The Importance Of Being Earnest Identity Essay

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. First and foremost, the scene where Jack searches through the army lists depicts the
Jack describes that fact that he discovered his name was really Ernest as a “terrible thing.” This shows his disappointment at the fact that he is really named Ernest, because he felt very clever in creating the identity of a sinful brother who lived in the city. This is the first and only time that Jack accepts his nominal name of Ernest. Just a few lines later, he says “On the contrary, Aunt Augusta, I’ve now realized for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest” (54). An audience would not be able to tell what homonym Jack is using, earnest or Ernest. By playing on the words, Wilde is stating that both being Ernest, and being sincere about Jack’s identity both are shadowed by the importance of creating an identity and living life in accordance with