...In the Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde it provides humor by differentiating the society in which they say they are, but are acting differently and eventually are being made fun of. It demonstrates this by using imagery and the tone it creates that shows how they take society and think about love. This novel will be consider as a satire as well because it makes fun of the Victorian period. In act 2, Oscar Wilde uses imagery to show how Cecily’s letters are a fantasy that demonstrates how her relationship with Earnest was even though it was just part of her imagination. Before Algernon’s departure to the city, he questioned Cecily what was she talking about, “My letters! But, my own sweet Cecily, I have never written you letters”. Algernon was not aware of the letters in which he thought it never existed. Cecily’s answer was, “I remember only too well that I was forced to write your letters for you.” Even though Algernon (Ernest) never had the intention to write letters, she had the desire to do it herself, so she would not feel lonely and still have the desire to love him and marry him because of his name Ernest. We can see that the letters are just written things that are not even true....
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...Time Period and Literary Movement: The importance of being earnest was written in the 19thcentury, which was the Victorian era. The Victorian era was a period that brought England to its highest point of development as a world power. During this time, the English aristocracy was dominant, snobbish and rich. Numerous authors, writers, artists, and dramatists of that era expounded on social issues, especially those concerning the impacts of the industrial revolution and political and social reform.Although, many say Wilde’s importance of being earnest is a “shallow, universal farce” because it has nothing in relation to the historical background in which it was written. Nonetheless, Oscar Wilde’s references to the historical events of his time were rather surpassed...
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...“Wilde empowers his female characters but also undermines them”. To what extent do you agree with this view? Wilde’s comedy of manners play, The Importance of Being Earnest, holds a satirical outlook on Victorian life. Wilde uses both satire and farce in his play written and set in 1895 to depict a slightly exaggerated version of society as it was, with all its forms of hypocrisy, double standards and repression of women. Wilde chose to invert the usual gender roles in Victorian literature by portraying the women with a position of power and influence in their relationships and the men as fairly passive. However, as Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff “Bunbury” about the women they love, they appear to dominate not only their facades but the women’s own lives and relationships. In addition, Wilde uses comedic effects throughout the play when presenting Lady Bracknell, Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew, allowing them to be seen collectively as foolish and incredibly naïve. Lady Bracknell is first and foremost a symbol of Victorian earnestness. Initially, we see that she is powerful, arrogant, conservative, and proper. In many ways, she represents Wilde's negative opinion of the Victorian upper-class, their power and conservative and repressive values. Lady Bracknell's authority and power are extended over each and every character in the play. Her decision about the suitability of both marriages in the play provides the conflict of the story. She tells her daughter quite...
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...text: ``The Importance of Being Earnest´´. ``The Importance of Being Earnest´´ is a comedy written by Oscar Wilde in the year 1894. In the text, Oscar Wilde makes fun of the upper class in the Victorian Age society. The reason why he had written ``The importance of Being Earnest´´ was to irritate the Victorian society. He focused on the term bunburing, which means creating a false person or identity. The creation of a false person and the creation of a false identity take place in the text to masquerade the true intentions of the main characters, Jack and Algernon. There are five characters in this text; Algernon, Lady Braknell, Gwendolyn, Jack and Lane. Algernon, which is the owner of the house the story takes place in, is a bachelor who sometimes leaves London to help a sick friend of his. However, he is bunburying, since he has invented a fictive person, so he could get out off unpleasant situations, especially when it involves his Aunt, Lady Braknell. In this case, Algernon had invented a sick friend by the name of Bunbury, which is funny since the name suggests bunburing. Lady Braknell is the mother of Gwendelyn Fairfax and a perfect example of typical Victorian classism. She doesn’t want her daughter to marry Earnest, because she found out that he was an orphan. Her daughter, Gwendolyn, is in love with Earnest, who also loves her. Although she returns her affection towards Earnest, she is self-centered, since she desires only to marry a man named Earnest: ``Jack!... No...
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...Elise Rivas The Importance of Being Earnest Timed Write Mrs. O’Connell Prompt: Write a well-crafted essay that agrees with, disagrees with, or qualifies the following statement: Wilde’s play, The Importance of Being Earnest is a satirical look at a variety of social ills that Wilde would like to see changed. Saturday Night Live, a show on NBC dedicated entirely to skits mocking pop-culture, never shies away from provoking an audience. Nor does the show hide behind fears of flaunting an opinion. During the 2008 Presidential Election, one would have to be quite oblivious to not see the show’s blatant endorsement for Barack Obama. Each show begins with a political skit. But beyond SNL’s opinionated nature lies a desire to poke fun at the meaningless, trivial features of society. Most of the skits have no depth, like “Debbie Downer” and “Opera Man.” Oscar Wilde, particularly in his play The Importance of Being Earnest, like SNL, is funny for the sake of being funny. There is no implicit message. Wilde merely desires to provoke the audience by broaching laughable features of society. One would be thinking too intensely if one believes Wilde was proposing a societal change. A main focal point of satire in Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is towards the overbearing romanticism of relationships and in life. For example, Cecily, a young, googly-eyed girl, writes letters to herself from her imaginary suitor, Ernest. While explaining to her fiancée, Algernon, she...
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...The play, The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde is a comedy of manners because it mocks and ridicules the wealthy Victorian society of the mid 1800’s. Wilde uses witty dialouge and twists to create the ridiculous and outlandish plot. Although the play may be light hearted and often funny there is some depth and social commentary about marriage, education, and society. Act I begins in modern day London (1895) the play opens with the lighthearted and well-to-do bachelor Algernon Moncrieff awaiting the arrival of his aunt, Lady Bracknell and cousin, Gwendolen Fairfax for a meal at his flat. Unexpectedly, his good friend, Ernest Worthing drops by to visit. Ernest announces to Algernon that he is going to ask for Gwendolen’s hand in marriage but before Algernon gives him his approval he mentions a mysterious inscription on Ernest’s cigarette case that says “From little Cecily with her fondest love to her dear Uncle Jack”(1601). Algernon demands to know who “Jack” and “Cecily” are. Ernest admits his real name is Jack and Ernest is the name of his fictional troublesome brother who he uses as an excuse to visit the city and Cecily is Jack’s ward that lives with him in the country. Algernon then confesses he is also a “Bunburyist”, (a name he has given to someone that leads a double life) and he often uses his invalid friend Bunbury as an excuse to leave his social obligations in the city. After a brief conversation between Jack and Algernon Lady Bracknell and Gwendolen arrive...
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...Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Lenka Drbalová Comedy of Manners: William Congreve and Oscar Wilde Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc., M.A. 2014 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author’s signature Acknowledgement I would like to thank prof. Mgr Franková , CSc., M.A. and PhDr. Věra Pálenská, CSc. for their guidance, advice and kind encouragement. Table of Contents Preface ...............................................................................................2 Introduction ......................................................................................3 Chapter I – The Way of the World 1.1 In General ..................................................................................8 1.2 True Wit and False Wit ............................................................9 1.3 Courtship and Love .................................................................14 1.4 Invention vs. Reality ................................................................18 Chapter II – The Importance of Being Earnest 2.1 In General ................................................................................22 2.2 True Wit and False Wit ..........................................................23 2.3 Courtship...
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...Wilde’s two works, this research study can acknowledge the effect the expectations have on these characters; especially the men. Analyzing the characters in Oscar Wilde’s works, The Importance of Being Earnest and A Woman of No Importance, show how the expectations of society effects the characters’ behaviour and their reaction to society’s ideals. Oscar Wilde examines the impact of Victorian society’s unrealistic expectations on the individual in The Importance of Being Earnest and A Woman of No Importance, showing how rejection, whether from a potential partner or society as a whole, can lead to deceit and engaging in a double life in order to satisfy conventions. As it stands, these comedies are the fullest embodiment of Wilde’s lifelong assault upon commonplace life and commonplace values. It was inevitable that the conventional world should strike back at Wilde, at his character and his ideas, if not specifically at his play, but the speed and cruelty of the world’s retribution surpassed expectation. Four days after the opening of his last and finest comedy, the succession of events began that brought about his disgrace, imprisonment and exile. Wilde felt strongly that men and women should be treated equally when it came to sexual matters. It is a main topic of The Importance of Being Earnest as well as A Woman of No Importance. As several writers have suggested, it is not difficult to see that a concealed sin, especially a sexual one, and a plea for forgiveness might well reflect...
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...Oscar Wilde as a person, was described as a”flamboyant and vivacious playwright of the 19th century” (Campbell, Samuel. "Best Oscar Wilde Plays." Stage Milk. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Dec. 2015.) for the unyielding wit and cleverness displayed in most of the pieces of literature that he wrote. In “The Importance of Being Earnest”, Wilde expresses this form of cleverness through each of the characters that he created in the short play which only consists of three acts. Humor and irony are used throughout the play to assist, enhance, hurt or help the characters that are portrayed throughout each act in the play. “The Importance of Being Earnest” is a play based around a man named Jack, whom as an infant, was abandoned by his mother and left in a basket. He was adopted by a man named Thoman Cardew shortly after being found abandoned.Now as an adult, Jack is at the pinnicle of his class and one of the most important people within his community. However, at the beginning of the first act, Jack is introduced as “Ernest”. Even through the continuation of the act, he i referred to as Jack on script, but is Ernest while in character. Oscar wilde used irony and humor to help introduce, enhance, hurt and develop the characters throughout the play....
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...dramatic genre of comedy is relevant to Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest? The philosopher and literary critic Sigmund Freud agreed with Bentley’s statement on the dramatic genre of comedy, agreeing that ‘every joke contains an element of seriousness; a joke is never just a joke’. Wilde uses many aspects of comedy to back this opinion. The character of Lady Bracknell was created as a comic tool by Wilde to generate fun for the audience; her dialogue is essentially a way of creating humour, despite her domineering nature which is made absurd and ridiculous to mock the upper classes. This creates a light hearted tone. However, Wilde also uses the character of Lady Bracknell to express the undertone of catastrophe through her unwittingly funny comments on serious subjects. As soon as Lady Bracknell enters in Act one Wilde uses her as a tool to mock marriage. She talks about Lady Harbury who has recently lost her husband and, Lady Bracknell comments, ‘she looks quite twenty years younger’. Lady Harbury looking well is certainly due to the restraints of her strict Victorian marriage being broken, so she can now live ‘for pleasure’. In the 21st century if your husband died you would mourn his death, because modern marriages are mainly for love, not to gain status and money. This is part of the tone which Wilde has set of frivolity over sincerity. During Bracknell’s interrogation of Jack after his proposal to Gwendolyn, Wilde fills the dialogue with quips at the aristocracy...
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...English 202 8 June 2014 Final Paper In “The Importance of Being Earnest,” Oscar Wilde unmasks the societal contradictions of modern Victorian society. In a way this story is a Comedy of Manners because it makes fun of the idea of the upper class and how the people in it went about getting married. I think Wilde was trying to accomplish something when writing this story and that was to show how ridiculous the process of marriage was in the upper class in particular. His main point of this story is to show how shallow and hypocritical Victorian society is. The main two characters in the story are Jack and Algernon. They both have alter ego’s in order to escape the restraints that Victorian society impresses upon them. Jack is expected to take care of the young Cecily but he cannot resist the urge to party and have fun. As a result, he comes up with an alter ego named Ernest. He tells Cecily that Ernest is his younger brother and that he gets in trouble all the time. Being that he is the older brother he expresses that he has to get his Ernest out of trouble all the time when really he is just partying and escaping the life he really doesn’t want to live. Algernon also has an alter ego named Bunbury whose grave health conditions provide him with the excuse to escape to the country as and when he pleases. The fact that the two main characters have created alter egos to escape the life they are currently living shows that Wilde wanted to portray how people would do certain things...
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...attitudes to marriage and respectability satirised in ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’? Oscar Wilde uses the play ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ to mock and ridicule the attitudes and popular conceptions towards marriage and respectability of the upper class in his own time which he believed to be purely superficial. Through the use of controversial satirical caricatures- in particular Lady Bracknell - Wilde often exaggerates behaviour and language when addressing the topic of marriage to instigate humour. The comedy which is thus generated by Wilde’s epigrams, stereotypes and heavy irony invites the audience to laugh at the ridiculousness of their own attitudes in order to teach them a moral lesson. Marriage has always been subject to the whims of fashion, but in Wilde’s era the problem as he saw it, was that marriage appeared to have lost any connection with love. The societal rules and rituals which had to be followed for the arrangement of a marriage were necessary to sustain or improve an individual’s social position; eligibility was determined by a thorough interrogation of an individual’s name, wealth, family background and rank. However it could be argued that far from pushing the boundaries in making the audience understand their shallow values in relation to marriage and respectability one of the huge structural ironies of the comedy is that all characters marry their social equals- whether this is because Wilde thinks that they deserve each other or whether his challenge...
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...The Importance of Being Earnest Draft The opening scene of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ establishes the play as a Comedy of Manners as Wilde as immediately introduces some of the key ideas behind his satire of the middle classes, for example triviality and a lack of moral values. The setting of a flat on Half Moon Street immediately gives a sense of affluence. The description of the furniture with the adverbs ‘luxuriously and artistically’ deliberately focuses on aesthetic and makes no reference to substance or function, which reflects the superficiality of the upper classes whom Wilde will be satirising throughout the play. This introduces a sense of decorous pretence, which creates the perfect mood for Wilde’s comedy of manners. Algernon’s initial dialogue is a conglomerate of puns which immediately establishes him as a comical character and the archetype of the upper class bachelor. This is essential as Algernon is central to Wilde’s comedy of manners as he exemplifies the frivolity and hypocrisy of the upper classes, which Wilde will be satirising throughout the play. ‘…I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte.’ The use of the word ‘forte’ here is punning and ironical, as it can mean both a speciality, and a technique used by musicians in which the volume is increased to emphasise emotion. While Algernon did indeed play loudly, he claims ‘sentiment is my forte’, which is a reversal of the purpose of the musical...
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...“The real importance of Earnest is the thrill of brilliant repartee. And as we laugh, an amazing thing happens: Oscar Wilde comes alive.” The Washington Post commends the 2002 comedic motion picture version of Oscar Wilde’s well-known play The Importance of Being Earnest. The director, Oliver Parker, maintained the farcical humor of the original play while integrating cinematic staging elements such as elaborate costumes and deft acting to seamlessly create a new depiction of Wilde’s notorious play. The cast seamlessly portrays the originality of Wilde’s infamous characters: Jack played by Colin Firth, Algernon played by Rupert Everett, Gwedolen played by Frances O’Connor, and Cecily played by Reese Witherspoon. The amusing acting merged with...
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...Satire Within The Importance of Being Earnest Comedy is normally intentioned to be engaged in theatrical plays to develop a significant message. In witty, comical plays like “The Importance of Being Earnest”, the author, Oscar Wilde’s key objective is to create comedy in a number of situations creating ridiculous occurrences and absurd characters. Wilde presents the character(s) in the comedy play to obtain weaknesses, conceits, and lack of insight so that their acts can be easily compared between real life and form a sense of humor within the audience. Comedy of matters is a category of play suitable to uncover the superficial values of the dominant class in society written in a satirical but natural way. Wilde satirizes the values of the Victorian higher class using the characters Jack, Gwendolen, Algernon, Cecily, and Lady Bracknell. There are many examples from “The Importance of Being Earnest” that depict comedic and satire elements through themes like marriage and triviality. The nature of marriage, critique of marriage as a social tool, is a theme that is portrayed throughout Wilde’s play. It is also the most valuable during the Victorian era and to most of the characters especially to Lady Bracknell. She represents the predictable fascinations of the Victorian name such as social class, income, and an acceptable character. She views marriage as a financial business and does not approve of Jack to marry her daughter, Gwendolen, and simply because he is an orphan....
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