The Importance Of Being Earnest By Oscar Wilde

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

Oscar Wilde’s play, The Importance of Being Earnest; A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is best described as such, a trivial comedy for serious people. Wilde’s play is structured through the influences of social drama and farce. This play was written in 1895 during the Victorian era where an expected behavior governed all areas of life including sexuality and frivolity. Oscar Wilde’s own sexuality is historically well-known as he was married to a woman, but partook in sexual relations with men (“Oscar Wilde”). This play was birthed during the midst of pressures that Wilde experienced in balancing his marital life and precariously trying to maintain his homosexual proclivities. Wilde’s response to the English aristocracy, in all its arrogance,

Seeing the orthodox through the play and the part of Wilde no one has ever seen shown through the writing of The Importance of Being Earnest. “ The Importance of Being Earnest is his exuberant parody of the ‘trivial comidies’ (his own amongest them) which the ‘serious people’ had established in the english theatre” (Allingham). The show of comedy throughout the play even when performed in the english theater shows the true joy in the authors writing. Comedy shown even with how the characters speak or act to one another in the play such as the two women act toward each other. “ You have filled my tea with lumps of sugar, and though I asked you most distinctly for bread and butter, you have given me cake. I am known for the gentleness of my dispostion, and the extraordinary sweetness of my nature, but I warn you, Miss Cardew, you may go too far” (Wilde 63). The comedy comes from them showing there actual dislike between each other but doing it through comedy of messing up things she asks for. The relief of comedy throughout the play can become touching also very

The Importance of Being Earnest is a comedy of manners in which Oscar Wilde satirizes the way in which the people of the Victorian Era act. The play itself follows Algernon Moncrieff and Jack Worthing, and their quest to get acquainted with their future fiancées, Cecily Cardew and Gwendolen Fairfax. Additionally, Wilde wrote the play during the aestheticism movement, which promoted the creation of art for art’s sake. Through the use of humor, irony, and sarcasm, Wilde highlights the artificiality of Victorian society. From this, two major themes arise: people from the Victorian Era place significance on superficial details, which in turn causes them to disregard the concept of love in marriages.

On the eleventh of November, I was able to take in a performance of Oscar Wilde’s 1895 comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest, a Trivial Comedy for Serious People, it was performed in an amphitheater from within Corning Community College. Additionally, it was presented by the aforementioned college, and the Muse of Fire Theatre group. While initially off putting, the overall experience was generally an enjoyable one.

The Importance of Being Earnest has been referred to as “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People,” these “serious people” were those of the Victorian contemporaries. Wilde’s writings created this dimensional portal that allowed viewers to visualize and understand the actions that took place “behind doors” in this era. He suggested that these contemporaries should treat trivial matters with greater respect and pay less attention to what society regarded as serious. In Victorian society only several things were spoken about seriously: appearance, style, and money. Wilde not only expressed this philosophy in The Importance of Being Earnest, but in recently read, Lady of Windermere 's Fan as well. Oscar Wilde’s most commonly trivial matter was marriage and how it was seen as an arrangement, way of gaining social status, and a game.

The Importance of Change in Society Oscar’s Wilde play, The Importance of Being Earnest, mocks the values, principles, marriage, and search for love during the Victorian Era. It makes fun of the social hierarchy and climbing to the top. Wilde made society question their obscure values and ideals of marriage. He made two characters that felt so pressured to be serious and sophisticated all the time, that they had to create alter egos and fake friends just to escape the pressure. Oscar Wilde uses satirical humor and outlandish characters to highlight the absurdity of the society in The Importance of Being Earnest.

Oscar Wilde frames "The Importance of Being Earnest" around the paradoxical epigram, a skewering metaphor for the play's central theme of division of truth and identity that hints at a homosexual subtext. Other targets of Wilde's absurd yet grounded wit are the social conventions of his stuffy Victorian society, which are exposed as a "shallow mask of manners" (1655). Aided by clever wordplay, frantic misunderstanding, and dissonance of knowledge between the characters and the audience, devices that are now staples of contemporary theater and situation comedy, "Earnest" suggests that, especially in "civilized" society, we all lead double lives that force upon us a

Oscar Wilde’s, The Importance of Being Earnest, is a satirical play for earnest people. Wilde uses witty and humor through analogies or metaphors to address matters such as marriage and class structure. Wild’s play is much of a satirical attack toward the higher class in a Victorian society. The Importance of Being Earnest, acts as a storyline of living a double life. Jack and Algernon claim to be an ideal figure, Ernest, whom which attracts women. Both characters, living the double life, tend to get in a situation which leads to failure, when they were discovered of being frauds toward the ending of the play. Then, Jack’s history if revealed when it is discovered that, Jack has been actually living a lie all along. Throughout the play, Wilde demonstrates how the Victorian era had a corrupted class structure in which those in the upper class took pride in their knowledge and position to judge those who are not in the equal status as them.

‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, is utilised by Wilde to draw attention to the superficiality of the social facades predominantly maintained by the upper classes, through the physical depiction of Jack and Algernon’s aliases. Wilde further exemplifies his discontent with widespread social conventions at the time by satirising the arrogance of the aristocracy with a constant underlying representation of the lower classes as a more humble and less pretentious social division. Moreover, the playwright embeds heavy hypocrisy and explores the general understanding of what it means to be ‘earnest’ in order to mimic and highlight the flaws of Victorian society at the time.

There is no denying that Oscar Wilde was an extremely gifted and talented writer, whose individual and enlightened views on life, as well as the impact of his social life led to the basis of many of his great works. The Importance Of Being Earnest allows the reader to relate different characters and meanings in the play to Wilde's very distinct character and lifestyle; allowing for endless possibilities of contextual investigation and discovery.

Oscar Wilde’s short play “The Importance of Being Earnest” was written during the Victorian Era. This was a time when strict moral values were emphasized. On the cover of “The Importance of Being Earnest” there is a subtitle “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People.” Despite using the word “trivial,” the play is important because it reflects the Victorian Era’s significance of social hierarchy. When Wilde refers to “serious” people, he means the ones that followed the Victorian morals in order to be presented in the highest fashion. “Serious” people during the Victorian Era were able to read this work without feeling as though their beliefs are threatened. The title of the play is to the true meaning,

First, The Importance of Being Earnest has multiple examples of satire throughout the play. One example is Lady Bracknell discussing the education system in London. She says: “I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and

During Oscar Wilde’s life, the practices and standards of society heavily conflicted with his personal beliefs and stances. Wilde’s prevalent homoeroticism during a time in which homosexuality was socially unacceptable, served as unassailable evidence in his conviction. Ultimately, the inclusion of such passages resulted in his imprisonment. The necessity to disguise and conceal his homosexuality led to Wilde’s criticism of the need for social facades. He, therefore, used his works, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, as a means to convey his true feelings and beliefs and to criticize and satirize the shallowness and superficiality of the society in which he lived. Oscar Wilde condemns the suffocating and superficial standards of Victorian era society by displaying and denouncing the absurdity of social facades.

The Importance of Being Earnest was one of the best comedy manner plays I have read thus far. The play was written by Oscar Wilde, which happened to be the best masterpiece he has ever written out of all four of his stage comedies. The Importance of Being Earnest was first published in 1899. This play was a self-parody and unreliably explanation on the dramatic farce genre for Wilde. This play is a comedy of manner during the Victorian Age. The Victorian Age was a period of peace and sensibility. The Importance of Being Earnest was an early trial in Victorian melodrama. This play was particularly known as a satire with a touch of sentimental comedy. This play was known for its worldly deliberately farce. The Victorian society dealt with