Importance of Being Earnest Analysis
... The Importance of Being Earnest is the title of the last play that he wrote, and is probably the most important one of all. ... The Importance of Being Earnest is indeed a comedy of manners. ... They are in the middle of a big argument about which one of them deserves Earnest (they don’t realize that there are two of them), but as soon as Merriman appears with tea, they cease their bickering for the duration of the servant’s intrusion so as to keep up their social expectations and to act like “real ladies”: -Cecily is about to retort. ... The Importance of Being Earnest is indeed a play full of these issues of deception, from the title to the very last page. This piece of Wilde’s creation tells the story of two men, Algernon and Jack, who deceive their young ladies by telling them that their names are Earnest in order to have their love and full attention. When Algy questions Jack’s name, Jack replies: “Well, my name is Earnest in town and Jack in the country” , this man changes names depending on where he is so he’s therefore deceiving all of the people around him. Algernon is exactly the same; he deceives Cecily by pretending to be Jack’s non-existent “wicked brother” Earnest so as to get the chance of meeting her. “You I see from your card, are Uncle Jack’s brother, my cousin Earnest” , is what young Cecily says to Algy once he had handed over one of Jack’s in-town cards. ... One of Jack’s cunning schemes was the invention of a wicked brother Earnest which gave Jack the chance to go into town to see Gwen, the love of his life. He told the people around him at his house in the country that he had to leave to get Earnest out of trouble, hence his frequent absences from his domicile. ... This shows a certain sort of decent manners as it is less rude than simply backing out with the excuse of the event being too boring to attend. ... They seem to think I should be with him” , is Algy’s excuse for not being able to eat with his aunt, the Lady Bracknell. ... There is some good in everyone”, “If you don’t shake hands with Earnest I will never forgive you” . ... ” Jack often replies with: “Well at any rate, that is better than being always over-dressed as you are [. ... In The Importance of Being Earnest, it is the upper classes’ manners and conventions that are criticized and laughed at and not the certain individuals or smaller societies, like the poor and lower class people, who are different. ... These young ladies have only one criterion for a future husband: his name must be Earnest. ... They knew before they had even met their men that they would only love a man by this name: Gwen- “My ideal has always been to love someone of the name of Earnest […] The moment Algernon first mentioned to me that he had a friend called Earnest, I knew I was destined to love you. ... “It has always been a girlish dream of mine to love someone whose name was Earnest.