The Importance Of Being Earnest Satire Essay

The humor lies not on what Algernon is saying but how Cecily is reacting to his proclamation of love. Instead of rejoicing in Algernon words, Cecily is more concern about spelling everything correctly. This is where in the Victorian upper-class “style” is regard over “skill”. Here, Cecily is more concern about the delivery of Algernon love rather than the significance of it. Which in today’s modern culture that would be seen as absurd and ridiculous.

In conclusion, The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde demonstrates uses satire through the social, political, and religious ways of the Victorians and used them to make a mockery of their ideals, beliefs, values, and

“The Importance of Being Earnest,” a satirical play written by Oscar Wilde, discusses a vast variety of criticisms regarding the late Victorian societal period. In this comedic drama, focusing on and analyzing certain minor characters leads to a more effective interpretation of the messages attempting to be portrayed to the audience. For example, through the persona of Lady Bracknell, Wilde effectively mocks the concept of marriage for social status rather than love. Additionally, interpreting the roles of the lower class servants allows the readers to internalize the desperate need for social reform that the author felt at the time period. Finally, the entire concept of Bunburyism, or masquerading as an alternate persona, satirizes the hypocrisy of the Victorian Era.

Wilde uses the conventions of comedy to criticize Victorian society; four examples of this are the use of inversion, the presentation of marriage as a business deal, the use of deception and lies and the comic conservative ending.

In the play by Oscar Wilde “The Importance of Being Earnest”, Wilde takes a comedic stance on a melodrama, portraying the duplicity of Victorian traditions and social values as the modernism of the twentieth century begins to emerge. The idea of the play revolves around its title of the characters discovering the importance of being earnest to their individual preferences. The author uses the traditional efforts of finding a marriage partner to illustrate the conflicting pressure of Victorian values and the changing presence of modern thought.

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

- first the name Ernest, which is the main focus of the play, and also

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.

In The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde satirizes people in the Victorian Era for believing that their ideal romantic fantasies are pragmatic and attainable in reality. The play’s utilization of comedy of manners, through satire, aims criticism at the higher classes of society. Wilde shows that even though upper class citizens have a lavish lifestyle it does not mean that they can also obtain a romance that is as equally extravagant. Wilde’s usage of comedic tools, such as hyperboles and ironic concepts, emphasizes how people’s expectations and high standards can often jumble, as well as lead them astray, from the actuality of romance and how it is flawed rather than flawless, and that no one will always get the fairytale ending they

The Importance of Being Earnest is regarded as one of the most successful plays written by Oscar Wilde, a great 19th century playwright. Oscar Wilde deals with something unique about his contemporary age in this drama. It addresses Victorian social issues, French theatre, farce, social drama and melodrama. All these factors influenced the structure of the play in a large scale. This play is basically a Victorian satirical drama showcasing the social, political, economic and religious structural changes that affected 18th century England. It was the time when British Empire had captured most part of the world including Oscar Wilde’s homeland, Ireland. The aristocrats of England had become dominant over the middle and poor class people and

In Victorian society, the conventional norms of status, gender roles, and marriage were closely linked by an institution that men and women were placed with unrealistic demands and expectations from society. Women were brought up by their parents to become the perfect housewife, and men were forced into marriages based on status within the society. In Oscar Wilde’s play, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” he mocks the typical Victorian conventions and ideals of what society held on the individual. I will be examining the techniques Wilde uses, such as satire, symbolism, and farcical situations, and showing how he takes those Victorian

The Importance of Being Earnest is a comedic play that was written by Oscar Wilde in the late 1800s. He believed that people in the Victorian Era took life too seriously. He wrote this play with various forms of satire to ridicule the strict lifestyle the upper-class were boxed into. The upper class had pretentious values and behaviors that characterized Victorian life. During the Victorian Era, people were living under Queen Victoria’s monarch. During her reign, “Queen Victoria, conveyed connotations of "prudish, "repressed," and "old fashioned" (Roth). Wilde used the Victorian ideals to ridicule the upper-class by using satire in his play. The upper-class would have been the ones in the audience watching the play and they should have realized his use of satire to mock their attitudes and pretentious values. Oscar Wilde satirizes marriage, honesty, and sexuality throughout the play that the upper-class would be attending.

‘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.

First and foremost, The Importance of Earnest is a comedy of manners as Oscar Wilde’s main premise is to satirise the behaviours of upper class Victorian society, as he knew it. In order to achieve this he created witty dialogue, ridiculed the institution of marriage and appealed, more, to the audience’s intelligence than their emotions. However, he also creates comedy by installing farcical features such as mistaken identity, physical humour and an absurd plot.

The dramatic ironies in “The Importance of Being Earnest” add to the humor of the play. At the very start of the play, the readers only have limited information about the characters. When Jack visits Algernon in his house, the readers are taken along not knowing any knowledge of the events beforehand. They learn along with Algernon that Jack has a make believe brother whose name is Ernest, and Jack uses Ernest in order to get out of many situations as well as an excuse to not be a proper gentleman at times. Algernon learns that Jack’s real name is not Ernest, but that it is really Jack. However, the readers are given the privilege of knowing Jack’s true name from the very beginning. Then Algernon confesses to his “bunburying,” which is essentially the fact that he has a made up friend who is ill in order that Algernon can use him as an excuse to free himself from unpleasant social scenes. The action continues when Jack becomes engaged to Gwendolen under the false pretenses of the name Ernest. Skipping forward, Algernon visits Jack’s niece, Cecily, at Jack’s house in the countryside. Here is one of the first instances of dramatic ironies. Algernon introduces himself to Cecily as Ernest, Jack’s younger wild brother. The readers know that he is not, and that Ernest is made up in the first place. This creates humor due to the suspension it builds. The reader anticipates when Cecily will find out the truth, and how it will affect her. The plot thickens when Jack announces to Canon Chasuble that his brother Ernest is dead, while at the same time Algernon is pretending to be Ernest at Jack’s home. Once again this creates suspension because the reader has