How Does Oscar Wilde Use Satire

Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is truly a satire. In The Importance of Being Ernest, Wilde mocks the society in Britain, and the rules it followed in the 1800s. He uses satire in the description of every character and other themes like marriage, intelligence, morality, and lifestyle primarily aimed at the upper class of the time. At the turn of every page the use of satire proves again and again to be ideal when questioning the morals and values of people.

Oscar Wilde’s play entitled “The Importance of Being Earnest” illustrates the concept of dual personality, fantasy, love, and lies. Jack, Algernon, Gwendolyn, and Cecily all live in lies. They are manipulated by their fantasies and desire for perfect relationship and love. Jack, the protagonist in the play, is the root of lies because of his imaginary brother named Earnest. Algernon uses the name to win Cecily, while Gwendolyn and Cecily are both fascinated by this name because it expresses strength and perfection of manhood. Due to their search and desire to have Earnest, the male and female characters escape from the reality. Therefore, Wilde in The Importance of Being Earnest portrays a gender doubled

When talking to Algernon for the first time, Cecily thinks his name is Ernest. When he asks if she would love him if his name was different, her response was :”I might respect you Ernest, I might admire your character, but I fear I should not be able to give you my undivided attention.”(Wilde, 76) Incongruity shows how ridiculous Cecily’s values are. If she is concerned about a name to determine if someone is a good person to love, how could it possibly be a serious love? Incongruity is also used later in that same conversation, when Algernon is leaving and Cecily says, “Considering that we have been engaged since February the 14th and that I only met you today for the first time, I think it is rather hard that you should leave me for so long a period as half an hour.”(Wilde, 77) Cecily and Algernon had been engaged for three months but they only met once. That tells a story about how seriously they are taking their engagement and soon to be, marriage. Which seems to be not so seriously, since one of them doesn’t even know the others real name when they meet. Although they do not seem to be serious about it, Algernon and Cecily seem to be going through with the marriage, and when Lady Bracknell finds out her nephews fiancé has a fortune of “A hundred and thirty thousand pounds!”,she thinks “Miss Cardew seems to me a most attractive young

Algernon’s stances on marriage, relationships, and self accurately describe his selfishness. Not only does Algernon destroy his own sense of reality, he destroys everyone else’s concept of the truth. The Importance of Being Earnest is meant to make people laugh; unfortunately, Wilde’s characters are so rude and condescending that the reader can have trouble finding the humor. This play is so full of unhealthy relationships that one has to assume that nothing will work out in the end. Algernon is an egomaniac, and there is no doubt that his attitude will rub off on Cecily, Jack, and

In the play, The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, there is a lot of humor that can be found. Specifically, developed behind the characters in this play that display many instances of irony and how important it was to fit into the “status quo” of this time period. There are specific behaviors from the characters of Lady Bracknell, Gwendolen, and Algernon that portray Wilde’s opinion of society during the Victorian Age. The attitude of these characters is snobbish and their manners display double standards and superiority. The play’s use of mockery and irony of these satirical situations is meant to publicly ridicule the self- loving attitude of the upper class while exposing their true absence of intelligence which causes their absurd social behaviors

It was highly moral for a man to have a family and to be current in marriage; it boosts up his image and role in society. A man, who has been out of marriage for too long, is seen as idle. Wilde presents two characters, Algernon and Jack, who have a dispute whether marriage is silly or not. It suggests that not every Victorian man were keen on the idea of marriage. In the Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde displays a

Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest (.1993.) is an enlightening epitome of social class in the Victorian era. The satire is driven by the frivolous behaviour, superficial lives and artificial norms within the Victorian aristocracy. Incorporating his own opinion into the play, Wilde continually attacked and mocked their hypocrisy, views on marriage, and their mannerisms. Throughout the play, Wilde used an abundant range of literary techniques to reinforce his opinion. Irony, paradox and hyperboles, as well as witty epigrams and aphorisms were used astutely and were ubiquitous throughout the play. This contributed to the satirical style and tone of the text, and enabled Wilde to effectively communicate his critical perspective on social class in Victorian England.

Oscar Wilde's, "The Importance of Being Earnest" revolves around the dichotomy of the true definition of honesty versus the victorian definition of honesty. It is apparent that Wilde's opinion is that true honesty is expressed through being genuine to one's self as opposed to putting on a front as is important in victorian ideals. In this work, Wilde uses humor to off-set the seriousness of the theme of the story. One who has studied this work can also clearly see that Wilde is using sarcasm to say things that would not have been accepted by society if they were said bluntly. For example he exemplifies in a very sarcastic manner the hypocracy that victorian society represents by the very fact that they pretend to uphold honesty above all

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, premiered in London in 1895 when Wilde was in the peak of his career. During this time of the Victorian Era, society was very moral and chaste, at least on the surface. There was a very specific code of behavior that governed almost everything, but focused mainly on the topic of marriage. This affected Wilde first-hand as he was married to a woman but also involved with men which was forbidden at the time. Using the themes of dualism and marriage, Wilde is trying to show the audience the ridiculous nature of Victorian society. Through the reoccurring theme of dualism, Oscar Wilde uses sizable amounts of satire to not only mock the trivial Victorian society, but more specifically to ridicule

Nineteenth century European society was characterized by organized religion and a rigid class system. Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice use satire to reveal faults in these elements of society. Many of Wilde’s criticisms of society are provoked by his closeted homosexuality. He portrays religion as a restricting, meaningless convention and depicts the aristocratic class as a hypocritical and unempathetic lot. Austen similarly finds faults in these areas of society, but her opinions stem from her experiences as a nineteenth century woman. Her criticisms of religion are directed toward the clergyman and she declares the aristocratic class to be both egotistical and image obsessed. Both authors satirize the same systems and traditions of society to raise awareness of faults within each area, but their critiques of each feature is different. Additionally, Wilde uses various literary techniques as methods of satirization while Austen only uses her characters as sources of criticism.

AThe Importance of Being Earnest a play written by Oscar Wilde is set in England in the late Victorian era. Wilde uses obvious situational and dramatic irony within the play to satirize his time period. According to Roger Sale in Being Ernest the title has a double meaning to it and is certainly another example of satire used by Wilde. With a comedic approach, Wilde ridicules the absurdities of the character’s courtship rituals, their false faces, and their secrets. (Sale, 478)

In Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde is mocking the Victorian society as a whole. In a society where affirmed progress was key, it was critical for artists like Oscar Wilde and the Ozark Actors Theatre to have a clear-cut expression of the incomplete perception of life in the nineteenth-century England. Wilde's onslaught on the conduct of the current times is an effort to accomplish the author's revelation that art has the capability to rule life, at a time when civilization measures progress by factual research. Wilde choice to adopt the English language as the means to alter society whether than the traditional methods or the scientific method was a bold move to go against

The The Importance of Being Earnest, written by Oscar Wilde, is a play set during the Victorian Era. It is about the lives of characters named Jack Worthing, Algernon Moncrieff, Lady Bracknell, Gwendolen Fairfax, Cecily Cardew, Miss Prism, and Rev. Chasuble that lived during that time period. One of the main topics discussed in The Importance of Being Earnest is marriage. Overall, Wilde portrays marriage differently throughout the play for the upper and lower classes of society.

For Wilde, the word earnest comprised two different but related ideas: the notion of false truth and the notion of false morality, or moralism. The moralism of Victorian society—its smugness and pomposity—impels Algernon and Jack to invent fictitious alter egos so as to be able to escape the strictures of propriety and decency. However, what one member of society considers decent or indecent doesn’t always reflect what decency really is. One of the play’s paradoxes is the impossibility of actually being either earnest (meaning “serious” or “sincere”) or moral while claiming to be so. The

Wilde is exhibiting how people in society, such as Jack were nescient to the affects their  wealth and power had on those below them. They followed the “Liberal Unionist” views, where Irish would be sent deeper and deeper into impecuniosity. Wilde’s radical conceptions challenged this and showed how incognizant and blind the opulent genuinely were, because he himself was a libertarian.