutenberg, 29 Aug. 2006. Web. 1 Dec. 2013. .…
The Importance of Being Earnest is a play that trivializes many things: the Victorian society, the nature of marriage and especially the concept of human identity. While identity is typically considered to be something concrete, the characters within the play are constantly in flux. This is especially evident in Jack, whose forms his identities as he goes through life. He transforms from a nameless baby in a handbag, to Jack the thriving member of the countryside bourgeois, then further on to become Ernest, a member of the aristocracy. Jack creates a fiction that is eventually proven to be his actual identity. The army lists show that his father’s name was Ernest John, which prove that Jack was both an Ernest and a Jack, as he was named after his father. Through the army lists, Wilde shows the triviality of one’s nominal identity in Victorian society, and the importance of the art of creating an identity.…
The play “The Importance of Being Earnest,” is one of the most perfect examples of satire in our culture. Although it is set in England, it makes fun of the upper class. The play uses dramatic irony to show how Oscar Wilde sees the upper class as too formal and snobbish. It is dramatic irony because the characters in the play obviously think that they are high class with their multiple houses and butlers even though the author thinks that the upper class is too snobbish.…
Wilde's famous epigrams remain intact and are reasonably well spoken. But the extra visual accouterments have a profoundly distracting effect. They interrupt the rhythm and retard the momentum of brilliantly silly banter that could be described as incisive nonsense. When Lady Bracknell (Judi Dench), the play's ur-snob, declares, ''Ignorance is like a delicious exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone,'' she conjures a privileged, cucumber-sandwich world where a devotion to the superficial is a code of behavior and proof of social…
Often times, authors and playwrights write characters and plots based on life experiences. These ordeals can very much alter one’s life and the perception of it. Author and playwright Oscar Wilde is no exception to this; with the many experiences that his own life holds, such as his double identity and homosexuality in the Victorian Era, Wilde is able to write his autobiography as a novel or play using characters similar to ones in his own life, as he has. In The Importance of Being Earnest, Algernon Moncrieff defies the Victorian upper class society by using his alter egos, Bunbury and Ernest, to appropriate his bad behavior and ultimately obtain what his desires. Algernon is a reflection of the play’s author Oscar Wilde as he learns about the importance of truth while working through his society-shaped id, ego, and superego. Faced with making decisions that align with Sigmund Freud’s psyche model, Wilde successfully breathes himself into Algernon while satirizing the society in which he grew up.…
Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest tells the story of two gentlemen who lead a double life under the name “Earnest” in order to win the hearts of their love interests.The play premiered in London’s St. James’ Theater in 1895 and is now performed in theaters throughout the world because of its timeless humor and whit. In his play The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde employs the use of satire to convey his criticism towards Victorian society’s views on marriage, deceit and duality, and gender roles.…
At the outset, the title of the play refers to the importance of being sincere, here Wilde's use of irony embodies the theme of satire. This theme runs throughout the entire play due to…
The Importance of Being Earnest is considered by many to be a comedy of manners, focusing on the love lives of aristocratic young people, and relying on the use of verbal wit, stock characters and humour over developing a deep plot and sense of character. In this scene, Gwendolen and Cecily have just gotten into a fight over their alleged fiancés mistaken identity. Through his use of hyperbolic language, dramatic stage directions, character role and theme, Wilde creates a comic scene.…
Oscar Wilde's satire, The Importance of Being Earnest, targets society from the Victorian era. Wilde uses his characters and Tragic Comedy to satirize Victorian society. Wilde's Jack and Algernon reveal this idea in his play.…
When Oscar Wilde wrote The Importance of Being Earnest he gave birth to a wonderful character named Algernon Moncrieff. In this essay we will see how the appetites of this character add to the humor of this play. To analyze this we will look at his character traits. Algernon's traits of gluttony, dishonesty, romance and wit hive us delightful humor throughout the play.…
The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is regarded by many as one of the wittiest plays in the English language. However, it is not simply a “trivial comedy,” as its title proposes, but also a cutting satire appraising the conventions of Victorian society, chiefly the upper class. Much of Wilde’s social commentary is portrayed through the speech of the dictatorial Lady Bracknell, who embodies Victorian upper class conventions. Having ascended to her current high social status through a profitable marriage with Lord Bracknell, she defends her esteemed place in society. Fixed in her beliefs, Lady Bracknell criticizes education as “a serious danger to the upper classes” and blames Jack for “carelessness” for “losing” his parents, necessary family connections if he wishes to marry her daughter.…
The themes in Oscar Wilde´s “Importance of Being Earnest” such as hypocrisy, manners, dual identity, duplicity and deception are all closely linked throughout the play. One can see that the use of witticisms and hyperbole, combined with the themes Wilde commonly associates with Victorian lifestyle subtly, lightheartedly deride the audience. The effect of the theme duplicity and deception is essentially the criticism of the Victorian citizen. In creating the absurd lifestyle of his characters, he brings out what he feels are faults in society. The complications experienced by the characters are allegorical of the problems that the lifestyle creates, and the humour implicated throughout the storyline is simply to take the audiences focus off of the fact that they are being ridiculed. In this essay I will explore further when and why Wilde uses these themes, and how he puts them across in inoffensive ways.…