While reading Oscar Wilde’s story “The Importance of Being Earnest” I can see that the play is about a debate of pleasant and unpleasant marriage. Wilde explores sincerity in his play by really gearing the play around the word “earnest”. In the play both women wanted to marry a person named “earnest” because they thought that it actually meant to be sincere, responsible, and earnest. The play presents many scenes of sincerity versus hypocrisy. For example, when Lady Bracknell asks Jack about Cecily with the intention to judge her as a wife for Algernon, while Lady Bracknell notices Cecily after she found out about her money. But, also the men characters play having a double life or secret life. Both men Jack and Algernon make up a fake…
Wilde's famous epigrams remain intact and are reasonably well spoken. But the extra visual accouterments have a profoundly distracting effect. They interrupt the rhythm and retard the momentum of brilliantly silly banter that could be described as incisive nonsense. When Lady Bracknell (Judi Dench), the play's ur-snob, declares, ''Ignorance is like a delicious exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone,'' she conjures a privileged, cucumber-sandwich world where a devotion to the superficial is a code of behavior and proof of social…
The Importance of Being Earnest is a play that trivializes many things: the Victorian society, the nature of marriage and especially the concept of human identity. While identity is typically considered to be something concrete, the characters within the play are constantly in flux. This is especially evident in Jack, whose forms his identities as he goes through life. He transforms from a nameless baby in a handbag, to Jack the thriving member of the countryside bourgeois, then further on to become Ernest, a member of the aristocracy. Jack creates a fiction that is eventually proven to be his actual identity. The army lists show that his father’s name was Ernest John, which prove that Jack was both an Ernest and a Jack, as he was named after his father. Through the army lists, Wilde shows the triviality of one’s nominal identity in Victorian society, and the importance of the art of creating an identity.…
Oscar Wilde's satire, The Importance of Being Earnest, targets society from the Victorian era. Wilde uses his characters and Tragic Comedy to satirize Victorian society. Wilde's Jack and Algernon reveal this idea in his play.…
Upon the opening of Act 2 in The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde sets out a rather peaceful looking scene, transporting his audience to Jack’s country estate in Hertfordshire. The act takes off in the Garden at the Manor House, described in the stage directions as ‘an old fashion one, full of roses’ with baskets and chairs set under a large yew tree. With the time of year being July, this all makes up for a somewhat simple Victorian summer setting, enabling the newly introduced characters to stand out, shining as new targets for Wilde’s satire. The first set of new characters are Cecily Cardew and Miss Prism, whom although live out the country, far from an urban artificial society, can still…
When Oscar Wilde wrote The Importance of Being Earnest he gave birth to a wonderful character named Algernon Moncrieff. In this essay we will see how the appetites of this character add to the humor of this play. To analyze this we will look at his character traits. Algernon's traits of gluttony, dishonesty, romance and wit hive us delightful humor throughout the play.…
Often times, authors and playwrights write characters and plots based on life experiences. These ordeals can very much alter one’s life and the perception of it. Author and playwright Oscar Wilde is no exception to this; with the many experiences that his own life holds, such as his double identity and homosexuality in the Victorian Era, Wilde is able to write his autobiography as a novel or play using characters similar to ones in his own life, as he has. In The Importance of Being Earnest, Algernon Moncrieff defies the Victorian upper class society by using his alter egos, Bunbury and Ernest, to appropriate his bad behavior and ultimately obtain what his desires. Algernon is a reflection of the play’s author Oscar Wilde as he learns about the importance of truth while working through his society-shaped id, ego, and superego. Faced with making decisions that align with Sigmund Freud’s psyche model, Wilde successfully breathes himself into Algernon while satirizing the society in which he grew up.…
Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest tells the story of two gentlemen who lead a double life under the name “Earnest” in order to win the hearts of their love interests.The play premiered in London’s St. James’ Theater in 1895 and is now performed in theaters throughout the world because of its timeless humor and whit. In his play The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde employs the use of satire to convey his criticism towards Victorian society’s views on marriage, deceit and duality, and gender roles.…
The importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde represents consistent themes throughout the play that relate to problems in everyday life. The play primarily revolves around two men, Jack Worthing and Algernon. Both men treasure the women they have always wanted and finally got, but soon this perfect love becomes complicated when both are found telling little white lies to get what they want. Wilde uses these two men and their stories to show how one little white lie creates more lies and leads to a downfall. Wilde illustrates throughout the play how society is dishonest.…
At the outset, the title of the play refers to the importance of being sincere, here Wilde's use of irony embodies the theme of satire. This theme runs throughout the entire play due to…
The Importance of Being Earnest is considered by many to be a comedy of manners, focusing on the love lives of aristocratic young people, and relying on the use of verbal wit, stock characters and humour over developing a deep plot and sense of character. In this scene, Gwendolen and Cecily have just gotten into a fight over their alleged fiancés mistaken identity. Through his use of hyperbolic language, dramatic stage directions, character role and theme, Wilde creates a comic scene.…
Cited: Wilde, Oscar. N.p.: n.p., n.d. The Importance of Being Earnest. Project Gutenberg, 29 Aug. 2006. Web. 1 Dec. 2013. .…
The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is regarded by many as one of the wittiest plays in the English language. However, it is not simply a “trivial comedy,” as its title proposes, but also a cutting satire appraising the conventions of Victorian society, chiefly the upper class. Much of Wilde’s social commentary is portrayed through the speech of the dictatorial Lady Bracknell, who embodies Victorian upper class conventions. Having ascended to her current high social status through a profitable marriage with Lord Bracknell, she defends her esteemed place in society. Fixed in her beliefs, Lady Bracknell criticizes education as “a serious danger to the upper classes” and blames Jack for “carelessness” for “losing” his parents, necessary family connections if he wishes to marry her daughter.…
In Oscar Wilde’s play, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” the traditionally esteemed values of duty, honesty, and hard work are tossed aside in favor of baser motivations. Pleasure, rather than morality, is the focus of every decision made by these less than admirable characters. As eloquently stated by Jack, “…pleasure, pleasure! What else should bring one anywhere?” (1735).…
The themes in Oscar Wilde´s “Importance of Being Earnest” such as hypocrisy, manners, dual identity, duplicity and deception are all closely linked throughout the play. One can see that the use of witticisms and hyperbole, combined with the themes Wilde commonly associates with Victorian lifestyle subtly, lightheartedly deride the audience. The effect of the theme duplicity and deception is essentially the criticism of the Victorian citizen. In creating the absurd lifestyle of his characters, he brings out what he feels are faults in society. The complications experienced by the characters are allegorical of the problems that the lifestyle creates, and the humour implicated throughout the storyline is simply to take the audiences focus off of the fact that they are being ridiculed. In this essay I will explore further when and why Wilde uses these themes, and how he puts them across in inoffensive ways.…