Earnest

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. Through the use of repartee (one

One of Oscar Wilde’s most notable works, The Importance of Being Earnest, showcases Wilde’s bizarre and arguably backwards take on the literary device known as an aphorism. Most commonly, aphorisms are used in a didactic context and tend to reflect some form of ethical guideline or universal truth. It is easy to write off Wilde’s utilization of the device as ironic, as the aphorisms used in the play demonstrate values that are diametrically opposed to those we recognize in the real world; however

Many dramas are told in a specific way in order to make a point. Being written as a comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde adheres the idea that drama should never teach but only entertain. The play ridicules the two protagonists Algernon Moncrieff and John Worthing who carry a double life. They lie in order to have everything they want, and also to be able to conquer the women they love. John with his desire to marry Gwendolen Fairfax faces the difficulty of achieving her mother's

In the satirical play “The Importance of Being Earnest,” the playwright, Oscar Wilde mocks the ideas that Victorian society had about marriage. The scene in which Jack, one of the main characters, attempts to persuade Lady Bracknell to allow him to marry Gwendolen, her daughter, is over dramatic and humorous in order to show how the Victorian society treated marriages. Oscar Wilde subtlety argues, through comedy, that most marriages are for financial and social gain instead of love, emotions, and

In the satirical play The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, the author uses exaggeration and two examples of irony to create humorous dialogue and situations between the characters of Algernon—a wealthy man from the city who is good friends with Jack, and, in this scene, is pretending to be Jack’s made-up younger brother Ernest—and Jack’s young, eighteen year old ward who lives in the country, Cecily. Wilde uses Cecily’s age, personality and upbringing to his full advantage in this scene

Satire of Gender Within the Victorian Era Oscar Wilde in "The Importance of Being Earnest" satirizes gender within the Victorian Era. He does this by creating a foil between Gwendolen and Lady Bracknell. In this particular era, Lady Bracknell, is the perfect Victorian woman. She is prim, proper, and reserved. Whereas, Gwendolen is outspoken, clever, and bold. One begins to see this contrast based on how they interact with others and then each other. In her interaction with Jack as he proposes she

In Act II of the play, The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde creates humor through the use of the three levels of irony: dramatic, verbal and situational. This recurring elements can be seen throughout the scene in Algernon and Cecily dialogue with each other. Wilde does this in order to satirize love and romance in the Victorian Age as well as the standing values that it upholds. In the beginning of the scene, dramatic irony takes place when Cecily and Algernon “decide” to marry each other

their work to express their views on the social system and stratification of classes. Likewise, Oscar Wilde was a playwright whose criticism, expressed in the form of satire, mostly targeted the upper classes. His famous play The Importance of Being Earnest provides a prime example of the use of satire as a form of critic. Through the use of characterization and absurd language, Wilde mocks the value given to social institutions in the Victorian upper-class society. Specifically, he satirizes the socially

both”(Foster, 19). Reinert compares The Importance of Being Earnest with An Ideal Husband. In his earlier play, Lord Goring is a hero who seems flippant and shallow but is later shown to have wit and character. Whereas, in Earnest the characters remain fools throughout the play. The “heroes”, Jack and Algernon, seem to respect Prism and Chasuble who are meant to be the foolish characters. That is the reason The Importance of Being Earnest cannot be labeled as a play of manners

The Frivolity of Being Earnest: Inversion in The Importance of Being Earnest In Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, the trivial and superficial override the strict moral ideology of the Victorian period. The play revolves around Jack Worthing, a man who creates a second identity: when he is in the city, he is Jack, and when he is in the country, his name is Ernest. He is engaged to Gwendolen, an aristocratic woman who wishes to only marry a man who is named Ernest. Her haughty aunt, Lady