Oscar Wilde Satire

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

Oscar Wilde was an Irish playwright, novelist, and poet who lived an unconventional life during the Victorian Era. Oscar Wilde is lauded for his works, trademark wit, and the way he carried himself around. Arguably, his most famous piece of work is The Importance of Being Earnest, which is about two people who make up a person that lives in another part of the country in order to escape burdensome social responsibilities. The Importance of Being Earnest is an example of a satirical piece of literature. Satire is the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc. Wilde’s life experiences greatly impacted the views, that he expresses through satirical humor, in his works, particularly The

A satire is a piece of work that is designed to ridicule or tease a group or organization, generally for the purpose of being humorous. “The Importance of Being Earnest,” a play by Oscar Wilde, is a satire, ridiculing class, gender, and marriage. This essay will describe some points from each of these sections, as well as give a brief synopsis of the play these examples come from.

Write an essay that argues your position on the extent to which Wilde’s claims are valid.

Satire Mini-Unit: Questions 1. Swift identifies that there are too many impoverished children in the streets of Ireland, these children are too much of a burden for their parents to handle. 2. When a poor child grows to the age of 1, they should be slaughtered, sold, eaten, and skinned to provide clothing. This eliminates the need to feed more mouths and provides a way to benefit society.

    "I turned half way around and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself" (7). During the Victorian era, this was a dangerous quote. The Victorian era was about progress. It was an attempt aimed at cleaning up the society and setting a moral standard. The Victorian era was a time of relative peace and economic stability (Marshall 783). Victorians did not want anything "unclean" or "unacceptable" to interfere with their idea of perfection. Therefore, this quote, taken from Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray,

The play examines the relationships between husbands and wives and reflects stereotypes of gender, particularly a marriage that ended in murder. The setting, a messy kitchen, reflects to me that the women stand together, emphasizing both the way they have been pushed together by their male-dominated society but also, possibly, their loyalty to each other over their husbands, a topic explored in the play. The men repeatedly dismiss things as beneath their notice if they are things such as the canning jars of fruit that are, in their opinions, women’s concerns. The men never recognize that they have forced the women to be concerned about these things, by not allowing them to be concerned about anything else. The men’s dismissal reflects a larger mindset of devaluing women and their opinions and interests in general.

Throughout life we are told not to do anything bad and to not break the rules, however how is a person supposed to learn from what they do wrong? Oscar Wilde once wrote, “Disobedience in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is a man’s original virtue…,” through historical evidence this statement is made true because without minor disobedience and rebellion, we wouldn’t have the basic human rights that we have today. In the second part of his quote, Wilde makes a point that through the disobedience and rebellion of historical figures, social progress would not have been made, and the shape of American culture wouldn’t be the way it is today.

What do all great authors, such as Oscar Wilde, do when they see something wrong in their culture? Simple: they show society how shortsighted it truly is by ridiculing its beliefs. It would be impossible to simply mock the beliefs of an entire culture without being labeled as crazy or an outcast, so they ridicule the culture indiscreetly. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde is a classic example of a highly esteemed work that uses satire to jeer at the cultural norms of the Victorian Era. The Importance of Being Earnest mocks the resolute mind-sets, the aloofness of marriage, and the class-system with satire during the Victorian Era.

Wilde uses the satirical devices travesty and irony in order to portray marriage negatively. Through his use of satire, one can infer that Wilde sees marriage as a hindrance and a task that society seems to be obsessed with. In Act 1, the proposal scene is shown. After Gwendolen and Jack admit that they have feelings for each other, Jack states that they should get married at once, but Gwendolen decides that Jack must properly propose first. The use of travesty is present here when the meaningful act of proposing to someone is constructed to be comical. Jack asks Gwendolen if he may propose to her. When most individuals wish to propose, they do not usually ask for permission first. Once Jack does propose, Gwendolen asks as though she is surprised and asks, “How long have you been about it!” (line 360). Through the way that Jack and Gwendolen conduct themselves, marriage can be perceived as trivial, when it is actually a significant act because a person is committing to a life with another individual. This shows that Wilde does not agree with marriage and it is not to be taken as seriously as society treats it today.

A Gross Indecency, a play about the trials of Oscar Wilde, and An Ideal Husband, a play written by Oscar Wilde, were two plays performed by the university theater. While An Ideal Husband had extraordinary sets and props, the cast did not know their lines. The two plays would have been tied in my affections had the cast of An Ideal Husband known their lines. In my personal opinion, A Gross Indecency by far exceeded the performance of An Ideal Husband by the university theater.

I wrote this analysis in my The Evolving Stage class where we read and discussed popular plays and their meanings. The objective of this assignment was to analyze a play we have read in class. I chose to analyze the play The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. I focused on the idea of marriage during the time period the play was written which was the nineteenth century. I discussed the different views of marriage portrayed in the play and compared them to today’s ideas of marriage. I quite enjoyed reading and analyzing this humorous drama.

The ideology of an unrealistic world illustrates how truth emerges through “motifs” . The “tea” drinking ritual symbolises social status. It suggests we are judged by our social etiquette, conforming to the laws of society issignificant for them. It has been viewed as naturalistic which is symbolic due to its humorous presentation. The classes are portrayed in a hasty manner as we notice Gwendolyn and Cecily struggle to regain their composure as “sugar is not fashionable anymore”.Furthermore, it invites the audience to mock these two ladies; instead of using their intellectual talent they are wasting their time contemplating whether “cake is rarely seen at the best houses”. Wilde’s presentation of the social hierarchy mocks the upper-class

Oscar Fingal O’Flaherty Wills Wilde was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist and poet. And everything else can find in a book or online, I am not going to do that today, I am sure you are not interested in the regurgitation of Oscar Wilde facts. I am sure that you know most of what is written there better than the people that wrote those facts on Wikipedia any way. I am not going to talk about the importance of being earnest in any way shape or form, trust me for I am in the gutter looking up at the stars right now and everything that is written here will probably be a huge lie. I cannot resist the temptation to it is just too hard not to sit here and just write a bunch of untold truths at least I won’t

In ancient times, humor or comic was strictly censored. In places like Greece and Egypt, jokes were even forbidden in social situations. Considering the almost taboo nature of humor, it's hardly surprising that humor never received particular attention from ancient scholars. Plato was averse to humor as jokes and sarcasm were not encouraged and men and women were expected to be serious rather than frivolous about all issues. Some ancient scholars went to the extent to argue that humor could lead to sarcasm, disrespect, vulgar or volatile discourse and finally anger, resentment and even murder.