Humor In Oscar Wilde's The Importance Of Being Earnes

In Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" he uses various comedic devices to create comedy; most noticeably melodrama and farce. These devices are used excessively in order to repeatedly address serious matters in a light-hearted manner; Wilde does this to create humour as opposed to offending his audience. Wilde deliberately wrote the play in this manner as he was fully conscious that his audience consisted of upper class Victorians. Throughout the play, Oscar Wilde articulately trivializes particular values which are supposed to be important in Victorian society, such as marriage and aristocracy, through the use of witty paradoxes and epigrams. Wilde's intentions were to make society think more profoundly and to make them more cognizant of serious matters in life, which should be treated with sincerity and the trivial things with seriousness. Therefore, Oscar Wilde's use of subtitle is not completely appropriate.
One of the values which are satirized by Oscar Wilde is aristocracy. As with the rest of the play, Act 1 is closely constructed and the opening exchanges between Algernon and Lane establishes the tone of the play: light-hearted, witty yet beyond the reach of orthodox morality. From the opening act it is evident that Algernon's relationship with …show more content…
Instead, I believe Wilde has written the play in order to express the importance of recognizing the hypocrisy of Victorian society and allow people to reflect on how to rectify their faults. The content of the play is predominantly based upon Wilde's own personal thoughts and experiences, such as the double life of Jack and Algernon. Therefore, despite the repetitive use of witty paradoxes and absurd epigrams, Wilde has successfully managed to educate the audience of serious values such as marriage, death and