Essay On Oscar Wilde

In ‘The Important of Being Earnest’, Oscar Wilde's ridiculing representation of Victorian Society comments on the ridiculous behavior of the Victorian Society’s inability to recognise the difference between important and unimportant issues. Therefore, Oscar Wilde subverts Victorian values to mock and imply triviality and superficiality. Wilde forces the audience to rethink the importance of their life and how they act while also scrutinizing the ignorance of the characters in upper class society through mocking their morals and obsessive fascinations. Wilde's uses the inversion of what isn’t serious and what is to ridicule Victorian Society. Despite this, Wilde wanted to create something beautiful and superficial. Hence, it would be more

       In the play “The Importance of Being Earnest”, Oscar Wilde focused on the Victorian Age by mocking the Victorian principles and ideals. Wilde utilized satire and mockery through the character to make fun of their culture, principles, behaviors, and morals of the Victorians. Wilde also used the characters in the play to demonstrate the political, social, and religious views in the late 1900’s.

In the years between 1837-1901, people had a completely new viewpoint separate from the previous era. During this frivolous era, people stressed respect, seriousness, and decency. Although one may think there is nothing wrong with these practices, he or she may not comprehend how intensely the individuals followed their new current traditions. Author Oscar Wilde thoroughly displays just how people during this time period acted in his play The Importance of Being Earnest. Wilde pokes fun at various elements of the Victorian society. To better understand how Wilde’s play made fun of the Victorian society, one must look at the following elements: manners, triviality and immaturity

Oscar Wilde had an extremely influential life that bled through into his writing. Before Wilde began writing, his adolescence in high society would later become an

The Importance of Being Earnest is a comedy play written by Oscar Wilde and first performed in 1895 at St. James’s Theatre in London. This play is considered “Wilde’s most popular work and continually revived today” (Raby, 1997, p. 165). Therefore, through this essay we will reveal aspects of both satire and Victorian Society. For this sake, we will begin by defining the main aspects of both these terms, so that then we can easily recognize the elements from Wilde’s play.

The play, The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde was written in the Victorian Age of England. During this time morality was connected with sexual restraint and strict codes of conduct in public. This play hilariously critiques Victorian moral and social values while the characters in the play try to figure out the meaning of “earnestness”. Wilde uses humor and irony to publicly ridicule the self-aggrandizing attitude of the Victorian upper classes, as well as to expose their duplicity and hypocrisy in regards to their social behaviors.

Throughout the play, aristocratic social relations are revealed, specifically with regard to how individuals within the society conduct themselves by embracing dual personalities. These individuals typically advocate one belief yet act in a completely different manner. On the whole, Wilde fashions a comedic environment in order to create absurd characters devoid of insight, which makes them behave unsoundly. Wilde’s use of satire to elucidate various elements of Victorian society reveals the superficiality and hypocrisy of its characters and their ideals.

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde can be termed as a complete satirical work because of the path it chooses on harshly, but at the same time humorously criticizing and ridiculing social issues, such as marriage, wealth and death. The author approaches these issues with absurd mockery evidently with the intention of tickling his audience while driving his point home. Regarded as one of the most humorous and witty plays of all time, Oscar Wilde’s play, The Importance of Being Earnest has also been criticized for lacking meaning and being too farce. The author, however, does not seem perturbed or concerned with the criticisms hurled his way, but his is the agenda of correcting the social flaws noticed in his characters, such as the concern for trivial things as names over bigger and more important issues as serious relationships and true love, the love of money over morality and the carelessness of lying in order to “avoid unwelcome social obligation” (16).

The main purpose of this theme is to stimulate laughter from the audience. Wilde is able to satirize the upper classes by placing this play in an upper class social setting. This “…requires the audience to accept the world presented on the stage as a real world, a possible world; and its human foibles, even if heightened and exaggerated in the play’s satirical exposure of them…” (Foster 19). Then he fills the characters language with sayings, which make them seem ridiculous. The characters constantly contradict the basic values in their speech. This works to Wilde’s advantage because he wants his play to be funny and not offensive. Raby states “… [i]n his political and aesthetic theory Wilde was both romantic and cynical. In his drama he was both sentimental and satirical” (Raby 26). He could manipulate the audience to think that the play was just a storyline but in reality it was mocking them. Which includes the theme of the irrational upper class; the question arises: what is the importance of being earnest.

Wilde has beautifully portrayed the characters of the play and they remain alive in each act of this drama. However, their sense of purpose and values remain foggy and highly confusing till the end of the play. When we read this play, we see that the dramatist portrays each character to depict the hypocrisy of the contemporary Victorian society. Wilde deals with the inconsistency of nature of men here. None of the male characters are serious in life or earnest in nature. There is lack of moral values in each character. The characters contradict themselves most of the time. Jack, the protagonist of the play, throws out all Victorian values even though he represents the model Victorian man and aristocratic English people. Through his characterization and portrayal of inconsistent characters, Wilde satirizes upon the English society and the hypocrisy prevalent in the Victorian era.

In Victorian society, the conventional norms of status, gender roles, and marriage were closely linked by an institution that men and women were placed with unrealistic demands and expectations from society. Women were brought up by their parents to become the perfect housewife, and men were forced into marriages based on status within the society. In Oscar Wilde’s play, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” he mocks the typical Victorian conventions and ideals of what society held on the individual. I will be examining the techniques Wilde uses, such as satire, symbolism, and farcical situations, and showing how he takes those Victorian

First, Oscar Wilde as influenced by his personal history in many ways. He was not the

Looking back on Oscar Wilde 's life, there are many realizations that he struggled finding something that suited him best with his type of work. A man of the 19th century, who is best known for his only novella The Picture of Dorian Gray and his play The Importance of Being Earnest as well as his infamous arrest, imprisonment and being a gay author leading to his downfall. Oscar Wilde who was known as a playwright, author, sometime poet, and also a not very motivated school student, still came to success. He was very talented, intelligent and aesthetically interested and looked at others works as influential. Using this influence he started to write his own works and became a successful and well known author.

This satirical view is closely bound to the atmosphere of the time. The play itself deals itself with a typical Comedy of Manners storyline, the trivial social standards, love affairs and the aim of gaining the most money with the least effort. These subject matters are transfixed into a witty dialogue of which is usually a focal point of Comedy of Manners material. The play criticizes and upholds the Upper classes ideals at the same time. Oscar Wilde’s satirical view of the Upper class is a paradox in itself as he was part of it. The Importance of Being Earnest also supports elements of the well-made play.      

Oscar Wilde's final play The Importance of Being Earnest was first performed in 1895, near the end of Britain's Victorian Era. As was common in Wilde's previous works, the play lightheartedly documents (and often mocks) Victorian society and explores a number of universal themes such as marriage, gender, and social class. One element in particular that Wilde repeats throughout the play is the superficiality of his characters. For them, appearance takes precedence over all else. This superficiality can be found in each of our main roles, whether physical or social in nature.