The Importance Of Being Ernest Research Paper
Introduction The Importance of Being Earnest was Oscar’s fourth comedy, and it was to be his last and most outstanding play. ‘The Trivial Comedy for Serious People‘ (in earlier drafts, ‘serious comedy for trivial people’) was first produced by George Alexander at the St James’s Theatre on 14th February 1895 in London. The play was reduced from four to three acts (Raby 161-163).
The Importance of Being Earnest contradicts banausic values in a utilitarian age (Varty 205). The comedy of manners and errors had a philosophy, which Wilde interpreted in an interview for the St James’s Gazette. It was “that we should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality” (McKenna …show more content…
308). Wilde exceptionally unified intellectual play with theatrical play by which he accomplished tremendous composition.
But Wilde’s accomplishment he gained with The Importance of Being Earnest was suddenly replaced with author’s decline. After Oscar Wilde’s imprisonment the artworks from his production stopped being performed. It reverted to type in 1901, a year after Wilde’s death (Varty 205).
The main point of this farcical comedy resides in invention of fictional alter egos of main protagonists Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff under the pretext escaping from strenuous social obligations. The major themes of play are the triviality with which matters as serious as marriage are taken and mockery of Victorian rules.
Financial difficulties impelled Wilde to write Earnest extraordinarily quickly. “I am so pressed for money that I don’t know what to do” (McKenna 308). Here can be seen possible interlock between Wilde’s world and protagonist’s way of life. “Dear child, of course you know that Algernon has nothing but his debts to depend upon.” (Ross 163).
Thus, it can be argued that in The Importance of Being Earnest, the double life led by the protagonists [Jack and Algernon] corresponds to Wilde 's personal life of a fake marriage disguising his
homosexuality.
The essay is further divided in three main supporting arguments. As in Victorian era as in any other period of society people are influenced and forced to behave like Jack and Algernon. Oscar Wilde was the victim of English indecency laws which reflected the prevailing Victorian attitude towards homosexuality. Instead of deciding for marital life or coming out with his sexuality he is struggling between two worlds and carelessly includes homosexuality in some of his writings.
Each Society Influence Individual’s Life
As in Victorian era as in any other period of society people are influenced and forced to behave like Jack and Algernon.
Jack and Algy lead a double life. Wilde was married man, adored father and respected writer, however he had a darker side where his weakness represented social and sexual services within the company of young men. According to Ellman, when Oscar Wilde faced contradictory choices, he chose them both. (Robbins 152)
In country house Jack is forced to adopt ‘a very high moral tone on all subjects.‘ But high moral standard has consequences: “can hardly be said to conduce very much to either one’s health or one’s happiness”, he creates wicked alter ego Ernest Worthing in London (McKenna 309). ‘Bunburying’ is Algy’s expression for escaping from his social duties and family responsibilities to country where his imaginary and permanently invalid friend Bunbury lives. According to McKenna the Bunbury is some code for ’the love that dare not speak its name’ is implied when Algy states that his friend has ‘exploded’. ‘Exploded!’ Lady Bracknell exclaims: “Was he the victim of a revolutionary outrage? I was not aware that Mr Bunbury was interested in social legislation. If so, he is well punished for his morbidity” (McKenna 309). ‘Social legislation’ was expression used as a euphemism for the movement to modify the laws controlling sex between men, and ‘morbidity’ was a word used disparagingly to indicate sex between men (McKenna 310).
Wilde almost certainly experienced his own ‘Bunburying’. He had led a double life for ten years, in which he was trying to escape from Constance and father responsibilities and spend time with young men. “I am off the country till Monday”, he had told George Ives in June, in a clear act of ‘Bunburying’ (McKenna 310). “I have said I am going to Cambridge to see you, but I am really going to see the young Domitian” (McKenna 310).
Wilde had the same immoral universe as Earnest, in which he adopted Algy’s advice “If you ever get married...you will be very glad to know Bunbury. A man who marries without knowing Bunbury has a very tedious time of it.” Oscar Wilde spent a lot of effort to forget the fact that he was married (McKenna 310).
At the first meeting Lady Queensberry’s indirection and an admonitory element inspired Oscar Wilde to create the proper and proprietary mother Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest (Ellman 363).
In his play Wilde mocked the rules of society, stood against social and sexual discrimination and showed the cruel exclusion of those who erred. In the scene when Lady Bracknell declares 149 Belgrave Square to be on the unfashionable side as throughout the play, all the details indicates Lady Bracknell’s draconian social discriminations and her acquisitive approach to life. (Raby 169-170).
In the mid-1890s, Wilde focused his attention in plays to men with bad manners. In The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Bracknell proclaims that a suitable young man may have nothing but if “he looks everything what more can one desire?” (Mendelssohn 165) In this play objects become progressively significant because language fails to communicate. Visual and material signs are valuable, but their meaning becomes less and less credible. The characters retire to visual and material signs to formulate the ideas and desires which are not able to tell. In The Importance of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde was trying to create a language of a visual and material idiom for the unspeakable (Mendelssohn 165-166).
Wilde as the Victim of 19th Century English Law
Oscar Wilde was the victim of English indecency laws which reflected the prevailing Victorian attitude towards homosexuality.
As Josephine Guy stated after years critics might expose another value of The Importance of Being Earnest which is coded critique of Victorian sexual mores (Guy 6).
In O‘Gorman’s book is written description of sexual prudery in Victorian culture which clarifies the then situation. The middle-class Victorians, known as the great enemies of sexuality, denied the notion of sexuality in their minds and repressed it in their lives. (O’Gorman 157).
Varty quoted Oscar Wilde’s words where he expresses his deepest emotions about ’the love that dare not speak its name’ and sorrow that he was not allowed to release inner yearnings. “Our love was always beautiful and noble, and if I have been the butt of a terrible tragedy, it is because the nature of that love has not been understood” (Varty 28).
These circumstances caused restriction of Wilde’s creative genius and affected his further personal life as well as artistic creation. “There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so the world does not understand. The world mocks at it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it” (Ellmann 435).
In 1885 when Gladstone’s Government passed the Criminal Law Amendment Act it was possible to arrest people for practising homosexuality. This was the law under which Wilde was imprisoned and was given the most rigid sentence. Oscar Wilde beloved and respected by aristocracy suddenly stopped being admired and respected. After 1895 Wilde’s readers changed their views on his work which was influenced by knowledge of his homosexuality (Varty 28-31).
From Mendelssohn’s perspective Jack and Algernon’s invalidism and poor health imitate the degenerative language applied to rejected sexualities and identities at the end of century. The doctrine of moral purity has forced Jack to recur to Bunburying because moralism ‘can hardly be said to conduce very much to either one’s health or one’s happiness’ (Mendelssohn 172-173).
According to Varty Lady Bracknell is the archetype of inflexibility and its exponent in the upper classes. When Jack makes reference to her by declaration ‘she is a monster, without being a myth’, pointing out the danger to society portrayed by her politics and exemplifying her as a symbol of a failing system (Varty 203).
Wilde’s Oscillation between Two Worlds
Instead of deciding for marital life or coming out with his sexuality he is struggling between two worlds and carelessly includes homosexuality in some of his writings.
Although Wilde never displayed his homosexuality, he was becoming tactless about his goings‐on. He surrounded himself with men prostitutes in posh hotels and rented houses with upper‐class beaus. At the turn of the 20th century Britain was the only country in Western Europe that criminalized all male homosexual acts with cruel penalties. Wilde was condemned to two‐year prison with hard labor sentence for indecency even though the evidence against him was uncorroborated (Adut).
Oscar Wilde wrote about his wife Constance: “She could not understand me and I was bored to death with the married life.” He was bored by her attitude toward morality. “Women are always on the side of morality, public and private.” Did Constance represent the mirror of Oscar’s immoral life? Was he so „bored“ he needed to run away from “country to town” as Jack Worthing? “When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.“ (McKenna 64)
The female characters in The Importance of Being Earnest- Gwendolen, Cecily, Lady Bracknell and Miss Prism – reflect Oscar’s dislike of women and his scepticism to their motives in matters of love and marriage. Oscar illustrates women in Earnest as selfish, calculating, jealous and greedy. All of them are seeking husband and pretend to be somebody they are not: Gwendolen Fairfax gives an impression of a girl with ‘a simple unspoiled nature’ though she is excessively knowing and very calculating. Cecily Cardew’s engagement is also the product of her imagination. Lady Bracknell pretends to be ‘grande dame’ even though she was an indigent nobody when she wed in the aristocracy. And Miss Prism is far from wise. The two young men of the play Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff are not characters of high value as well. They are seeking a wife. Jack without any family roots wants to marry the aristocratic Gwendolen, while unwealthy Algy wants to marry excessively rich Cecily. Algy is cynical about marriage which appears in his response to Jack’s announcement that he has come to town to propose to Gwendolen. “I thought you had come up for pleasure?” he says. “I call that business.” (McKenna 308-309)
Conclusion
The conceit and the dissemblance of the upper class became the target of Wilde’s derision. Wilde has given us indirect perspectives on society’s superficiality through direct mockery of the shallow art in which it sees its reflection (Forster 23).
We cannot confirm or disprove whether Wilde’s literary works are somehow interconnected with his homosexuality. Many circumstances about Wilde’s sexual life are still unknown and some of them will never be revealed. If we accepted presumption that Wilde’s art production was lead by his homosexuality we would ignore other elements which influenced the way how his works were written. On the other hand Wilde used writing as the tool to wreck bourgeois sexual morality (Guy 42-43).
No matter what Oscar Wilde’s intentions in sphere of sexuality were it is more than obvious he was not accepted by society. On the contrary majority of modern readers are attracted to Wilde because of his sexual notoriety which is seen as drifting force of his personality and the most significant component in his creativity (Guy 43).
Works Cited
Adut, Ari. A Theory of Scandal: Victorians, Homosexuality, and the Fall of Oscar Wilde. The University of Chicago Press 111.1 (2005): 213-248. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.
Ellman, Richard. Oscar Wilde. London: Butler & Tanner, 1988. Print.
Foster, Richard. Wilde as Parodist: A Second Look at the Importance of Being Earnest. National Council of Teachers of English 18.1 (1956): 18-23. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.
Guy, Josephine, and Small Ian. Studying Oscar Wilde: History, Criticism and Myth. North Carolina: ELT Press, 2006. Print.
McKenna, Neil. The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde. New York: Basic Books, 2005. Print.
Mendelssohn, Michéle. Henry James, Oscar Wilde and Aesthetic Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007. Print.
O’Gorman, Francis. The Victorian Novel. USA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Print.
Raby, Peter. The Cambridge companion to Oscar Wilde. Cambridge: CUP, 1997. Print.
Robbins, Ruth. Oscar Wilde. India: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011. Print.
Ross, Robert. The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest. London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1993. Print.
Varty, Anne. A Preface to Oscar Wilde. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1988. Print.
The Importance of Being Earnest contradicts banausic values in a utilitarian age (Varty 205). The comedy of manners and errors had a philosophy, which Wilde interpreted in an interview for the St James’s Gazette. It was “that we should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality” (McKenna …show more content…
308). Wilde exceptionally unified intellectual play with theatrical play by which he accomplished tremendous composition.
But Wilde’s accomplishment he gained with The Importance of Being Earnest was suddenly replaced with author’s decline. After Oscar Wilde’s imprisonment the artworks from his production stopped being performed. It reverted to type in 1901, a year after Wilde’s death (Varty 205).
The main point of this farcical comedy resides in invention of fictional alter egos of main protagonists Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff under the pretext escaping from strenuous social obligations. The major themes of play are the triviality with which matters as serious as marriage are taken and mockery of Victorian rules.
Financial difficulties impelled Wilde to write Earnest extraordinarily quickly. “I am so pressed for money that I don’t know what to do” (McKenna 308). Here can be seen possible interlock between Wilde’s world and protagonist’s way of life. “Dear child, of course you know that Algernon has nothing but his debts to depend upon.” (Ross 163).
Thus, it can be argued that in The Importance of Being Earnest, the double life led by the protagonists [Jack and Algernon] corresponds to Wilde 's personal life of a fake marriage disguising his
homosexuality.
The essay is further divided in three main supporting arguments. As in Victorian era as in any other period of society people are influenced and forced to behave like Jack and Algernon. Oscar Wilde was the victim of English indecency laws which reflected the prevailing Victorian attitude towards homosexuality. Instead of deciding for marital life or coming out with his sexuality he is struggling between two worlds and carelessly includes homosexuality in some of his writings.
Each Society Influence Individual’s Life
As in Victorian era as in any other period of society people are influenced and forced to behave like Jack and Algernon.
Jack and Algy lead a double life. Wilde was married man, adored father and respected writer, however he had a darker side where his weakness represented social and sexual services within the company of young men. According to Ellman, when Oscar Wilde faced contradictory choices, he chose them both. (Robbins 152)
In country house Jack is forced to adopt ‘a very high moral tone on all subjects.‘ But high moral standard has consequences: “can hardly be said to conduce very much to either one’s health or one’s happiness”, he creates wicked alter ego Ernest Worthing in London (McKenna 309). ‘Bunburying’ is Algy’s expression for escaping from his social duties and family responsibilities to country where his imaginary and permanently invalid friend Bunbury lives. According to McKenna the Bunbury is some code for ’the love that dare not speak its name’ is implied when Algy states that his friend has ‘exploded’. ‘Exploded!’ Lady Bracknell exclaims: “Was he the victim of a revolutionary outrage? I was not aware that Mr Bunbury was interested in social legislation. If so, he is well punished for his morbidity” (McKenna 309). ‘Social legislation’ was expression used as a euphemism for the movement to modify the laws controlling sex between men, and ‘morbidity’ was a word used disparagingly to indicate sex between men (McKenna 310).
Wilde almost certainly experienced his own ‘Bunburying’. He had led a double life for ten years, in which he was trying to escape from Constance and father responsibilities and spend time with young men. “I am off the country till Monday”, he had told George Ives in June, in a clear act of ‘Bunburying’ (McKenna 310). “I have said I am going to Cambridge to see you, but I am really going to see the young Domitian” (McKenna 310).
Wilde had the same immoral universe as Earnest, in which he adopted Algy’s advice “If you ever get married...you will be very glad to know Bunbury. A man who marries without knowing Bunbury has a very tedious time of it.” Oscar Wilde spent a lot of effort to forget the fact that he was married (McKenna 310).
At the first meeting Lady Queensberry’s indirection and an admonitory element inspired Oscar Wilde to create the proper and proprietary mother Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest (Ellman 363).
In his play Wilde mocked the rules of society, stood against social and sexual discrimination and showed the cruel exclusion of those who erred. In the scene when Lady Bracknell declares 149 Belgrave Square to be on the unfashionable side as throughout the play, all the details indicates Lady Bracknell’s draconian social discriminations and her acquisitive approach to life. (Raby 169-170).
In the mid-1890s, Wilde focused his attention in plays to men with bad manners. In The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Bracknell proclaims that a suitable young man may have nothing but if “he looks everything what more can one desire?” (Mendelssohn 165) In this play objects become progressively significant because language fails to communicate. Visual and material signs are valuable, but their meaning becomes less and less credible. The characters retire to visual and material signs to formulate the ideas and desires which are not able to tell. In The Importance of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde was trying to create a language of a visual and material idiom for the unspeakable (Mendelssohn 165-166).
Wilde as the Victim of 19th Century English Law
Oscar Wilde was the victim of English indecency laws which reflected the prevailing Victorian attitude towards homosexuality.
As Josephine Guy stated after years critics might expose another value of The Importance of Being Earnest which is coded critique of Victorian sexual mores (Guy 6).
In O‘Gorman’s book is written description of sexual prudery in Victorian culture which clarifies the then situation. The middle-class Victorians, known as the great enemies of sexuality, denied the notion of sexuality in their minds and repressed it in their lives. (O’Gorman 157).
Varty quoted Oscar Wilde’s words where he expresses his deepest emotions about ’the love that dare not speak its name’ and sorrow that he was not allowed to release inner yearnings. “Our love was always beautiful and noble, and if I have been the butt of a terrible tragedy, it is because the nature of that love has not been understood” (Varty 28).
These circumstances caused restriction of Wilde’s creative genius and affected his further personal life as well as artistic creation. “There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so the world does not understand. The world mocks at it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it” (Ellmann 435).
In 1885 when Gladstone’s Government passed the Criminal Law Amendment Act it was possible to arrest people for practising homosexuality. This was the law under which Wilde was imprisoned and was given the most rigid sentence. Oscar Wilde beloved and respected by aristocracy suddenly stopped being admired and respected. After 1895 Wilde’s readers changed their views on his work which was influenced by knowledge of his homosexuality (Varty 28-31).
From Mendelssohn’s perspective Jack and Algernon’s invalidism and poor health imitate the degenerative language applied to rejected sexualities and identities at the end of century. The doctrine of moral purity has forced Jack to recur to Bunburying because moralism ‘can hardly be said to conduce very much to either one’s health or one’s happiness’ (Mendelssohn 172-173).
According to Varty Lady Bracknell is the archetype of inflexibility and its exponent in the upper classes. When Jack makes reference to her by declaration ‘she is a monster, without being a myth’, pointing out the danger to society portrayed by her politics and exemplifying her as a symbol of a failing system (Varty 203).
Wilde’s Oscillation between Two Worlds
Instead of deciding for marital life or coming out with his sexuality he is struggling between two worlds and carelessly includes homosexuality in some of his writings.
Although Wilde never displayed his homosexuality, he was becoming tactless about his goings‐on. He surrounded himself with men prostitutes in posh hotels and rented houses with upper‐class beaus. At the turn of the 20th century Britain was the only country in Western Europe that criminalized all male homosexual acts with cruel penalties. Wilde was condemned to two‐year prison with hard labor sentence for indecency even though the evidence against him was uncorroborated (Adut).
Oscar Wilde wrote about his wife Constance: “She could not understand me and I was bored to death with the married life.” He was bored by her attitude toward morality. “Women are always on the side of morality, public and private.” Did Constance represent the mirror of Oscar’s immoral life? Was he so „bored“ he needed to run away from “country to town” as Jack Worthing? “When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.“ (McKenna 64)
The female characters in The Importance of Being Earnest- Gwendolen, Cecily, Lady Bracknell and Miss Prism – reflect Oscar’s dislike of women and his scepticism to their motives in matters of love and marriage. Oscar illustrates women in Earnest as selfish, calculating, jealous and greedy. All of them are seeking husband and pretend to be somebody they are not: Gwendolen Fairfax gives an impression of a girl with ‘a simple unspoiled nature’ though she is excessively knowing and very calculating. Cecily Cardew’s engagement is also the product of her imagination. Lady Bracknell pretends to be ‘grande dame’ even though she was an indigent nobody when she wed in the aristocracy. And Miss Prism is far from wise. The two young men of the play Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff are not characters of high value as well. They are seeking a wife. Jack without any family roots wants to marry the aristocratic Gwendolen, while unwealthy Algy wants to marry excessively rich Cecily. Algy is cynical about marriage which appears in his response to Jack’s announcement that he has come to town to propose to Gwendolen. “I thought you had come up for pleasure?” he says. “I call that business.” (McKenna 308-309)
Conclusion
The conceit and the dissemblance of the upper class became the target of Wilde’s derision. Wilde has given us indirect perspectives on society’s superficiality through direct mockery of the shallow art in which it sees its reflection (Forster 23).
We cannot confirm or disprove whether Wilde’s literary works are somehow interconnected with his homosexuality. Many circumstances about Wilde’s sexual life are still unknown and some of them will never be revealed. If we accepted presumption that Wilde’s art production was lead by his homosexuality we would ignore other elements which influenced the way how his works were written. On the other hand Wilde used writing as the tool to wreck bourgeois sexual morality (Guy 42-43).
No matter what Oscar Wilde’s intentions in sphere of sexuality were it is more than obvious he was not accepted by society. On the contrary majority of modern readers are attracted to Wilde because of his sexual notoriety which is seen as drifting force of his personality and the most significant component in his creativity (Guy 43).
Works Cited
Adut, Ari. A Theory of Scandal: Victorians, Homosexuality, and the Fall of Oscar Wilde. The University of Chicago Press 111.1 (2005): 213-248. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.
Ellman, Richard. Oscar Wilde. London: Butler & Tanner, 1988. Print.
Foster, Richard. Wilde as Parodist: A Second Look at the Importance of Being Earnest. National Council of Teachers of English 18.1 (1956): 18-23. Web. 12 Dec. 2012.
Guy, Josephine, and Small Ian. Studying Oscar Wilde: History, Criticism and Myth. North Carolina: ELT Press, 2006. Print.
McKenna, Neil. The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde. New York: Basic Books, 2005. Print.
Mendelssohn, Michéle. Henry James, Oscar Wilde and Aesthetic Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007. Print.
O’Gorman, Francis. The Victorian Novel. USA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Print.
Raby, Peter. The Cambridge companion to Oscar Wilde. Cambridge: CUP, 1997. Print.
Robbins, Ruth. Oscar Wilde. India: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011. Print.
Ross, Robert. The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest. London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1993. Print.
Varty, Anne. A Preface to Oscar Wilde. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1988. Print.