The Importance Of Being Earnest By Oscar Wilde

By stating that he did not know anyone by the name of Cecily, Jack initiates his own debacle. He has to clarify that Cecily is actual his ward. Nonetheless, Jack bears no anguish to dissembling to his closest companion. Jack’s morality has been impaired by his lies and it implies that his animalistic qualities control him. Yet, he falls in love and he must tell Gwendolen, his sweetheart, of his morally wrong character. In order to do so Jack has to disclose that Ernest was not in fact his real name but a mere alias created to cover up his dastardly ways. He can think of no other way than to “kill” his brother. Wilde shows how Jack’s urbane nature begins to be marred by his animalism since he was willing to kill a man, fictional or not. Ensuing in the play Jack is speaking with Algernon and he begins to ponder on how to commit the murder. He states “My poor brother Ernest is carried off suddenly in Paris, by a severe chill. That gets rid of him” (Wilde 16). Though fictional, Jack’s murder of Ernest still seems to carry the same implications further into the book. This murder eventually skews his reputation once his lies become known. Wilde proves how Jack’s lies soon catch up to him and flaw his esteemed moral persona. Later in the play Algernon sets off on a trip to Jack’s country estate and claims he is Ernest Worthing. Later when Jack arrives Cecily informs her caretaker that his brother Ernest is in his room. Jack replies

The deception of appearance is also echoed in “The Importance of Being Earnest” with Wilde immediately addressing the point that “appearance blinds” through the main protagonists of Jack and Algernon with both of these characters assuming the name of “Ernest” in order to deceive Gwendolen and Cecily respectively. Wilde is explaining to the audience the shallow nature of the upper class by depicting how easy it is in constructing a deceptive appearance, with a simple name change allowing this. Fitzgerald also emphasises how a name can easily be used to deceive when he describes Gatsby as changing his name from “James Gatz” to “Jay Gatsby” in order to hide his middle class roots. “The fact that Jack, like Algernon, has been leading a double life…

Jack’s cousin Cecily can be described as naive. Cecily believes in a different world than the one she lives in. An example of this is that she has already written letters to her husband, that does not exist, and according to her letters they have a rough relationship. Cecily is very opinionated but she does not speak her mind as often. Cecily falls in love with Algernon, while he is pretending to be Earnest. Cecily is not immune to the lying and she says that she has always dreamed about marrying someone with the name of Earnest. Cecily is the epitome of a women being raised in the Victorian Age. She has the best of education and sheltered from the harshness of the real world. Cecily has never met a truly wicked person and one of the thing she does not appreciate is hypocrisy. “I've now realized for the first time one my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest" (Wilde 57). Cecily believes that if you have something to say no

Jack is overjoyed to find out that Gwendolyn returns his feelings. However, she is taken with the name Ernest and would not consider marrying a man by any other name, especially Jack. Lady Bracknell interviews Jack to determine if he qualifies as a possible future husband for her daughter. When she discovers that Jack doesn’t know who his parents are because he was found in a handbag she is outraged; she forbids a union between the two, declaring it scandalous. In the next scene Algernon shows up in Jacks country estate pretending to be Ernest and falls in love with Cecily.

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 play The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde and the novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson showcase the Victorian era. With memorable characters like Aunt Augusta, accustomed to tea time and addicted to her cucumber sandwiches, and the loveable Dr. Jekyll, driven by his own devilish work, one is almost able to hear the trotting of horses with carriages on cobblestone streets. While the thought of high society and misty mornings is appealing, both works of literature are also used to convey the ludicrousness of Victorian society. Whether it is Algernon or Jack bunburying in the country or Dr. Jekyll’s transformation into the detestable Mr. Hyde, each one has found a need to create a separate entity from themselves due to societal pressures. Wilde’s lighthearted mockery of the things central to society, such as class struggle and marriage, and his deliberate focus on things less meaningful, like cucumber sandwiches, adds a much more serious tone to his play in modern society than Stevenson, who uses graphic images and internal struggle to convey his thoughts on society and encourage reader introspection.

Wilde’s ‘The Importance Of Being Earnest’ explores various themes of love and marriage, especially in Act 1, where marriage in Victorian society is widely contradicted as a ‘very pleasant state,’ instead using various comedic devises, such as puns, double entendres and inversions to mock its virtue and morality.

The women of the play long to marry a man with the name Ernest so Jack and Algernon lie about their identities just for the sake of being able to marry the women they love. These men are able to simply lie about their names and create a completely new identity, replacing their old ones. The playwright uses this to explain how one’s image can be forged and created for one’s benefit. In the fictional sense, characters can be whoever they want to be, as they are people that solely exist in a made-up world, so anything is possible. In this play, Jack pretends to be “Ernest in town and Jack in the country,” as the name Ernest is a more likable name than Jack (12). He lies to everyone in town about his name, including his friend Algernon and love interest Gwendolen. When he states this line, he appears to be very casual and calm, as if the idea were obvious. This shows how one’s image is easily changed accordingly, based on the situation.

According to Petrie, “The men’s expectations pressured women to be the ideal Victorian woman society expected them to be” (Petrie 180). This is true for the typical Victorian ideal, but in “The Importance Importance of Being Earnest” Wilde reverses this idea, having the men get pressured by the expectation of the women. This is shown exceptionally true when both Jack and Algernon are at Shropshire and they are planning on getting re-christened in order to change their name to Ernest, as stated by Jack “I have just made arrangements with Dr. Chasuble to be christened at a quarter to six…” (Wilde 1766) and Algernon “I made arrangements to be christened at 5:30” (Wilde 1766). When Jack first finds out about Gwendolyn’s obsession over the name Ernest, and asks if she could love him if his name was Jack, she harshly responds “Jack? No, there is very little music in the name Jack, if any at all, indeed. It does not thrill. It produces absolutely no vibrations… I have known several Jacks, and they all, without exception, were plain” (Wilde 1742). This goes against the ideal that the

In nineteenth-century Great Britain, being homosexual was forbidden by law. As a result of these laws, many males were reluctant to form strong relationships with other men due to the fear of persecution. Although illegal, many such as author Oscar Wilde refused to abide by these regulations in order to find happiness in the company of other men. In several of his pieces, such as the play, The Importance of Being Earnest and the novella, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde shows the troubles in male relationships through the characters that he writes about. In the play, he presents a friendship between Algernon and Jack and in the novella, he focuses on a companionship between Basil and Dorian, both showing failed relationships between men. In the two pieces, men find difficulty in maintaining friendships among each other due to suffocating social standards and the conflicts spurred by these expectations.

Like any good dandy, Algernon constructs himself from the outside in. He does not insist on having an identity, he simply exudes one, and that contradictory persona lays the foundation for The Importance of Being Earnest as a play. In truth, Algernon “could not exist at all without a public whose standards of taste, hierarchies of value and conventions of discourse he could predict” (Godfrey 28) because of his ironic twisting of those same values. Wilde’s play, in the same way, could not exist if it did not have the framework of aristocratic London to echo and satire. Wilde’s values are woven throughout The Importance of Being Earnest, to the point where the concept is given life in Algernon and the story given traction by the duality of dandyism.

The Importance of Being Earnest revolves around substantiality and insignificance. Oscar Wilde, the author, seems to take great delight in making things as un-simple as possible. Although it seems that the primary reason for Oscar Wilde to write this play is to entertain people, he constantly explores what is important and what is trivial, often inverting the two, in an effort to criticize and make people be aware of the social problems of his time. Set in Great Britain at the turn of the century, Wilde’s play makes fun at Victorian society’s major obsession with minor things. For example, Lady Bracknell interviews Jack to see if he is a suitable husband for her Gwendolen.

The Importance of Being Earnest is a comedy whose playwright was Oscar Wilde and this play was first performed and years later were published in written format. Its first performance was at the St James Theatre, the 14th of February, in 1895 and was released with this subtitle: a trivial comedy for serious people. He released this play when he was in the highest point of his popularity before he fell in disgrace and was imprisoned. The first publication of the written play was in 1898.

In The Importance of Being Earnest, the author, Oscar Wilde uses characterization to put forth his theme of how humans attach importance to concepts that have very little meaning at all by describing each character to be judgmental and cruel towards one another. Lady Bracknell, for example, believes wealth is by far more important than breeding, and tends to bully everyone in her path including her own daughter Gwendolen. In the play, the society focuses more on how each person presents themselves, rather than their brutal actions. The Aristocrats, who are known as the upper class, tend to treat their close family and relatives poorly. Whereas the lower class, such as Jack and Cecily, have more trustworthy and compassionate relationships with their families. Even though Jack is made up to be trustworthy, he somehow turns out be a manipulated liar. Jack Worthing is a character in the play who repeatedly tells people his name is Ernest in the city, and Jack in the country. The only time Jack has ever showed his honesty was when he confessed the love he has for Gwendolen Fairfax.

In Act 2 of the Wilde’s play Gwendolyn and Cecily both confront Jack and Algernon about their names. Both men confess that they have been wearing disguises and leading double lives in order to maintain relationships with them. They both apologize for their actions and admit that they have not lived up to the values and attributes associated with the name Earnest. Initially, Gwendolyn and Cecily want nothing to do with them because they feel deceived and betrayed. However, they both decide to forgive them only if they change their names to Earnest. Jack and Algernon agree to “become Ernest through baptism” (Bastiat 3) because they do not want to lose them and what to live according to societies’