THE IMPORTANCE OF

BEING EARNEST

A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

 OSCAR WILDE (1854 - 1900)
• An Irish poet and playwright

• His parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals; Wilde

spoke fluent French and German

• He studied the Greats at Dublin and Oxford

• The emerging philosophy of aestheticism

• One of the most popular playwrights in London

• Short stories, plays, The Picture of Dorian Gray

IMPORTANCE OF BEING
EARNEST – General facts
Premiered on 14 February 1895, St James’s Theatre

A farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious

personae to escape burdensome obligations

Triviality with which it treats marriage and satirizing of Victorian

morality

Some have praised the play’s humour, others commented on its

lack of social messages
 WILDE IN VOGUE
Wilde’s spectacular debut in the early 1880s had been
followed by journalism and editorship

• The Happy Prince and

• Premiere of The Importance
Other Tales (1888)
of Being Earnest was
postponed due to severe
• The Picture of Dorian Gray
cold weather
(1891)

• A Woman of No Importance
• The glamour of a first night +
fashionableness of Oscar
(1893)
Wilde
• An Ideal Husband (1895)
THE
SCANDAL
• The Marquess of Queensberry
planned to present Wilde a bouquet of
rotten vegetables

• Their feud came to a climax in court

• Wilde was arrested and convicted on

charges of gross indecency

• He never wrote another comic or

dramatic work
 “Indeed, [Wilde] made dying
Victorianism laugh at itself, and it may
be said to have died of the laughter.

— Richard Le Gallienne,
The Romantic ‘90s
 THEMES
The Art of The Pursuit
I Deception II of Marriage

Cash &
III IV Name & Identity
Class

Hypocrisy &
Men & Women
V Victorian VI in Love
Morality
 DECEPTION
• Aesthetic movement – “Does art imitate life, or
life imitate art?”

• Fact vs. Fiction conflict

• The false identities of Algernon and Jack

• Cecily also creates a fictional story of her

engagement to an “Earnest”

• Gwendolen’s matrimonial fantasies about

marrying an “Earnest”

• Life itself is an artifice → a making of art

 THE PURSUIT OF
MARRIAGE
• A driving force behind much of the play’s action

• The play reads as a marriage plot → similar to many Victorian novels

• Jack and Algernon are willing to go to outlandish lengths to appease Gwendolen

and Cecily’s fickly desires → engagement as the ultimate goal

Jack Gwendolen Algernon Cecily

CASH & CLASS
• The Victorian society was obsessed with wealth,
family status and moral character

• All present in Lady Bracknell’s interrogation

• She measures Jack’s class and character on the

basis of his finances and family relations

• No family relations → bad character

• “To lose one parent may be regarded as a

misfortune… to lose both seems like
carelessness.”
 NAME & IDENTITY
• Jack’s search for his origins → Wilde’s satire of Victorian
shallowness and overemphasis of class

• earnest, adj. = very serious and sincere

• Earnest – a Christian/given name, not a family name

The ideal husband/lover An alter ego, a pretense

The name “inspires A way to court ladies and
absolute confidence” indulge in pleasures of life
 VICTORIAN HYPOCRISY
• Exploration of Victorians’ social mores through puns and inversions in the
characters’ actions and dialogue

Style Money

Good
Sincerity
character
MEN & WOMEN IN LOVE
 MEN & WOMEN IN LOVE
• A Wildean game of love: Jack/Algernon vs. Gwendolen/Cecily

• Stereotypes: men as suave dandies, women as vapid beauties

• When it comes to marriage →

women hold the position of
power

• In Victorian society male

elders chose the men with
whom their daughters,
sisters, nieces interacted and
dated
 COMEDY OF MANNERS
A genre of realistic, satirical comedy of the Restoration period (1660 - 1710) that
questions and comments upon the manners of a society

Shakespeare Restoration comedy

Much Ado About Nothing
1st comedy of manners in England Both deal with the
aristocracy, have convoluted
plots and foppish characters,
and are generally satirical in
Ancient comedies nature
Meander’s Greek and
Platus’ Roman comedies
Oscar Wilde
 • An age in which customs and
An age of ideals manners were coming
increasingly under scrutiny

• In IoBE, such a social tension

finds form in two sets of figures –
traditional morality vs. the younger
generation

• Gwendolen and Cecily → New

Women / women unafraid to admit
that their love depends entirely on
a superficial quality
 SYMBOLS
I Town & Country II Bunbury

III Tea Service IV Food

Orphans &
V The Dandy VI Wards
 TOWN & COUNTRY
• Residence = a key signifier of social standing
and sophistication

• Lady Bracknell’s interest in Jack’s address –

class ↔ fashion ↔ residence

• His house in town is “unfashionable,” and his

country estate just “gives one position”

• Gwendolen judges Cecily based upon her

upbringing in the country
 BUNBURY
• Bunbury = a fictional invalid that Algernon makes up; a
ready excuse

• He also uses the term “bunburying” to describe Jack’s

false representation as “Earnest”

Deception
Bunbury Fiction
Escapism
 TEA SERVICE
• Several pivotal scenes resolve around tea → carefully crafted scenes in which
the characters negotiate tricky scenarios

• Cecily and Gwendolen veil

Negotiating
their antagonism towards
tense social
each other through a
situations
demonstration of grace

• Gwendolen – makes funs of

Cecily’s lack of taste
• Cecily – keeps offering her
cake and sugar
FOOD
• Food symbolizes excess and
overindulgence
• Algernon cannot stop eating → his
appetites are just as excessive
• The jokes about food provide a sort of
low comedy
• Some argue that food in IoBE can also
be seen as a stand-in for sex
• Food and gluttony – other appetites and
indulgences
 Pays particular
attention to his Witty and
Popularized appearance
by Wilde charming

THE DANDY

Late A stand-in for

Victorianism Self-styled Wilde
philosopher
ORPHANS & WARDS
● Jack as an orphan → difficulty of
marrying Gwendolen and settling
into a traditional family

● Cecily as an orphan → lack of a

real parental figure, attentive to her
needs

● They both highlight the place of

love and imagination in the creation
of family bonds

● They both invent fictional

relationships in order to forge real
connections with others