The Victorian Era

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

       In the play “The Importance of Being Earnest”, Oscar Wilde focused on the Victorian Age by mocking the Victorian principles and ideals. Wilde utilized satire and mockery through the character to make fun of their culture, principles, behaviors, and morals of the Victorians. Wilde also used the characters in the play to demonstrate the political, social, and religious views in the late 1900’s.

Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest. The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Alison Booth, et al. 9th ed. New York: Norton, 2005. 1879-21.

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.

Wilde’s novel is an obvious evidence of the pervasiveness of main values of Victorian society. According to Wilde, “Aesthetic tendencies have to be taken with prudence and have reasonable limits that imply moral responsibility.” According to the critic Alex Ross, “ Wilde’s aestheticism, his fanatical cult of beauty, was the deepest and most lasting of his passions, and it is now the most radical about him” (Ross 2011).

The Victorian Era or the romantic period was a time in which Queen Victoria ruled the throne. The Victorian period formally began in 1837 the year in which Victoria became the Queen of England and ended in 1901 the year in which she was laid to rest. In this paper, I will discuss Queen Victoria’s life or what we all know to be “The Victorian Era.” I will highlight some of the most powerful events that occurred during this time, the many reforms that were passed during Queen Victoria’s ruling, I will discuss the political, cultural, and social developments of this time period. I will speak about some inventions of the Victorian Era, and the two main political parties better known as the Tory and Whigs that were popular during this age. You will discover what imperialism is, the commonwealth, The British Monarch and why and how Victoria was such a remarkable monarch. I will even tell you some of the most interesting facts that I have learned to be true about Queen Victoria.

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.

Oscar Wilde was a figurehead for a larger cause in the late nineteenth century. His reality crumbled under the cognitive dissonance of the high-class aristocrats and their struggle to find any reason to overthrow those who are cognizant enough to see and react to said dissonance. What are best known as the Wilde trials, consisted of using completely fictional literature as evidence to real events. Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray was a tool used to undermine Wilde’s authority and testimony about his personal romantic encounters. While, the book may hold status as a revolutionary novel about exploring ideas, the Victorians did not think as much once they took a closer look. Once a popular novel about high-class society soon became an object of severe scrutiny and libel for the author. The Victorians began to change how they perceived the entire English language. The aesthetics that they once sought after were now being thrown into question.

The play, The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde was written in the Victorian Age of England. During this time morality was connected with sexual restraint and strict codes of conduct in public. This play hilariously critiques Victorian moral and social values while the characters in the play try to figure out the meaning of “earnestness”. Wilde uses humor and irony to publicly ridicule the self-aggrandizing attitude of the Victorian upper classes, as well as to expose their duplicity and hypocrisy in regards to their social behaviors.

Wilde jeers at the corrupt mind-sets of the Victorian Era by making the stiff beliefs of his community

Throughout the Victorian Era, there was an aura of confusion and contradiction. The metaphorical envelope was being pushed in the areas of science and literature, but respectability and morality

In the sardonic play,” The Importance of being Earnest”, the author, Oscar Wilde, criticizes the Victorian era. Wilde touches on key subjects like social status, marriage, and utilizes various symbolisms, in a comedic way to mock the Victorian era’s detrimental culture. Wilde uses contrasting characters to convey a symbolism of the Victorian era in a satirical way. In doing this, he uses different characters to prove his point in mocking Victorian culture. These characters are used represent all that is worth criticizing in Victorian society.

Mabel epitomises the supposed silliness and frivolity that a young Victorian girl would have and this is further encouraged by Wilde’s use of epigram and absurdity in the line “Oh, I love London Society! I think it has immensely improved. It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what Society should be.” showing the shallow and flamboyant nature of Mabel’s character to reflect to typical young woman in Victorian society. Farce can be further seen by the interaction between Lady Basildon and Mrs Marchmont who are described as ‘types of exquisite beauty’. The lines (Lady Basildon) “What martyrs we are, dear Margaret.” (Mrs Marchmont). [Rising.] “And how well it becomes us, Olivia!” Utilises hyperbole to show their frivolity and silliness to highlight their situation within the gender norms. Their willingness to suffer conversation with boring men makes them more attractive and also shows how women were forced to settle for men they may not particularly like. This comment is then further driven by Wilde via Lord Goring’s epigram “if we men married the women we deserved, we should have a very bad time of it” highlighting the inequality between the sexes in terms of

At first glance, Oscar Wilde’s works The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lady Windermere’s Fan, and The Importance of Being Earnest seem quite disparate. The first is horror, while the latter two are comedies; the first is a novel, while the latter two are plays; the list of the differences between the works could continue. The striking thing about these works, however, is that despite their differences, Wilde manages to unify their themes. Wilde uses the symbolism in each work—images of self in The Picture of Dorian Gray, the fan in Lady Windermere’s Fan, and the use of names in The Importance of Being Earnest—to collectively criticize Victorian morality.

great prosperity in Great Britain's literature. The Victorian Age produced a variety of changes. Political and social reform produced a variety of reading among all classes. The lower-class became more self-conscious, the middle class more powerful and the rich became more vulnerable. The novels of Charles Dickens, the poems of Alfred,