Duality In Oscar Wilde's The Importance Of Being Earnest

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Oscar Wilde’s comedic play The Importance of Being Earnest concerns the delusions and inconveniences derived from double lives and lies. Almost every main character has a degree of significant duality, though perhaps the character with the most dichotomous features in two separate lifestyles is the story’s very own protagonist, John “Jack” Worthing. Written in 19th century England, Jack Worthing is the perfect mirror image of the conventional Victorian male, representing the prototypical male bachelor. Dissatisfied with his monotonous social setting, a “restrictive, mundane and thus typically Victorian home life” (Wilde 3), Jack acquires a double identity as an alibi to help him escape his constrained lifestyle. Jack’s alternate identity is …show more content…
The Victorian Era has a rigid social structure that forces Jack Worthing to live two contrasting lifestyles, both of which are essential parts of his personality. In the country, Jack is a responsible guardian to his niece, and he shows good moral standards and altruism. Jack also stands for the Victorian values of morality, including honor, duty, and respectability. However, Jack becomes bored and begins to find the rules of the Victorian lifestyle somewhat dull and limiting on the elation one gets with individuality, risk, and elegance. This forces Jack to pretend that he has an irresponsible brother, Earnest, who’s scandalous life requires him to travel to London to provide necessary assistance. When he has escaped in the city, Jack as Earnest values form and joy above moral code while flaunting a strong sense of individuality, wit, and sophistication. At one side, Jack tries to uphold moral values and caters to other’s needs, and on the other, he tries to have more selfish fun without any moral responsibility. Ultimately, Jack terminates his alternate ego to make way for his ultimate passion, Gwendolyn, and to fully allow his conscientious mindset to take over. Soon after abolishing his disguise as Earnest, he realizes that his real birth name is in fact

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