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Stereotypes In The Importance Of Being Earnest

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During the Victorian England time period, society enforced very specific gender roles for males and females. While males were deemed as in the dominant and provider role, women were seen as compliant and submissive. Demanded to be followed, breaking out of these norms resulted in social isolation and other consequences. There were specific rules and scripts females needed to follow to be part of society and respected by their peers. Oscar Wilde sets out to challenge these norms in his play, The Importance of Being Earnest. The play follows two male characters that deceive their respective love interests to earn their hands in marriage. While there are certainly instances in Wilde’s play, where female characters conform to their gender roles, …show more content…

In the Victorian World women's education, opinions, or success didn’t matter at all. In the journal Feminist thinking on education in Victorian England by Laura Schwartz, she writes “In its most extreme manifestations, women’s intellects were seen as insightful and sensitive without the ability to make rational evidence-based judgements; physiologically, they were not equipped to deal with the rigours of university education which would threaten their capacity to bear children; and because women’s vocation in life was supposedly different from that of men, it was believed to be pointless and cruel to educate her beyond her sphere as wife and mother (674, Schwartz). The norm was that education was completely unimportant to a female and Wilde represents that stereotype in the character of Cecily Cardrew who studies completely random and useless subjects such as German literature, Geography, and Political Economy. There were societal expectations that women of higher class were to be educated, but that education was essentially worthless. Thus, women of a certain class were taught subjects without any application to the real world as done to Cecily as shown in Act 2, “Cecily. [Coming over very slowly.] But I don’t like German. It isn’t at all a becoming language. I know perfectly well that I look quite plain after my German

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