How Class and Social Structure of the Victorian Era Is Reflected by the Literature of the Time

England under the Victorian Era was a fascinating place to live. The streets of London were filled with horse-drawn carriages and tightly spaced flats. Along with those, the streets were also a place for theft, sickness, and musk from the local factories. Crime was present throughout the cities. Drug use and prostitution were the highest forms of criminal behavior (Garside). Arthur Conan Doyle’s beloved and well-known character, Sherlock Holmes, emerged from the Victorian Era. The people of London came to love the weekly stories that were published about the great detective and were extremely excited to hear the next short tale (Clausen). As the city of London began to change and the people gained more wealth, the social statuses of the citizens began to change as well. The most prospered groups were the Upper Class the Middle Class. In the Victorian Era, the Middle Class flourished because of the development of industrialization. Factories opened up creating new jobs for the Lower Class and provided supplies for many.

Throughout much of the play and especially the beginning, Wilde satirizes the setting in which both the characters as well as his audience live in. This satirization specifically requires that the audience be thoughtful whenever Wilde makes a joke, resulting in the thoughtful laughter which makes a true comedy. “The Importance of Being Earnest” is set during the late 20th century in Britain, a time period known as the Victorian Era, in which the British Empire was at its absolute peak. The dominance of Britain in world affairs resulted in a sense of

The average life a person lives in this time period comes easy. Though we may carry certain struggles, they don’t compare to the daily troubles of lower class throughout the Victorian Era. Of course, there were countless successful people during this time, poverty became a huge predicament for the common family. Shortage issues influenced adults as well as the children. All ages got the enjoyment of life stolen from them in this rigid era. Lack of help would only ruin these people as well as the time period as a whole.

The Victorian era society was divided into three class's upper, middle, and working class. The upper class was made of aristocrats, noble's dukes, and other wealthy families that worked in the court system. They held the most powerful positions that gave them authority, better living conditions, and other facilities. The upper class of society had rules such as the proper forms of address, what to wear that would be appropriate it was something crucial to get right. Many aristocrats did not work as for centuries together their families had been gathering enough money for each generation to live life in luxurious. The upper class was broken down into three subdivisions which were the royal class, upper middle class, and lower upper class. Middle class put pressures on the upper classes for representation which resulted in series of reform acts giving commoners increased representation in parliament.

Every line, every character, and every stage direction in The Importance of Being Earnest is set on supporting Oscar Wilde’s want for social change. The Importance of Being Earnest was written during the late period of the Victorian era. During this period social classification was taken very seriously. It could affect working and living conditions, education, religion, and marriage. Wilde explores the issues of social class and turns it into a comedic play. He humorously criticizes Victorian manners and attacking the society of the luxurious life. The audience becomes self-aware as the characters reflect on themselves. Plays such as this become successful because of the backgrounds the writers come from and the experiences they have had.

Oscar Wilde’s, The Importance of Being Earnest, explores marriage and the way in which the upper class viewed it as a business. Through his characters Wilde also explores the theme of greed that runs in the upper class and Wilde exposes the pettiness that was typical of the upper class. He explores these themes and ideas by using humour and wit. Throughout these passages Wilde’s characters portray marriage as a business.

When Queen Victoria took control of England in 1837, the country was undergoing many social changes. Social status was no longer based on lineage and was now determined by an individual’s financial status. Lower class individuals were shamed and judged by members of the elite social classes. Things like fashion and language were used to categorize people into certain social classes. This categorization came with the prejudices and stereotypes that were common among members of a certain class. This culture gave the members of the elite social classes a sense of entitlement that lead them to judge the mistreat members of the lower classes. From this harsh and strict social system emerged a group of social reformers. These reformers came in the form of writers, journalists, photographers, etc. and they worked hard to expose the social class system for what it was. One of the most important social reformers during the Victorian Era was Charles Dickens. Growing up in a poor, working class family, Dickens knew about the harsh realities that spawned from the social class system present. His writing reflects these experiences and attempts to expose this harsh system and other big problems prominent in Victorian society. Pip is a character that experiences some of these realities in Great Expectations. Pip initially lets his social status define him and must then go through a spiritual journey to discover what truly defines an individual. In Great Expectations Charles Dickens uses

The Importance of Being Earnest is viewed as a standout amongst the best plays composed by Oscar Wilde, an incredible nineteenth century writer. Oscar Wilde manages something one of a kind about his contemporary age in this show. It addresses Victorian social issues, French theater, sham, social dramatization and acting. Every one of these factors influenced the structure of the play in a huge scale. This play is essentially a Victorian mocking dramatization displaying the social, political, monetary and important religious changes that influenced eighteenth century England. It was during this time that the British Empire had taken over most of the world including Ireland, Oscar Wilde’s home. The privileged people of England turned out to

The class system during the Victorian Period played a significant role on people’s lives. The class a person belonged to played an important role in that individual’s future. In Victorian England, class diversity and class placement either hindered or enhanced people’s lives. One work of literature that comments on class distinctions in Victorian England is “The Importance of Being Earnest”, by Oscar Wilde. In “The Importance of Being Earnest”, Wilde expresses the concern with the Victorian people endeavoring to maintain an upper class reputation--while hiding the reality of their lives.

Sans irony, the title of the play, The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People, by Oscar Wilde probably would have been called “The Insignificance of Being Earnest.” This is because throughout the play all the major characters lied and were not the least bit earnest. This comedy is a satire on the mannerisms of the Victorian upper-class society in the late 1800s. As it is a satire, Wilde’s intent was to poke fun at the aristocrats of his time by exaggerating their behavior to criticize how substanceless their lifestyles were. Wilde incorporates various elements of literature including genre, symbolism, and characterization to challenge the Victorian upper class’ arrogant lifestyle.

All throughout Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s prominent Sherlock Holmes fiction, there seems to be a lot of themes concerning the social class structure of Victorian England. I do not believe that Doyle’s true objective was to depict Holmes as upholding the traditional state of affairs of that time, as class inequality was a very prominent thing. Women were regularly thought of as having less intelligence than males and there was a seething, developing tension building up between the three categorized classes; those being the upper, middle, and lower. Doyle also depicts and writes frequently about a kind of “criminal class” who seem to be predestined to a life of crime and are often the people of the lower and working classes. This, to many people, might suggest that Doyle believed that the lower class working people were doomed to a life of crime. However, I postulate that it’s much more sophisticated than just that. There happen to be quite a few tongue-in-cheek comments all throughout the Holmes canon and Doyle was simply using his characters to challenge the issues of social inequality and gender roles, rather than to conclusively solve them. I believe that Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is the embodiment of critique of class and gender roles, criticizing the status quo by introducing multiple villains that don’t mesh with the stereotypical “criminal class”, by depicting those of the upper class as irrational, silly and mean-spirited; while at same time, Doyle was headlining women in

First and foremost, The Importance of Earnest is a comedy of manners as Oscar Wilde’s main premise is to satirise the behaviours of upper class Victorian society, as he knew it. In order to achieve this he created witty dialogue, ridiculed the institution of marriage and appealed, more, to the audience’s intelligence than their emotions. However, he also creates comedy by installing farcical features such as mistaken identity, physical humour and an absurd plot.

 While some critics contend that The Importance of Being Earnest is completely fanciful and has no relation to the real world, others maintain that Oscar Wilde's "trivial comedy for serious people" does make significant comments about social class and the institution of marriage.  These observations include the prevalent utilization of deceit in everyday affairs.  Indeed the characters and plot of the play appear to be entirely irreverent, thus lending weight to the comedic, fanciful aspect.  However, this same factor also serves to illuminate the major points that Wilde tries to convey about the English society in which he lived.  

Being one of the most famous plays written by Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest is a romantic comedy that makes good use of the conflicts of characters to deal with themes such as marriage, social class and hypocrisy. There are two different types of conflict to drive plot and capture audience attention in a story: internal and external conflict. The former concerns a character’s emotional, moral or ideological dilemma within his own mind; the latter concerns a character’s struggle against an opposing view from another character, society or the nature. In fact, in The Importance of Being Earnest, by increasing the story’s tension and enhancing character development, the internal and external conflicts of Jack Worthing contribute

As social conflicts continued from social class, socially conscious writers often sought out to address these problems, “many had combined aesthetic and didactic aims to produce their writings and novels with a purpose”. (David Social Class). In most situations these novels and forms of protest literature subsumed to the social polemic. The system class and their differing class levels. Alongside these varying class levels and their particular access to riches and acquiring influence come abilities and hardships intently connected with such rankings. Writing that arrangements with social class frequently remarks on these abilities and hardships.