The Importance Of Being Earnest Women Essay

The Importance of Being Earnest, written by Oscar Wilde, is a play that was first performed and published in the late nineteenth century. This play was written during the decline of the Victorian era and portrays the lifestyle of the era’s upper class in the author’s amusing point of view. While this was the era of supreme manners, well-educated men, and the utmost marriageable women, Oscar Wilde depicts his characters in a more truthful manner by revealing their contradicting statements and dishonest ways. Gwendolen, Cecily, and Lady Bracknell are the women in the play who are supposed to be the perfect representation of Victorian women, but their flaws are shown through their superficial behavior and ignorance. The main characters, Jack and
Lady Bracknell was supposed to be the ideal Victorian woman and mother, but even she took the majority of matters into her own hands. Taking control is the opposite of what the typical woman during that time period did. While the husband is supposed to be in control of every aspect of the family’s lives, Lady Bracknell had her own opinion of what should and should not be. When Gwendolen announced her engagement to Jack, Lady Bracknell completely overrode her
When Gwendolen and Cecily meet for the first time, they go back and forth between like and dislike. At the beginning of their introductions, Gwendolen announces how much she likes Cecily even though they had never met prior to that moment. Cecily responds by saying how nice it is of Gwendolen to like her after such a short period of time. Literary critic, David Parker, writes in his article “Oscar Wilde’s Great Farce: The Importance of Being Earnest”, about the relationship between these two girls, their changeability, and how their impulses affect their attitudes. He delves deeper into their relationship by studying their constant changeability, “Their changeability is most amusingly demonstrated in the first meeting of Gwendolen and Cecily, when, in the course of a single scene, they proceed from mutual suspicion to mutual affection, thence to mutual detestation, and finally to mutual affection again, all the time firmly maintaining that they are consistent.” There back and forth decisions are satirized by the ironic humor that they think of themselves as consistent women. Oscar Wilde uses Gwendolen and Cecily to represent the women of the Victorian era who were supposed to be the finest bachelorettes, but in reality, had their fair share of flaws as one would expect. He