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... Wilde exposes this divide in scenes such as when Gwendolen and Cecily behave themselves in front of the servants or when Lady Bracknell warms to Cecily upon discovering she is rich, but the play truly pivots around the word "earnest." Both women want to marry someone named "Ernest," as the name inspires "absolute confidence"; in other words, the name implies that its bearer truly is earnest, honest, and responsible. However, Jack and Algernon have lied about their names, so they are not truly "earnest. ... Only Jack seems to have earnest romantic desires, though why he would love the self-absorbed Gwendolen is questionable. ... She does not consent to Gwendolens marriage to Jack on the basis of his being an orphan, and she snubs Cecily until she discovers she has a large personal fortune. ... Wildes The Importance of Being Earnest, which is distinctly Victorian in tone, dialogue and characterization, adapts this traditional theme to a contemporary vision. ... Although the play ends happily, The Importance of Being Earnest nevertheless leaves the audience under the impression that marriage and social values are often tied together in destructive ways. ... Because of the plays profound success, both immediate and enduring, The Importance of Being Earnest has come to represent Oscar Wildes late-Victorian view of the aristocracy, marriage, wit, and social life; the play is often seen as providing a deep insight into London society at both its finest and its most absurd before the dawn of the twentieth century.
Analysis
Perhaps the single reason that Oscar Wildes The Importance of Being Earnest has endured as one of the greatest and most popular works of literature to emerge from Victorian England is its brilliant wit, which conveys both humor and social satire. This wit is the key to Wildes own aesthetic style, which simultaneously scoffs at the uselessness of art and trumpets that uselessness as arts greatest value; as an aesthete influenced by such men as Walter Pater, Wilde believed in art for arts own sake, and it was only in being useless that art could exist for no sake other than its own. ... The Importance of Being Earnest, like so many of his works, focused on the elite, and while making fun of their absurdities and excesses, it also reveled in their witty banter and rambunctious lives. ... Running throughout the entire play is the double meaning behind the word earnest, which functions both as a male name and as an adjective describing seriousness. ... In claiming to be Ernest, both Algernon and Jack had, unbeknownst to themselves, been earnest. Yet even as he played with his theme for laughs, Wilde saw earnestness as being a key ideal in Victorian culture. ... In the figure of Lady Bracknell in particular, The Importance of Being Earnest lightly shows the limitations and unhappiness produced by such a way of life. ... With this, The Importance of Being Earnest makes a tentative further claim: that perhaps Algernon, Jack, Cecily, and Gwendolyn have been the earnest ones all along; unwilling to act earnestly according to social status and convention, willing to lie to get what they want, and never completely able to escape their own delusions, they at least act honestly with themselves. ... The line about the dentist and the construction of false impressions in Act I is one example of such a pun, as is the joke about being "exploded" in Act III. ... Algernon is being totally absurd; one cannot forget that one is married. ...
Overall, The Importance of Being Earnest has many goals.
Approximate Word count = 2870
Approximate Pages = 11.5
(250 words per page double spaced)
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