The Importance of Being Earnest

Characters Pretending to be Earnest The Importance of Being Earnest is a play written by Oscar Wilde. The setting of the play is during the Victorian age in England. There are many characters in the play that look as if they are displaying earnestness but, three of them stand out from other characters. Algernon Moncrieff, Gwendolen Fairfax, and Cecily Cardew are the characters that on the outside exemplify sincerity and an earnest attitude, but on the inside are lying the whole time. Telling…

Dorian Gray’ was published as a book in 1891. He lived in Paris, when he wrote ’Salom’ and with the help of Madame Bernhardt, the play was presented in the Palace Theatre. After several successful plays, Mr. George Alexander produced ’The importance of Being Earnest’ at the St. James’s Theatre. The play was written in 1895 and was a great success. With his plays he became very popular, but later in 1895 an unexpected circumstance shadowed his life. He lost in a prosecution against the Marquis of…

Both The Importance of Being Earnest and A Midsummer's Night Dream use the dramatic convention of forbidden love through most of the play. With the characters having to overcome the wishes of their parents and the forbidden love, to achieve what they want this was normally done through trickery or luck. For instance, in A Midsummer's Night Dream, Egeus bans the relationship between Hermia and Demetrius and is instead supportive of the relationship between Hermia and Lysander. In The Importance…

Victorian Satire in Oscar Wilde’s ”The Importance of Being Earnest.” Victorian era ideals are littered throughout Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.” Whether it be the act of bunburying, the prominence behind one’s name, or the suitability of someone in another’s hand in marriage, all are visited in this play in some form or another. Points of importance to Victorian culture are found quite trivial within the lines of this work published near the end of the same era, especially…

and the precedence of good over evil. Victorian author Oscar Wilde, however, challenged the bounds of typical Victorian literature and ultimately “opened the door for the development of modernism” (Gutierrez-Folch). Two of his works, The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband, portray Wilde’s ideas and attitudes toward Victorian literature in a satirical manner, encouraging audiences to recognize a deceptive society under Queen Victoria’s rule. The era of Victorian literature came on…

The story “The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde is a very political play that satirizes the beliefs in the Victorian Era, a fine example of the strict conventionalism would be the character Lady Bracknell. The lady of the house was like every upper class mother in the Victorian Era. She was looking for a man with a wealthy title and family, however, the man Gwendolyn loved was not very wealthy and had no title or family. Due to Lady Bracknell’s lack of knowledge on the man, she…

“In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing”. This quote was said by Gwendolyn after she and Cecily found out that their lovers (Earnest and Algernon) were lying to them about their real names. What Gwendolyn meant when she said that was that it does not matter if a person was truthful, kind or sincere as long as he was rich or good looking. That means that women at that time did not care for sincerity or kindness when looking for husband, but they only cared about…

Ernest Husbands or Earnest Husbands? In the play The Importance of Being Earnest, the characters view love and marriage differently than we do in modern society. In the play, Cecily and Gwendolen fall in love with the name “Ernest” rather than the person or their ability to be earnest. Also, when Lady Bracknell was interviewing Jack, she asked many questions that we would not typically ask when considering marriage. In modern society, most people fall in love with someone because of their…

recognition of its counterpoint in another.” One does not typically prefer to date someone with the name John, rather than Dylan, for example. Usually, a person will say a name does not matter when it comes to loving someone. However, in The Importance of Being Earnest, one name is all that matters. Gwendolen only desires to marry a man with the name Ernest, and refuses to settle for anyone less. On the other hand, in Romeo and Juliet, the Capulet Juliet does not care…

In The Importance of Being Earnest, there is a distinct lack of connection between the social classes (Stokes). As previously discussed, this is the product of the social contempt that the upper classes held regarding the lower classes. Although this system of royalty and nobility has almost been completely dissipated altogether, the old form of social prejudice has not been annihilated, but rather it has taken a new, if not more dangerous, form. Because we live in a society where everyone is…