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Literatura Inglesa IIi: Pensamiento y Creación Literaria en la 1.ª

Mitad del Siglo XX
3º Grado en Estudios Ingleses: Lengua, Literatura y Cultura
Facultad de Filología
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
Reservados todos los derechos.

No se permite la explotación económica ni la transformación de esta obra. Queda permitida la impresión en su totalidad.
Unit 1
The Discourse Between or the Need to “Make It New”
LITERATURE IN AN EVER-CHANGING WORLD
1.- WHAT IS NEW IN THE MODERN ERA?

The modern period in literature is considered to run from the c16 century onwards. The
word ‘modern’ stems from the Latin modo which means “just now”, and the most
immediate definition provided reads: “Of or pertaining to the present and recent times as
opposed to the remote past”. For instance, in the c15, modo, or modernus, referred to
the Christian present as opposed to the Roman past. Referring to the ‘modern era’ in
relation to the Victorian past works to involve the reader in the period rather than her/his

looking at it from a distance.
It’s always risky to refer under a single heading to the period covered in this course: the
fin de siècle, the Edwardian period and the Georgian period.
The key word in the period is ‘change’.
‘What was happening that made individuals so prone to seeking new forms of looking at
the world and to approaching life?’ In general terms, ‘there was a need’ to challenge
Victorian values and Victorian morals. Despite some voices had previously spoken out it
was around the 1880s when confidence in society’s institutions and authority faltered
and Victorian positivism was questioned, bringing about a crisis in the power and ideals
of Victorianism.
The 1851 Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London served to display the progress
of a nation that had achieved a leading role in the international sphere. Crystal Palace
became the temple of the machine where to find breath-taking works of engineering, the
most amazing technical discoveries, the wonders of industrial enterprise, and the most
innovative works of art that were meant to show that Romanticism had been overcome.
The Exhibition loudly proclaimed the greatness of GB and its power, and its people’s
confidence. The following three decades are considered by most historians as the zenith
of the “Victorianism”.
Yet Victorian values were in decline. Two very dissimilar politicians dominated late
Victorian politics:
• Gladstone: liberal, humanitarian and dutiful. It‘s reported that Queen Victoria found
him boring.
• Disraeli: imperialist, nationalistic and charming. Apparently, the Queen enjoyed his
company, for he could make her laugh.
⎯ (1830-86) The Liberals on the rise:
• (1868-74) after the 2nd Reform Act, Gladstone was Prime Minister of the reforming
government.
• (1874-80) Tory majority government under Disraeli, seen as a reforming
government working under the policies established by Gladstone.
• (1880-86) Gladstone governed again (2nd and 3rd terms), but he was brought down
by the Irish issue.
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⎯ (1886-1906) Tories, now the ‘Unionists’, in power.
This is also the period of the advent of Marxism; Britain entered industrial competition
with Germany and US most prominently.
A need was felt for social and political reform. The policies of Liberal thinking that
appeared during the 2nd half of the c19 were promoted by the ‘old Whigs’ (aristocracy,
landlords and members of the House of Lords), by free traders and industrialists, and by
social reformers entrenched in all walks of life. These policies of Liberal thinking included
concern with issues such as:
→ The notion of Utilitarianism (put forward by Jeremy Bentham advocated that
‘morals and legislation’ should aim at achieving ‘the greatest good for the greatest
number’)
→ The notions of liberty and individualism
→ A proposal for social reform (suggested by Edwin Chadwick) that entailed
economic policies of ‘retrenchment’ (minimal state expense, and with efficiency in
government finances). Regarding economics, the policies were those of free trade,
anti-protection or laissez-faire. They followed Adam Smith’s theories promoted in
his study Wealth of Nations (1776): “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of
production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as
it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.” There was also a drastic
movement from an economy based on land ownership to a modern urban economy,

based on trade and on manufacturing.
Some important political reforms relate to the People’s Charter. The Acts for the
Representation of the People were debated at the turn of the century and gave, in 1918,
the right to vote to men over 21 and limited female suffrage to some women over 30
(universal suffrage for both sexes was achieved in 1928, and the age was lowered
to 18 in 1969). Other important measures were parliamentary reform and reforms to
increase education and to improve working conditions and health. Legal reform
proceeded slowly. Currently the most common form of entertainment was reading aloud.
Writers such as Dickens, Tennyson, or Trollope were widely read and discussed. The
advent of universal compulsory education after 1870 meant a much larger audience for
literature. The emergence of an unsophisticated reading public meant that literature was
divided between ‘high art’ and ‘low art’, the latter meeting the demands of much of this
new readership.
This was also the age of the ‘Irish Question’ a complex issue even today. The question
was whether the Irish should be allowed to rule themselves. Discussions on whether
Ireland was an ‘internal colonised zone’ emphasised its economic inequality and its
cultural differences with England. The cultural renaissance in Ireland around the turn of
the century was led by Anglo Irish writers including W.B. Yeats, Lady Augusta Gregory
and J.M. Synge. The men and women of the literary revival showed their love for Ireland
in their poetry, prose or drama. Groups as the Pan-Celtic Society and the Irish National
Literary Society were set up and involved W.B. Yeats, Douglas Hyde and Maude Gonne.
Yeats, Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Irish Literary Theatre (1898) in
order to use theatre to spread the ideals of the literary revival. As the Irish Literary
Theatre had no venue for its productions, the Abbey Theatre was set up in 1904.
The Irish Literary Revival produced an exceptionally strong body of work, which
stimulated Irish nationalism and gave Ireland a place on the international stage. The
writers of the revival were responsible for developing and articulating a new national
consciousness. The philosophy of the Gaelic League and the cultural activities of the
Irish Literary Revival influenced already existing political groups and new groups,
including the labour movement and Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin was the most important political
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movement to emerge from the cultural renaissance. Founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith.
Griffith was convinced that the 1800 Act of Union was at the root of most of Ireland’s
problems and believed that it was illegal. However, he was in favour of the withdrawal
of all Irish MPs from Westminster to form an independent assembly in Dublin. He
proposed a system of dual monarchy. Sinn Féin won several seats at local elections
but got little support from Home Rule advocates. Despite a close connection between
Sinn Féin and the IRB, the major difference was that Sinn Féin didn’t advocate
violence as a method of setting up an Irish republic. Despite the IRB was ready to act
in 1913, it lacked the means to carry out a revolution.
Land reform in Ireland had been taking place since the 1870s, but with little impact.
Unemployment and low wages meant that severe poverty was widespread. There was
little industry in southern Ireland and most of the labour force was unskilled. Living
conditions were worst in Dublin, people were poorly paid, frequently underfed, and lived
in condemned tenement flats.
By 1913 a series of strikes had taken place in Dublin. Police brutality was common, and
James Connolly set up the Irish Citizen Army to protect the strikers in November 1913.
The strikers were supported by many of the Irish literary and artistic community, as
well as militant nationalists such as Patrick Pearse and Thomas Mac Donagh. Many
workers were forced to return to their jobs by the end of January 1914, having been
starved into submission. Although the struggle ended in failure, revolution was in the air.
Notwithstanding the setbacks of the 1890s, the Irish Parliamentary Party believed that
there was hope of achieving Home Rule as the Liberals returned to office in 1906. The

Irish party held the balance of power after the 1910 general election. Home Rule seemed
to be within reach. In 1912 the House of Commons passed the Home Rule Bill and it
was due to become law in 1914. The Ulster Unionists began a campaign against Home
Rule during 1912-13 that led to the founding of the Ulster Volunteer Force in September
1913, with the Orange Order fighting to keep the Union in place and Ireland as part
of the UK.
The Ulster Volunteer Force acted as a model for the establishment of a similar voluntary
army in southern Ireland in 1914. Eoin MacNeill proposed setting up a civil defence
force; it became the Irish Volunteers. The Volunteers intended to safeguard the rights of
the Irish people, which they considered to be threatened by Unionist actions. The
Volunteers appealed to a large cross-section of the Irish people, including many men
already involved in groups such as the Gaelic League.
Despite the Irish Volunteers were over 100,000 by 1914, the authorities in Dublin did not
see them as a real threat as they had little money and few arms. On July 1914 a group
of Anglo-Irish nationalists imported guns and ammunition to Ireland in what became
known as the Howth Gun-Running. Despite the arms consignment wasn’t large; it
further spread the Irish militant nationalism and increased the joining volunteers.
World War I broke out on 4 August 1914, a week after the Howth Gun-Running.
Despite Home Rule was due to become law that September, the Prime Minister decided
to suspend the Act until the end of the war. Believing that the war would be over within
a few months and Home Rule would be granted the following year, a group of Volunteers
joined the British Army. Known as the National Volunteers while the rest retained the
name of Irish Volunteers. By the end of 1914 the Irish Volunteers had its own military
council, Patrick Pearse was its most outspoken and charismatic member.
The war made the possibility of the granting of Home Rule unlikely. The British War
Cabinet included two of the staunchest opponents of Home Rule and, in 1916, there was
a threat of conscription being extended to Ireland. As a result, belief in military action
as the best way forward was growing. The IRB saw England’s difficulties as Ireland’s
opportunity. A military council was set up in May 1915 with five members: Patrick Pearse,

Éamonn Ceannt, Joseph Plunkett, Thomas Clarke and Seán MacDiarmada. Despite
setbacks such as the sinking of a German ship carrying arms for the rising, the IRB’s
military council decided that the rebellion should take place on Easter Sunday, 1916.
After a series of obstacles, the military council decided to go ahead with the rising on
Easter Monday even though they realised that they were unlikely to succeed but were
prepared to make this ‘blood sacrifice’ for the sake of Ireland’s freedom. Pearse was
appointed President of the Provisional Government and Commander-in-chief of the
army. He proclaimed the Irish Republic from the steps of the captured General Post
Office (GPO) in Dublin. Despite initially taken by surprise, the British authorities reacted
quickly and suppressed the rising within a few days. Pearse surrendered on Saturday
29 April. Over 3,000 people were arrested in the wake of the 1916 Rebellion and over
half were interned in Britain. The leaders of the rebellion were tried and condemned to
death. Over a ten-day period at the beginning of May, fifteen of them were executed.
There was a public outcry about these executions and the Irish Parliamentary Party was
ineffective. Sinn Féin, came to be considered the most important Irish political
organisation. In December 1918, the general election resulted in a landslide victory for
Sinn Féin. The parliamentary party was left with only six seats, constitutional nationalism
had failed. Sinn Féin stated that its elected members wouldn’t sit in Westminster and
set about establishing in Dublin’s Mansion House an independent government which
the British Government refused to recognise. This led to a bitter Anglo-Irish conflict:
The War of Independence.
On 21 January 1919, members of the south Tipperary Brigade of the Irish Volunteers

killed two Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) constables in Soloheadbeg. This was the
first expression of physical force from a group of the Volunteers who wanted to act
independently of Sinn Féin, the political wing. In August 1919 the Volunteers changed
their name to the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The IRA had the support of much of
the population. By the end of 1919 it was obvious that the British authorities were
determined to use force to suppress the rebels.
The English government sent the first of a series of ex-service-men taskforces to Ireland
in March 1920. On 21 November 1920 (Bloody Sunday), eleven British intelligence
officers were shot in Dublin by Michael Collins’s gunmen. Crown forces reacted
by shooting into the crowd at a GAA march killing twelve people and wounding sixty.
Martial Law was declared in Cork, Kerry, Limerick and Tipperary on 10 December
1920; the following day a group of Auxiliaries went on the rampage in Cork city, burning
down the city centre. Eventually, it was agreed that all military activity was to cease at
noon on 11 July 1921. After a series of negotiations, a Treaty was signed on 6 December
1921. British rule in Ireland was at an end. Ireland had Dominion status and the 26
counties were to be called the Irish Free State. Britain retained three Irish ports, known
as the Treaty Ports, for defence purposes: Berehaven, Queenstown (Cobh) and Lough
Swilly. Ulster was partitioned, but the delegation believed that this was only a temporary
situation.
A provisional government was set up under Michael Collins to oversee the handing over
of Ireland to the Irish, and a formal transfer of power took place on 16 January 1922.
British troops in southern Ireland were evacuated and the Black and Tans, Auxiliaries
and the RIC were disbanded. The Treaty divided the Irish into two opposing groups. This
political split was paralleled in the IRA: anti-Treaty Irregulars (Republicans) and pro-
Teatry Army (Regulars). The division led to a Civil War. The general election in June
1922 resulted in victory for the pro-Treaty Sinn Féin candidates, but this meant that
the militant Republicans became more closely focused on rebellious action. A special
powers resolution came into effect on 15 October. It wasn’t until 6 November 1922
that the Irish Free State became a reality.

By April 1923 almost 80 Republicans had been tried, convicted and executed, greatly
weakening the movement. The Civil War ended on 24 May. The Civil War divided
political parties, movements and families and wasted the lives of many men. Sinn Féin
never recovered from the divisions of the Civil War years. New political parties developed
in its place such as the pro-Treaty Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil who were
anti-Treaty.
During this time, much of the attention of the country was also focused on the Empire.
Britain took control of key ports and islands around world. These ports and islands
became the bases for later expansion into the rest of the territory. The British Empire
was still expanding well into the c20 through protectorates.
The debates around the Empire and the impact they had in literature and other fields of
knowledge are much more intricate than this general approach might imply. This is so to
the point that the particular and complex questions raised by colonialism are still present
nowadays and form a full and independent body of research into the matter by the so-
called Colonial and Post-Colonial Studies.

The need for raw materials, gained through colonial expansion and exploitation, is one
of the consequences of the so-called Industrial Revolution.
Several reasons for the Industrial Revolution:
• Technological innovations in the production of textiles, iron and coal of the c18
and c19.
• A previous agricultural revolution had made Britain able to feed a larger
population, creating a greater demand for manufactured goods
• The innovations in transport (canals, railways, and shipping) helped spread
economic development to more remote regions. Soon, Britain realised the
advantages of the rapid transportation of foodstuffs. This gave rise to the notion
of ‘leisure’ (the country felt smaller and more manageable) and encouraged the
creation of ‘seaside resorts’. As the Industrial Revolution progressed, working
hours decreased, and the introduction of Bank Holidays meant that workers had
the time to take trips away from the cities to the seaside. The seaside resorts
introduced the amusement pier to entertain visitor.
In this period, this economic movement from landownership to a modern urban
economy was based on trade and on manufacturing. This accelerated the migration
from the countryside to the cities. Several results of this migration:
• Stimulus towards the development of ‘city’ professions such as law, accountancy
and management
• The growth of horrifying slums and cramped terraced housing in the overcrowded
cities. By 1900, 80% of the population lived in cities, ‘organised’ into geographical
zones based on social class. This was made possible by the expansion of
suburban rail transport. Some suburban rail companies were required by law to
provide cheap trains for commuters to travel into the city centre. The very notion
of ‘time’ changed: it was standardised in order to create a timetable based on
London’s time.
Technological developments helped to spread literacy: more newspapers were
published and read, more letters written as delivered faster, and political ideas were
spread faster through the newspapers and political campaigns. Parallel changes
occurred in culture and art, in transport and communication, and in health. The Industrial
Revolution also shifted the power from the aristocracy to the newly rich business leaders.
The new aristocracy became one of wealth, although titles remained socially important
in British society.
Artists felt alienated from the ruling culture and expressed their disdain for what they saw
as a ‘philistine’ public and moral tastes. Wilde followed the Art for Art’s Sake doctrine:
beauty and pleasure as ends in themselves. Polished, impressionistic images that
appealed to the senses and also a desire to shock and challenge Victorian values
dominated the arts. The figure of the dandy and the effeminate man appear. The
movement served to disengage art from any purposeful meaning in society. From the
1880s to the start of World War I, the Aesthetic movement liberated art from
pragmatism.
Art was an end in itself. The Aesthetic movement was born in France with advocates
such as poets Charles Baudelaire and Théophile Gautier. Inspired by Kant in relation
to the aesthetics and the pleasure obtained from viewing a work of art. For Kant, a
pure aesthetic experience is the contemplation of an object that provokes pleasure for
its own sake, with no other materialistic or utilitarian purposes. A phrase that will
accompany the movement is ‘art is useless’ and therefore it should be contemplated for
its value in terms of pleasure only. The Art for Art’s Sake motto will lead to the artistic
production of the Aesthetes. The views of French Aesthetics were introduced into
Victorian England by Walter Pater, who exposed the need to crown one’s life with the
most delicate and exquisite sensations in order to appreciate the supreme value of
beauty and the pleasure obtained from the ‘love of art for its own sake’. The moral
and artistic views of Aestheticism were expressed by the poet A.C. Swinburne and in the
1890s, as well as O. Wilde, by other writers such as Arthur Symons or Lionel Johnson.
Aesthetic values lived to the full brought about a different movement intrinsically linked

to the aforementioned: The Decadent Movement. The Decadents followed a way of life
based on the ideas of the Aesthetic movement. Art is totally opposed to ‘nature’
understood both in the biological sense and in the ‘natural’ norms of morality and sexual
behaviour.
The art of the Decadents was artificial and the decadence in their personal lives was
expressed in the search for strange ‘unnatural’ sensations which often involved drugs
and experimental sexual behaviour. The independence and self-sufficiency of art
stressed by the Aesthetes and Decadents, will strongly influence the writers of the inter-
war period such as T.S. Eliot, T.E. Hulme, W.B. Yeats and Virginia Woolf and the
Bloomsbury Group.
The belief that species were immutable had been questioned by naturalists since the late
18th C., and the proposition that plants and animals transformed themselves gradually
was finding more and more support. In 1859 The Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection was published. The book was the result of the appointment of Charles Darwin
as naturalist on HMS Beagle on a scientific expedition to survey the South American
seas. By 1844 the conclusions of his observations made during the journey started to
formulate the touchstone of his evolution theory: the principle of evolution by natural
selection.
Darwin was influenced by the theories of the political economist Thomas Malthus. In
Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus first observed that in nature plants and
animals produce a far greater number of offspring than can survive. He then extrapolated
this observation to the growth in population that was taking place in England in this period
and observed that the human species could also overproduce if left unchecked.
Malthus concluded that unless family size were regulated, famine would become a global
epidemic and destroy the species. Malthus maintained that poverty and famine were
natural outcomes of population growth but, he resorted to God as the explanation for
these natural outcomes. He believed that these outcomes were God’s way of preventing
laziness. Not only Darwin but also Alfred Russel Wallace arrived at the same conclusions

about natural selection after reading Malthus. The most important difference in views
was that the two naturalists framed this principle in purely natural terms both in outcome
and ultimate reason. This allowed Darwin to take a step further. He suggested that the
production of more offspring than can survive implies competition among siblings, and
that variations in the siblings would produce certain individuals with a greater chance of
survival. These would be the fittest.
Darwin called this mechanism ‘natural selection’: nature chooses the best individuals of
each generation and they transmit their favourable characteristics to their descendants.
This is how the ‘survival of the fittest’ works. This means the individuals perpetuating the
species are those more able to adapt to the environment, since adaptation to the
environment is the most important factor for the survival of the species. It is important to
note that even though it is commonly accepted that in The Origin of Species Darwin
postulated his theory of an ancestor to the human species, only twelve years later did
Darwin address this issue in his book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to
Sex. The hypothesis of a gradual transformation of species was abhorrent to a Victorian
mentality that proudly sustained the belief that Adam was created in God’s image. It was
also contrary to Christian belief as written in the book of Genesis. Darwin’s argument
implied that humans were closer to animals than they were to God and that nature was
evolving. The fact that Darwin waited for so long to publish his theories was because of
the strong opposition that he foresaw in the scientific community. The results of Darwin’s
investigations were discussed in the meeting of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science in 1860.

Darwinism didn’t remain a purely scientific discourse. Very soon it spread, and
permeated other spheres of knowledge such as the social sciences or anthropology.
Reproduction and the survival of the fittest became recognised as the forces behind
human endeavour. In this order of things sciences such as eugenics found the perfect
ground to spread. Led by Francis Galton, eugenics propounded the need for selective
breeding in the delineation of racial qualities. A nation should ensure that its able of
members had dominance in fertility if it wanted to survive. Failure to do so would mean
the disappearance of the nation.
It’s also important to consider that if Darwinism implies an assault on the traditional
beliefs concerning God, the universe and humanity’s relationship with both, Darwinism
could also be applied in giving scientific value to those Victorian ideals that it was
apparently diminishing. The word ‘degeneration’ was going to be a key term in relation
to the social changes taking place at the time. Terms such as ‘evolution’ and
‘degeneration’ started to be manifold in meaning and were used by theorists and critics
to serve their own respective purposes. ‘Evolution’ served the establishment to justify
empire and colonialism.
Since apes were considered to be under-evolved relations of humans, non-European
societies were seen as underdeveloped civilisations. It was the duty of the civilised,
progressive white male European to educate, civilise and improve the conditions of what
he regarded as the primitive societies, such as those in Africa or India. In 1895, Max
Nordau’s Degeneration was translated into English. In this work, Nordau, established
that the end of civilisation could be foretold by observing licentious contemporary forms
of art, such as Naturalism, and the Decadents. The rise of the New Woman and the
suffrage movement were also seen as precipitants of this apocalyptic future. In England
there were already works reflecting the decline of the European white civilization.
In turn, “degeneracy” referring to the phenomenon that the social status quo was under
threat from the freer values of the younger generation sceptical about the traditional
values of morality, customs and proprieties, particularly in relation to sex, meant a
liberating and scientifically based escape from those very values. At the same time, it
unsettled the assumed stability of Victorian society, bringing to the fore fears over

chastity, homosexuality, same-sex love, perversity, masturbation, morbidity and syphilis
that had up to then ‘officially’ been non-existent. These fears provoked a levelling of sin
and disease that meant that any deviation from conventional morality was as much a
sign of madness as it was of depravity.
Many of the current issues of human development, degeneration and depravity were
present in the popular literature produced in the late 1880s and 1890s. Among these
Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and Robert Louis
Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde could all be read partly as cautions against the rise
of promiscuity and its associated evils such as prostitution, syphilis and adultery. These
works also pointed accusingly to many of the pillars of Victorian society, so deeply
ingrained in what has come to be termed as ‘Victorian hypocrisy’ especially with regard
to sexual matters. Notions of evolution, progress and reform led to a fascination with
regression, atavism and decline. ‘Degeneration’ stood out as the byword for modern
Western civilisation. It was taken as the break from traditional forms of expression and
was present in the new tendencies in the arts.
As a consequence of the debates moving from the intellectual sphere to ordinary society,
many individuals found that they had lost their belief in external authorities and
experienced increasing insecurity in relation to the universe and within themselves. The
term ‘agnostic’ was coined in the 1870s, meaning the impossibility for the empirical mind
to either believe or not to believe. The impact of the godless society is found in any
individual who becomes unsure of the taken-for-granted certainties of the Victorian age.

The theological search for God had been replaced by an epistemological quest for self-
knowledge. In philosophy this quest found expression in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche
who categorically stated that “God is dead.” With this pronouncement Nietzsche was the
first philosopher to consider extensively human responsibility and freedom in a universe
without God. In his first publication, The Birth of Tragedy. The era in which he was living
was dominated by a rational Apollonian mentality to the detriment of the creative
aesthetic of the dream and chaos of the Dionysian spirit. It resulted in a total loss of
connection with the tragic myth and sensual intuitive truth found in Greek tragedy. The
most interesting aspect in this respect lies in Nietzsche’s insights into myth and
mythmaking.
The importance of myth applied to literature and the importance given to the aesthetic in
Nietzsche’s thought implied that the duty of the artist in the disordered and fragmented
modern world was to “create what culture could no longer produce: symbol and meaning
in the dimension of art, brought into being through the agency of language”. In other
words, myth stood out as the ordering power lost by the culture and society of the modern
materialist world.
Writers such as Eliot, Joyce, Woolf and Yeats would incorporate into their literature myth
and classical models destined to give meaning to the alienated modern individual for
whom Christian religion had ceased to be the answer. In the process new myths were
created. Another book that influenced authors of the period was James Frazer’s The
Golden Bough, a hugely extensive anthropological work published in twelve volumes
between 1890 and 1915. In this work Frazer charts the connections between pagan rites
and Christian religion. T.S. Eliot in his work The Waste Land is one of those authors
influenced by Frazer.
Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy of ‘the will’ propounded that the world was the
physical manifestation of an underlying cosmic reality. In this sense Schopenhauer had
a pessimistic view of the universe in that the will, by its own nature, can never be totally
satisfied: it leads meaninglessly to all forms of suffering. Nietzsche’s theory would depart
from Schopenhauer’s predicament but invert the pessimistic view of the latter into an
optimistic celebration of the positive forces of the will. Nietzsche felt that modern society

was sick because it failed to acknowledge to its positive forces but instead was led by
frivolity and morbidity. This point of view would greatly attract writers such as Yeats, who
would agree with the philosopher that the will was a physiological complex of drives and
impulses. Nietzsche lyes emphasis on the field of forces. Life should be led as an
endeavour fully to satisfy the will for power. Nietzsche’s perspective could justify
dictatorial regimes, asceticism, self-punishment, or sadism. In fact, Nietzsche’s theory
has been used by Fascism to justify philosophically its extreme ideological apparatus.
Particularly interesting was his theory of the superman (Übermensch). By Übermensch
Nietzsche was referring to a new, creative being who would transcend religion, morality
and ordinary society and would satisfy his own will. The motto of the Übermensch would
be “be what you are” and humanity’s greatest goal should point towards becoming an
Übermensch.
An interesting aspect of Nietzsche’s philosophy is his insistence on the necessity to
approach all values from a new, different perspective that would allow for the
contradictions and paradoxes of a new aesthetic based on Dionysian forces. The present

is already part of the past and therefore everything is necessarily new. Nietzsche is also
the theorist of nihilism. He explains that the term ‘nihilism’ is ambiguous. It could refer to
active nihilism or ‘increased power of the spirit or to passive nihilism. Both meanings can
be observed in the different approaches of Modernism towards literature.
Nietzsche’s concept of ‘eternal recurrence’ is very intriguing in relation to literature; while
encompassing the idea that experience is eternally repeated, it also considers a positive
aspect to this eternal recurrence in that the individual should live each moment as if it
would be repeated eternally. Through ‘eternal recurrence’, linear time is thus questioned
and undermined. Linear progression is itself less important than the fact of constant
repetition of a particular action. The concept of ‘eternal recurrence’ brings two very
interesting dimensions of time, namely cyclical time and eternal time. Virginia Woolf’s
Mrs Dalloway and James Joyce’s Ulysses, both contain a circular structure that breaks
the linear progression of the narrative. In ‘eternal recurrence’ the concept of cyclical time
is present in the idea of repetition or recurrence, and that of eternal time in the very fact
that that repetition will happen for ever. The alluring aspect of this theory is that its
direction is inwards, towards the individual, rather than outwards, towards the outside
world. The individual should live as she/he would like to live eternally. The need is for
the individual to experience life to the full and to accept responsibility for present actions.
This aspect of ‘eternal recurrence’ clarifies Nietzsche’s Übermensch in that what is at
shake here is becoming what one is and experiencing life as if one wanted each moment
to come back again. This is why repetition is significant in modern literature.
Repetition obeys a need to render linear, chronological time as insufficient in explaining
human reality and the universe. We have all experienced instances when an hour passes
as if it had been a second, whereas in different circumstances an hour may be perceived
as a decade. This experience of time leads to the key concept of ‘relativity’ which brings
to mind Albert Einstein and his popular and famous theory that matter transforms into
energy. The importance of Einstein’s theories is that pointed out the possibility of a
change in matter the principle of permanence implicit in Newtonian physics crumbles. A
Newtonian universe found expression in the realist novel, where a reliable narrator can
render the observations of a world that responds to consistent and empirical laws and
which progresses according to a chronological pattern of linear time; by contrast, the
transforming and mutable world of ‘relativity’ can be rendered only through a narrative
that changes its perspective.
We find in modern narratives flashbacks, time arcs, jumps, repetitions and leaps and
swerves. These are all narrative devices allowing for the representation of the subjective
perception of time and the instability of space boundaries as these transpire from the
theory of relativity. The infinite instance of time in which matter is transformed into
energy, or the moment in which the individual reaches the sublime point of recognition
of an emotion, the Woolfian ‘Moment of Being’ or the Joycean ‘Epiphany’ become the
most precious ‘goal’ a work of art can achieve. In order to transmit these moments, the
‘image’ seems the most readily available tool. In this sense the plot and the structure are
manipulated in order to provide the image of a particular emotion. Literature becomes
introspective, fallible, and intensely subjective through a writing that requires a very
dangerous exercise on the part of the writer. Pushing language to the limit, the writer
places him/herself dangerously close to neurotic discourse, risking in the process his/her
own sanity.
In talking about language, a reference to Ferdinand Saussure and the Course in General
Linguistics is unavoidable. He was the first linguist to question the goal of the study of
linguistics. He moved from the study of the genealogy of the changes in word and
grammar over time to the exploration of language as a social phenomenon. He
distinguishes ‘langue’ (language as a particular structured system), from ‘parole’ (specific
utterance or speech act). He formulates the principle that there are no positive signs in
language. This principle will be crucial for the development of structuralism and post-
structuralism. The literature produced before Saussure used language as a tool that
would enable the writer to portray reality as it could be physically observed. According to
Saussure, language is made up of signs owing their signification not to the world but to
the difference to each other in a network of signs that is the signifying system. The
meaning of a sing depends on its oppositions within a particular system. In other words,
language is socially constructed and subject to changes in meaning. The emphasis in

Saussuran studies is on how language functions when used by people and how people
are made to function by language. His interests focused on finding the rules and structure
of language governing speech and writing.
There were others interested in the problem posed by a new view of language. Ludwig
Wittgenstein formulated the idea that human reasoning wasn’t so much an engagement
with reality and truth as a language game. Wittgenstein’s ambitious Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus set out to provide a solution to all the philosophical problems. He tried to
establish a clear demarcation between logic and empirical knowledge, and to discern
between logical and empirical truths. In doing so he confronted the problem of
formulating a global conceptualisation about the relationship between language and
thought, and language and reality. Wittgenstein was not as interested in a linguistic
approach to language as in a philosophical one. In this sense, his insights into the nature
of language were prompted by a dissatisfaction felt and shared by Russell and the
members of the Vienna Circle with the imperfection of language.
The fact that language disguises and misrepresents thought and reality implies that a
search within language for a logic that goes beyond the superficial logic of its external
structure is of paramount importance. This hidden structure is logic. It’s constituted by
elements that have a direct connection with reality. According to Wittgenstein, language
has limitations marked by the logical rules governing the combinations of signs. There is
a distinction between what can be said with coherence and what cannot; Wittgenstein
attempts to establish what are genuine philosophical problems and what are not. We can
arrive at doubt only if a question can be formulated, and a question can be posed only if
there is an answer that can be provided only if something can be said. Hence human
knowledge and experience are constrained by language.
The importance of Wittgenstein is that he considered language as a social and
communicative reality. His work was highly influential on the logical positivism and
philosophy of science of the Vienna Circle which at their meeting discussed the
Tractatus. G.E. Moore’s insights into the aesthetic, constituted the basis for the
formulation of the aesthetics of the Bloomsbury group. Martin Heidegger placed an
emphasis on language as the vehicle through which the question of being could be

explored. He was particularly interested in poetry. In Being and Time, he affirmed that
individuals do not speak through language, but that language speaks through them. The
impact of Heidegger goes beyond the scope of this course. His thinking has contributed
to such different fields as existentialism and post-structuralism among many others. In
literature his strongest impact can be traced in from the second half of the 20th C. to the
present day.
A subjectivity made up of language participates in the very nature of language and such
a subjectivity ceases to be perceived as a unitary normative self and, rather, becomes a
fluid, discontinuous and fragmented self. The psychological studies of Sigmund Freud
leading to the foundation of the new science of psychoanalysis, corroborated this view
of the self as evolving and fragmented. Freud’s work is not isolated, it should be
understood as part of the general enquiry into the workings of the mind found in the
studies of among others Carl Jung, Henri Bergson and Williams James. James coined
the term ‘stream of consciousness’. In Time and Freewill, the French philosopher Henri
Bergson discusses the mind’s particular understanding of time. He opposes linear time
against what he calls ‘duration’, which refers to the way the mind perceives the length of
an experience according to the respective subjective factors of appreciation of that
experience in each individual. Bergson considers that chronological time is the time of
history and it is also the time that marks our bodies in so far as we are living organisms.
However, the time of the mind is completely detached from chronological time. ‘Duration’
refers to those times in the life of an individual that are significant for the individual.
These times are different for each individual. Such a distinction will influence the

representation of time in literature. The implication of the time of the mind is that past
and future co-exist in the present; as Eliot argues in The Waste Land mental time is
composed of ‘desire’ and ‘memory’. Bergson’s ideas were deeply influential on
Wyndham Lewis’s Time and Western Man which postulated the idea that continuity in
time was impossible, seeing as it did time as fragmented and people inhabiting time only
in memory and projection. These new perspectives on time explain some of the different
techniques in art, such as an open-ended finale or an abrupt beginning at any ordinary
moment in the life of a character.
Because ‘reality’ is shaped according to a mind’s perception of time, Bergson believed
that facts and matter should be scrutinised by intuition in order to achieve a complete
vision of reality, since these facts and matter are only the outer expression of reality. If
Bergson was concerned with the way in which the mind understands time, Freud was
concerned with the mind’s awareness of its own working. Freud started cooperating with
Joseph Breuer on cases of hysteria. They treated hysteria, allowing patients to disclose
their memories under hypnosis. Later on, hypnosis was somewhat discredited as a
practical tool, and the idea of ‘free association’ for recovering memories was introduced
into their work. Psychoanalysis, a term coined in 1896, was born.
In 1897 Freud broke his association with Breuer; he developed further his views on
psychoanalysis and the importance of infantile sexuality for the development of the
psyche. In 1910 he founded with Carl Jung the International Psychoanalytical
Association. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud argued that dreams are the
expression of repressed desires and that the realm of repressed desires is the
unconscious. Together with the conscious it forms the totality of the psychic reality. It’s
important to point out the significance of the discovery of the unconscious, which is the
part of the psyche unknown to the subject that is no less operative in the psyche’s reality
than is consciousness. The unconscious is full of memories and ideas from early
childhood. These are ‘repressed’ and made unconscious for various reasons. The
existence of the unconscious is evidenced in dreams, slips of the tongue, sudden and
uncanny realisations of an event, etc.

Moreover, the subject is made up of multiple selves that could emerge depending on
which part of the unconscious becomes conscious. In other words, one can never be
totally sure of what one is because the unconscious implies that one could be somebody
else. This idea is echoed in the new literary interest to show the drives, obsessions and
compulsions motivating the actions of ordinary people. After Freud, it is no longer
satisfactory to present the outside personalities of the characters and the surface
expressions of their thoughts, as was the case with realist fiction. Instead, the writer
needs to address what Henry James called ‘psychological realism’: to explore the hidden
drives and desires of the characters.
This period also witnessed developments in concepts of femininity centred around
discussions of the ‘New Woman’. Although feminist thought had its origins in the
Enlightenment, from the 1890s onwards it entered the public imagination. Cartoons in
Punch magazine featured powerful and athletic women cycling or playing cricket and
bullying effeminate men at dinner parties, in contrast to the prevailing image of the
Victorian middle-class woman as a fragile figure in need of male protection and
uninvolved with public life. A vortex of discourses focused on women’s sexuality, on the
so-called Woman Question and on those forms of sexual behaviour that deviated from
the norm appeared. This new interest on the part of scientific, legal, moral and political
discourses has at its source the women’s movement, the rise of the New Woman and
the figures of the decadent and the dandy, which challenged the monolithic ideological
certainties regarding sexual difference of mid-Victorian Britain.

The turn of the century was a time when “Men became women. Women became men.
Gender and country were put in doubt: the single life was found to harbour two sexes
and two nations”. The anxiety to restore patriarchal order in a godless society provoked
the appearance of the scientific ‘expert’ on sex, gender and sexuality and his intervention
in social, political and legal reform. Confronted with the increasing blurring of sexual
roles, scientists started to investigate the differences between men and women in order
to assert, through an empirical observation that supposedly validated the objectivity of
their scientific conclusions, the very differences on which their studies were based. Thus,
through social science and anthropological discourses emerging from Darwinism,
patriarchy and its organisation of social structures and gender roles were justified
historically and evolutionarily by means of re-examining the idea of the timeless role of
women in society.
A much more optimistic point of view comes from a New Woman. Jane Ellen Harrison
was a famous British Classicist and social anthropologist who wrote influential works on
the shift from matriarchy to patriarchy in Asia Minor and Greece. Harrison is inquisitive
as to the power structures between the sexes as they are exposed in myths and she
places particular emphasis in the “social shift from matrilineal to patrilinear [sic]
conditions”. In 1903 she published her Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religions.
Here, she argues for the existence of a matriarchal origin in Greek religions and claims
that the ancient cult to the female figure has been forgotten and replaced by an obsession
with the patriarchal figure. She suggests that patriarchy sought to destroy matrilineal
families in order to introduce patriarchal laws of marriage and narrowing concepts of
femininity. She proposes that since patriarchal mythology was the tool used to impose
patriarchal structures, research into matriarchal myths would help subvert patriarchy.
Harrison reinforces the thesis of the existence of a matriarchal culture by adding further
evidence to it; she also offers alternative modes of femininity and masculinity:
Harrison was certain that the power of the figure of the Great Mother was just biding her
time and that She would return triumphant. In Ancient Art and Ritual, Harrison suggests
that art develops from ritual: ritual is “swiftly and completely transmuted into art” and that
“they do not seek to copy a fact but to reproduce, to re-enact an emotion”.

The question of gender roles and the Woman Question reached different fields of
knowledge. In biology and medical science works such as The Evolution of Sex by
Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson concluded that the female human was a case of
arrested development. Gendering his study of the cell’s metabolic process, Geddes
argued that the position of women in society “merely reflected the economy of cell
metabolism and its parallel psychic differentiation between the sexes”.
Freud in 1925 published a paper entitled ‘Some Psychological Consequences of the
Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes’ in which he distinguished between the
respective psychological developments in boys and girls. Up to that point he had studied
girls’ development as analogous to boys. Female sexuality is for Freud linked to male
sexuality and the concept of ‘penis envy.’ In this sense, the dénouement of the ‘castration
complex’ for women leads to the acknowledgement of “the fact of her castration, and
with it, too, the superiority of the male and her own inferiority”. Rebellion against this
situation causes an abnormal development in woman whose ‘penis envy’ leads her to a
‘masculine complex’ connected in Freud to female homosexuality. Because “anatomy is

destiny” Freud also thought the feminist struggle to be pointless.
Freud’s biased perspective seems to imply that women are less valuable than and thus
inferior to men. Women, according to Freud’s point of view, were pursuing an impossible
quest, for lies in the biology of the sexes that the superego of men predisposes them to
undertake the most challenging tasks. Women, because of their less strongly formed
superego, are capricious and unreliable “social beings”. A few years later he published
‘Female Sexuality’ which expanded on the ideas expressed in the earlier paper. Freud’s
point of view on the subject of female sexuality remains hesitant and dubious, and he
never did come to a clear conclusion on the subject. The primal bisexual disposition
remains in the unconscious of both girls and boys. Bisexuality remains in adulthood,
Freud argues, and should be balanced in the individual towards the characteristics of the
ideal woman. Therefore, if biology dooms women to an inferior position, the primitive
bisexual disposition opens a door to the convergence of the sexes.
By perpetuating stereotypes of masculinity and femininity in his theory of the Oedipus
complex, Freud created a debate. His ‘feminist’ colleagues, while not denying the value
of psychoanalytical theory, challenged Freud’s characterisation of femininity. In particular
Karen Horney opened what came to be known as the Freud-Jones debate. She argued
that masculine narcissism “was responsible for the assumption that the female feels her
genital to be inferior”. In response to her, Freud wrote ‘Femininity’, where he comes to
the definition of femininity as a single unique position for ‘normal’ sexuality in women and
he establishes homosexuality in women as a ‘masculine complex’. The importance of
Freud’s sexual discourse during the interwar period lies in the fact that he left most
questions about female sexuality unanswered; for example, ‘pure femininity’ remains a
‘theoretical construction’
The field of knowledge that assumed special relevance in relation to sex gender and
sexuality was the new science of sexology. Sexual scandals and an epidemic of syphilis
caused the questioning of the validity of Victorian morals and values, while provoking in
people anxiety and fear. This resulted in emphasis on the importance of the family as a
safeguard against sexual decadence, and in a craving for legislative restrictions. The
discourse on sexuality was transferred from the public arena to the household. Oscar
Wilde’s trial and conviction in 1895, focused public attention on the emerging
homosexuality while provoking its medicalisation. With the purpose of establishing the
borderline between acceptable and abhorrent behaviour, science and civil order allied.
The literature of sexology of the period displays this anxiety. Although for many years
the 19th-C. theorists had denied women any sexual tendencies, the only approach that
scientific discourse was able to undertake was precisely solely related to her sex, to such
an extent that as Susan Kingsley Kent has argued society came to regard women as
“the Sex”. Words such as ‘feminism’ and ‘homosexuality’ were used now for the first time.
The term ‘New Woman’ was born in 1894 after many attempts to name the second
generation of feminist women.
‘New Woman’ refers to those middle-upper class women who “had profited from the
educational and vocational opportunities won by the pioneer feminists of the sixties”. The
most prominent change was their increased presence in the public arena. Whereas the
lives of most nineteenth-century women, tended to revolve around home life, modern
women ventured into jobs, politics and culture outside the domestic realm. By the 1920s
educated women wanted access not only to the so-called male professions but also
demanded “access to the broader world of male opportunity” and night life. Activities
seen as proper to the masculine world such as drinking, or smoking became symbols of
women’s emancipation. These women “rejected traditional feminine clothing” indicating
with this gesture a resoluteness to break free from traditional codes of gender behaviour.
The New woman was often viewed with suspicion and fear because her presence
threatened and challenged patriarchy. A powerful and attractive figure, frighteningly in
the ascendant, the New Woman attempted a re-conceptualisation of womanhood and
produced a discourse on female sexuality contradicting the prevailing idea of femininity.
Patriarchy’s adverse reaction can be observed even in liberal treatises such as Edward
Carpenter’s The Intermediate Sex which opens with a reference to the New Woman and
the suggestion that the masculinisation of women was the result of the attitude of these

independent women.
Carpenter links the New Woman with homosexuality. This connection was also used in
some reactionary literature questioning the morality as well as the physical and psychic
health of these women. The correlation between masculinisation, homosexuality and the
New Woman aimed to counterbalance the increasing popularity the New Woman was
gaining, especially among middle- and upper-class women. By making the New Woman
an androgynous figure, dominant discourse was attempting to portray her as a pitiful,
unsatisfied and asexual woman. This misogynist discourse provided the basis for
feminist and lesbian discourses that used her image as a code to make relative and
challenge and defy patriarchal gender roles. Significantly, the characteristics of the New
Woman are used in the fiction of the turn of the century and interwar period, such as
Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day, as codified signs for providing extra information about
strong female characters.
In ‘Woman and Her Place in a Free Society’, Carpenter denounced the objectification of
women by patriarchy. He equated private property with the submission of women to men
Carpenter argued that the construction of femininity was something completely alien to
women. The objectification of woman caused a lack of understanding between the sexes.
His consideration of female sexuality as a male construct and the need for understanding
between the sexes was shared by many feminists of the period. Olive Schreiner’s point
of view was that man and woman were bound together and that it was a mistake to
conceptualise the advance of the one without the other.
Olive Schreiner was born in South Africa. She travelled to Britain with the objective of
becoming a doctor and began attending lectures at medical school in London. Olive also
began going to socialist meetings. During this time, she became friends with leading
radicals such as Edward Carpenter, Eleanor Marx and Bruce Glasier. Her novel Story of
an African Farm was published in 1883 and was praised by feminists who approved of
the strong heroine who controls her own destiny. Soon after the novel was published
Schreiner developed an intimate relationship with the sexologist Havelock Ellis. They
shared the same views on sexuality, free love, marriage, the emancipation of women,
sexual equality, and birth control. She also wrote two collections of short stories, but the

two novels she was working on at the time, From Man to Man and Undine, weren’t
published until after her death.
In 1889 Schreiner returned to South Africa, where she married Samuel Cronwright in
1894. Her only child died sixteen hours after birth. Schreiner continued to write and her
next book, was a strong attack on imperialism and British racism in South Africa.
However, Schreiner was unwilling to give her full support to the armed rising that led to
the Boer War in 1899. Woman and Labour was published in 1911: it was acclaimed as
an important statement on feminism and had a major influence on a large number of
young women. A strong supporter of universal suffrage, Schreiner argued that the vote
was “a weapon, by which the weak may be able to defend themselves against the strong,
the poor against the weak”. On the outbreak of the First World War Schreiner moved
back to Britain. Over the next four years she was active in the peace movement and
worked closely with organisations such as the Union of Democratic Control and the Non-
Conscription Fellowship. In September 1920 Olive Schreiner returned to South Africa,
where she died in December that same year.
The New Woman defied patriarchy by looking for new narratives that would escape from
the tragic endings of the Victorian novel written by women. Their narratives “represent
female desire as a creative force in artistic imagination as well as in biological
reproduction”. In order to make use of this creative force advantageously woman should
free herself from the impositions of patriarchal stereotypes: “The ‘lady’, the household
drudge, and the prostitute”. For this reason, the female protagonist in Shreiner’s short
story ‘Life’s Gifts’ “laugh[s] in her sleep”, having renounced the gift of love in favour of

the gift of freedom.
If the outbreak of the First World War supposed a massive incorporation of women into
the labour force, its aftermath brought about an impasse in the women’s struggle.
Propaganda launched by the government was aimed at bringing women back to their
homes, their families and their husbands. Yet the scientific discourse on sexuality
reached the general public in the 1920s. Sexology and psychology started to be available
to the general public through the publication of manuals such as Marie Stopes’s Married
Love, or Helena Wright’s The Sex Factor in Marriage.
Marie Stopes always intended that sexual ecstasy should be restricted to marital union,
but despite her intentions she invited controversy because of her explicit approach to the
anatomy of sexual relations and her frank advocacy of the practice of birth control. Her
studies took her to London and Munich, then on to Manchester where she became the
first female member of the science faculty at the university. But it was her married life
that inspired her devotion to sexual education. Stopes’s first marriage was
unconsummated so it was then annulled in 1916, and she found herself researching the
subject. This fascination led to her first book Married Love, published in the year she
married Humphrey Verdon Roe. A second book followed Married Love and she became
an overnight success, swamped with requests for birth control advice. With her career
established, she wrote more books and edited the journal Birth Control News.
The impact of the publication of Married Love and The Sex Factor in Marriage was
twofold. On the one hand, by stressing the importance of sex for the couple, by proving
information on family planning and by being a source of information concerning
contraceptive methods, these works were breaking the taboo around sex, a taboo
inherited from the Victorians. On the other hand, popularising the works of Richard Krafft-
Ebing, Havelock Ellis and Freud among others, these works established the differences
between ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ sexual behaviour.
2.- TEXT ANALYSIS: OSCAR WILDE’S EARNESTNESS TO BREAK FREE

Oscar Wilde grew up in Dublin, where his parents, Sir William and Lady Jane Francesca
Wilde, were celebrities.
After Trinity College, Oscar Wilde attended Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied
with Ruskin and Pater. As a disciple of Walter Pater, he founded the Aesthetic
movement, which advocated ‘art for art’s sake’. Yeats, in his reminiscence of Wilde,
recalls him speaking of Pater’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance.
During his imprisonment, Wilde referred to The History of the Renaissance as “that book
which had such a strange influence over my life”. He was by
then already characterised by his aesthetic idiosyncrasies such as wearing his hair long,
dressing colourfully, and carrying flowers while lecturing, qualities that Gilbert and
Sullivan
parodied in the operetta Patience.
In 1882, Wilde embarked on a lecture tour of the US. At each stop, he preached the
gospel of Aestheticism, the ‘Cult of the Artificial’, which rejected the social conception of
the natural. Fully playing the role of the Aesthete, dressed as a dandy, he entered
America with one of his famous aphorisms. Back in England and after his marriage to
Constance Lloyd in 1884, Wilde became the editor of the magazine Woman’s World. In
1888 he published The Happy Prince and Other Tales, a collection of original fairy tales.
After five years he left the magazine and started publishing provocative essays largely
dealing with the self-explanatory Art for Art’s Sake. His book Intentions contained essays
titled ‘The Decay of Lying’; ‘The Critic as Artist’; ‘Pen, Pencil and Poison’; and ‘The Truth

of Masks’. They were written in the form of dialogues between a new Plato and his young
disciples, an intellectual exercise that the author soon began to live out. The next years
saw the height of his fame as he published and produced witty and scandalous plays
such as Lady “Windermere’s Fan”, “a Woman of No Importance”, and “An Ideal
Husband”. Wilde took the London stage by storm with his witty, epigrammatic style,
insolent ease of utterance and suave urbanity. Its combination of polished social drama
and coruscating witty dialogue was repeated in 1895 in the two hits he had
simultaneously on the London stage, “An Ideal Husband” and “The Importance of Being
Earnest”.
In 1891, he had fallen in love with a young aristocrat named Lord Alfred Douglas. The
charming but temperamental Douglas was at the time an undergraduate at Oxford.
Douglas’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, publicly accused Wilde of
homosexuality by leaving a card at Wilde’s club addressed: “To Oscar Wilde posing as
a Somdomite”. Wilde, understanding that the Marquess of Queensberry meant
‘sodomite,’ sued for libel. Wilde lost and left himself open to criminal prosecution. His
successful career ended in criminal prosecution for sodomy, in what was called the trial
of the century. The Picture of Dorian Gray was used as evidence against him, and after
a series of trials he received a sentence of two years. He was sent to Wandsworth Prison
in November 1895 and was subsequently transferred to Reading Gaol. The prison
conditions were truly severe. One of Britain’s periodic prison reform initiatives was
launched just after his two-year sentence ended.
On leaving prison, bankrupt and ruined in health, he went to Paris, where he settled,
bitter and broken. He lived for three more years, mostly under the assumed name of
‘Sebastian Melmoth’, depending on others for support. His family had abandoned him,
and his wife changed her name and that of their sons to Holland. On 30 November 1900,
at the age of forty-six, Wilde died of cerebral meningitis at the Hotel D’Alsace. He was
buried at Bagneaux. He is now buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) is Oscar Wilde’s most lasting play, a
masterpiece of modern comedy. More than a century later, it still strikes a wonderful

balance between being a respected and studied piece of literature and a favourite with
audiences.
Although Wilde liked critical success, he preferred financial success since he was always
short of money because of his extravagant behaviour. It appears from his letters that he
wrote The Importance of Being Earnest for money.
He wrote the play in three weeks, and sent it to George Alexander, who did not like it
and opted not to produce it. But the terrible failure of Henry James’s play Guy Domville
shortly after Wilde sent him The Importance of Being Earnest convinced Alexander that
they needed another play to fill the gap. Wilde’s play was put on at the St James’s and it
was a spectacular success.
The play consists of a tension between truth and falsehood, which are given equal value
and appear to be mere rhetorical strategies. The play also contains plays on language
and meaning. Many critics have noted the extraordinarily verbal nature of this play. Wilde
subordinated every other dramatic element to dialogue for its own sake and create a

verbal universe in which the characters are determined by the kind of things they say,
with the plot nothing but a succession of opportunities to say them. It is remarkable for
Wilde’s use of aphorisms (a sentence containing a wise or witty comment).
Filled with wit and wisdom, The Importance of Being Earnest tells the tale of Jack
Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff. Both young men have taken to bending the truth in
order to add a dash of excitement to their lives. Jack has invented an imaginary brother,
Ernest, whom he uses as an excuse to escape from his dull home in the country and to
justify his frequent trips to his bachelor rooms up in London. Algernon uses a similar
technique, only in reverse. His imaginary friend provides a convenient and frequent
excuse for taking excursions in the country. Since the reader/audience finds no
description of the Dramatis personae at the beginning of the play, the reader/audience
has to accept the disguises. However, Jack’s and Algernon’s deceptions eventually cross
paths, resulting in a series of crises that threaten to spoil their romantic pursuits: Jack of
his love Gwendolen Fairfax and Algernon of his sweetheart Cecily Cardew.
The play is constructed on a series of secrets; the action arises from disclosure or the
fear of disclosure. Unlike most farces, deception and deceit in The Importance of Being
Earnest are given relatively light moral value. The lies Jack and Algernon tell at the
beginning, which the reader/audience thinks are faintly immoral, actually turn out to be
the real truth of the situation.
The play was subtitled A Trivial Comedy for Serious People and in this context, it is
remarkable that the word ‘serious’ appears seventeen times, whereas the word ‘trivial’
appears only three times (including twice as ‘triviality’). This makes the audience wonder
whether this means that the play is more ‘serious’ than ‘trivial’. Famous aphorisms are
“The General was essentially a man of peace, except in his domestic life,” (Act III) and
“Divorces are made in Heaven” (Act III). Wilde is relying upon his audience’s familiarity
with Restoration comedy and later comedy of manners (social habits and customs),
especially those of the upper classes. The picaresque Jack says he was ‘found’ which is
a reference to Henry Fielding’s 1749 novel History of Tom Jones, a Foundling and is
confirmed later on in the play by Lady Bracknell who wonders whether Jack will be
‘another Tom’.
The stage at the time presented ‘Society Drama’: plays of modern life set in the rarefied
world of the upper classes. These plays could be witty and frivolous light comedies; or
they could be ponderous dramatic treatises on difficult social issues, most often the
sexual ‘double standard’ and the ‘problem’ of the ‘fallen woman.’ We hear a parodic echo
of such plays when Jack Worthing, in the final act of The Importance of Being Earnest,
says of Miss Prism “who has the right to cast a stone against one who has suffered?
Cannot repentance wipe out an act of folly? Why should there be one law for men and
another for women?” (Act III). Of course, Wilde pokes fun at the institution of marriage,
which he saw as a practice surrounded by hypocrisy and absurdity.
Although the play ends happily, The Importance of Being Earnest leaves the audience
under the impression that marriage and social values are often tied together in
destructive ways. Ultimately, the aristocracy does not see marriage as an organ of love,
but rather as a tool for achieving or sustaining social stature.
Lady Bracknell is as opposed to the ownership of large stretches of private property as
is the most ardent socialist, but she is devoted to preserving the privileges enjoyed by
the upper classes and rejects Jack because of his possible lower-class origins without
feeling any pangs of conscience. This is the major theme of the play.
Wilde’s aim in writing The Importance of Being Earnest was anti-morality, a revision of
Victorian priorities. His inversion of priorities is delightful as an antidote to Victorian
sincerity and earnestness, but ultimately is limited by its very sense of opposition: not an
alternative morality, but rather anti-morality.
Among the comic techniques Wilde employs we should highlight his use of incongruity
(exists a great distance between what the audience expects to happen and what actually
happens) and timing (timing achieved both through the characters’ use of pauses and
also through Wilde’s finding of the right moment to insert a comic motif).
Wilde also uses flippant wit such as Algernon’s line “All women become like their

mothers”. One of the ways Wilde’s wit manifests itself is in puns (plays on words), like
the one in the title, for running throughout the entire play is the double meaning behind
the word earnest, which functions homonymous both as a male name and as an
adjective describing seriousness.
The clearest example of parody occurs when Gwendolen states that the home is “the
proper sphere for the man,” which is a reversal of one of the most striking maxims of the
time. There’s also irony in Jack saying that telling the truth is a “terrible thing” and in Lady
Bracknell telling Jack to “acquire some relations as soon as possible,” not knowing that
one of them will be herself. Role-playing and reversal of roles have traditionally been an
aid to comedy.
One final technique Wilde employs in this comedy is the absurd. Overall, The Importance
of Being Earnest has many goals. It pokes fun at the aristocracy, the literary world,
marriage, English manners and customs, women, men, love, religion, and all sorts of
other staples of modern society. It does so in a light-hearted fashion. But the comic in its
most brilliant aspect uses laughter as an end in itself and the comic in Wilde’s play uses
laughter often merely as an end in itself. The audience often finds that the play’s reason
for being is not located outside the play but inside since it is often self-referential - which
is what makes Wilde a precursor of Beckett and Stoppard.
Gender roles are exposed as seriously threatened at the same times as consumerist
values seem to redefine and resettle the patriarchal system.
ANALYSIS
The Importance of Being Earnest
Summer 1894
1899
Aestheticism; Victorian Era

During the initial run of The Importance of Being Earnest, Lord Alfred’s father, the
Marquess of Queensberry, accused Wilde of being a “somdomite” (sic). Under his lover’s
influence, Wilde countered by suing the Marquess for libel. Queensberry was acquitted,
but enough evidence of Wilde’s homosexuality surfaced during the first trial that Wilde
was charged with “gross indecency.” Against the advice of his friends, Wilde remained
in London to face the charges. Wilde’s writings were used against him and Wilde was
sentenced to Wandsworth Prison for two years’ hard labour.
The scandal did irreparable damage to Wilde’s career, shutting down The Importance of
Being Earnest’s otherwise successful run and causing Wilde to spend his remaining days
living abroad in obscurity. Despite Wilde’s infamy, his writings became an integral part
of the Aesthetic movement, which has informed contemporary conceptions of art. While
the Victorians believed that art should have a positive moral influence, aesthetes like
Wilde believed that art could be valued for its beauty alone. The saying “art for art’s sake”
is a lasting mantra that resonates in modern works of art because of Wilde’s writings.
In the most basic sense, The Importance of Being Earnest is a drama... because it’s a
play. It's also a comedy—not only in the modern laugh-out-loud way, but also in the
classical sense, in that it features a set of characters overcoming adversity to achieve a
happy ending.

Earnest is the classic marriage comedy, where couples fall in love, but can't be together
for various reasons. However, hidden identities are revealed, class differences are
resolved, families are reunited, and Lady Bracknell’s consent is given to all the couples.
Earnest is also a satire because it makes fun of its characters—most of whom are
members of the aristocratic class. Wilde constantly exaggerates the upper class’s
shallowness and frivolity to show their corrupt morals. When Lady Bracknell interrogates
Jack, we learn that all she cares about is his money, his trendiness, and his family name.
Setting is a key element in this play because it offers a guise for the main character’s
alias. This adds to the hilarity that develops from misunderstandings both intended and
accidental. He primary settings are the city: London, and the country: Hertfordshire,
England.
Act I: Algernon Moncrieff’s flat in Half-Moon Street
Act II: The Garden at the Manon House, Woolton
Act III: Drawing room of the Manor House, Woolton.
The time period is the 1890s.
This is a play without a narrator or a chorus.
Though all works of literature present the author’s point of view, they don’t all have a
narrator or a narrative voice that ties together and presents the story. This particular
piece of literature doesn't have a narrator through whose eyes or voice we learn the
story.

JACK
The protagonist of the play. Was discovered as an infant by the late Mr. Thomas Cardew
in a handbag in the cloakroom of a railway station in London. Jack has grown up to be a
seemingly responsible and respectable young man, a major landowner and Justice of
the Peace in Hertfordshire, where he has a country estate.
He seems like a respectable young man but leads a double life as a clever dandy. He
goes by “Ernest” in town and “Jack” in the country. Meanwhile, he pretends to have a
brother also named “Ernest” whose mischief frequently calls him back to town. The
adopted son of Mr. Thomas Cardew, Jack is heir to a fortune and guardian to Cardew’s
granddaughter, Cecily. Jack’s engagement to Gwendolen Fairfax is endangered after a
comedy of errors leads her to uncover Cecily’s existence and Jack’s true identity. The
"J.P." initials after his name stand for “Justice of the Peace.”
Jack Worthing represents conventional Victorian values: he wants others to think he
adheres to such notions as duty, honour, and respectability, but he hypocritically flouts
those very notions. Indeed, what Wilde was actually satirizing through Jack was the
general tolerance for hypocrisy in conventional Victorian morality. Jack uses his alter-
ego Ernest to keep his honourable image intact. Though Ernest has always been Jack’s
unsavoury alter ego, as the play progresses, Jack must aspire to become Ernest, in
name if not behaviour. Until he seeks to marry Gwendolen, Jack has used Ernest as an
escape from real life, but Gwendolen’s fixation on the name Ernest obligates Jack to
embrace his deception in order to pursue the real life he desires. Jack has always
managed to get what he wants by using Ernest as his fallback, and his lie eventually

threatens to undo him. Though Jack never really gets his comeuppance, he must
scramble to reconcile his two worlds in order to get what he ultimately desires and to fully
understand who he is.
ALGERNON MONCRIEFF
Algernon, the play’s secondary hero, is closer to the figure of the dandy than any other
character in the play. Like Jack, Algernon has invented a fictional character, a chronic
invalid named Bunbury, to give him a reprieve from his real life. Algernon is constantly
being summoned to Bunbury’s deathbed, which conveniently draws him away from
tiresome or distasteful social obligations.
He’s a charming bachelor and extravagant dandy, who specializes in making witty
remarks and “Bunburying,” or finding clever ways of getting out of his social obligations.
He masquerades as Jack’s cousin “Ernest” in order to meet Cecily Cardew.
GWENDOLEN FAIRFAX
Gwendolen suggests the qualities of conventional Victorian womanhood. She has ideas
and ideals, attends lectures, and is bent on self-improvement. She is also artificial and
pretentious. Gwendolen is in love with Jack, whom she knows as Ernest, and she is
fixated on this name. This preoccupation serves as a metaphor for the preoccupation of
the Victorian middle- and upper-middle classes with the appearance of virtue and
honour. Gwendolen is so caught up in finding a husband named Ernest, that she can’t
even see that the man calling himself Ernest is fooling her with an extensive deception.
In this way, her own image consciousness blurs her judgment.
CECILY CARDREW
Cecily is a starry-eyed young lady who prefers writing in her diary to studying. She
dreams of meeting Jack’s cousin, “Ernest,” and constructs an elaborate, fictional
engagement between herself and this elusive persona.
She is a child of nature, as ingenuous and unspoiled as a pink rose. However, her
ingenuity is belied by her fascination with wickedness. Though she doesn’t have an alter-

ego as vivid or developed as Bunbury or Ernest, her claim that she and Algernon/Ernest
are already engaged is rooted in the fantasy world she’s created around Ernest. Cecily
is probably the most realistically drawn character in the play, and she is the only
character who does not speak in epigrams. Her charm lies in her idiosyncratic cast of
minds and her imaginative capacity, qualities that derive from Wilde’s notion of life as a
work of art. These elements of her personality make her a perfect mate for Algernon.
LADY BRACKNELL
She is Gwendolen’s stuffy and judgmental mother. Lady Bracknell’s views are
entrenched in Victorian social mores, so she will not allow Jack to marry Gwendolen until
he finds some suitable “relations”.
Through the figure of Lady Bracknell, Wilde manages to satirize the hypocrisy and
stupidity of the British aristocracy. Lady Bracknell values ignorance, which she sees as
“a delicate exotic fruit.” When she gives a dinner party, she prefers her husband to eat
downstairs with the servants. She is cunning, narrow-minded, authoritarian, and possibly

the most quotable character in the play.
MISS PRISM
Cecily’s prim and pedantic governess, she espouses such rigid views on morality that
they seem quite ridiculous. Her love interest is Dr. Chausible.
Miss Prism is an endless source of pedantic bromides and clichés. She highly approves
of Jack’s presumed respectability and harshly criticizes his “unfortunate” brother. Puritan
though she is, Miss Prism’s severe pronouncements have a way of going so far over the
top that they inspire laughter. Despite her rigidity, Miss Prism seems to have a softer
side. She speaks of having once written a novel whose manuscript was “lost” or
“abandoned.”
The major theme of this play is the triviality of the upper class. This is expressed in the
nature of the writing, which is satirical. By examining the language and interaction of the
characters, one can see that they are simply absurd.
THE ART OF DECEPTION: FACT V. FICTION

The conflict between fact and fiction is driven by Algernon and Jack’s lies about their
respective identities, specifically the fictional personas they create in order to mask their
doings, shirk their duties, and deceive their loved ones.
Jack invents his brother “Ernest” so he can excuse himself from the country. Under such
pretense he can escape to town, where he can court Gwendolen and entertain himself
with extravagant dinners. Similarly, Algernon invents his invalid friend “Bunbury,” so he
has an excuse to escape from the city. Fact and fiction collide when Algernon arrives at
Jack’s country estate, pretending to the elusive “Ernest”. His arrival upsets Jack’s plan
to kill off his fictional brother and nearly derails Jack’s real engagement to Gwendolen.
That Algernon coins the terms “Bunburying” and “Bunburyist” after his imaginary invalid
to describe such impersonations highlights the deceptive, as well as the fictive quality of
Jack and Algernon’s actions.
Cecily innocently creates a detailed backstory to her engagement to “Ernest,” writing in
her diary that she has not only been engaged to her beau for three months, but that they
have been engaged in an on-again-off-again romance.
Ultimately, the play’s main characters participate in the fine art of fabrication not just to
deceive, but also to create a reality that is more like fiction. The line between fact and
fiction blurs when the fictional name of “Ernest” turns out to be Jack’s real birth name. In
this way, Wilde doesn’t just question whether art imitates life, or life imitates art, but
suggests that life itself is an artifice, quite literally a making of art.
THE PURSUIT OF MARRIAGE
The pursuit of marriage is a driving force behind much of the play’s action. Similar to
many Victorian novels of the period, the play reads as a marriage plot, documenting the
errors in social etiquette and romantic upheavals that come about as Jack and Algernon
stumble towards the altar. Jack pursues Gwendolen’s hand, while Algernon pursues
Cecily. Because Jack and Algernon are willing to go to such outlandish lengths to
appease Gwendolen and Cecily’s fickle desires, engagement—which will ultimately lead
to marriage—becomes the primary goal of the main players.
While engagement appears to be the endgame of The Importance of Being Earnest, it is
actually the fodder uses to entertain the audience. While each couple exhales “at last”
with relief once they are engaged, Wilde uses the delays and stumbles to the altar to
entertain his audience. Gwendolen’s melodramatic quote, “This suspense is terrible. I
hope it will last,” speaks to this idea. While the characters are relieved to be engaged “at
last,” like Gwendolen, we in the audience hope that the suspense “will last” so that we
can continue to indulge in the characters’ foibles and follies. Unlike the Victorians he
depicts, Wilde is preoccupied with the amusements that arise on the road to marriage,
rather than marriage as an end in of itself.
CASH, CLASS AND CHARACTER

The Victorian society in which Wilde lived was concerned with wealth, family status, and
moral character, especially when it came to marriage. Lady Bracknell’s interrogation
of Jack’s proposal to marry Gwendolen demonstrates the three “Cs”—cash, class, and
character. First, she asks him about his finances and then his family relations, a measure
of his class. That Jack has none, reflects poorly on his character.
In the Victorian world one’s name was the measure of one’s social capital, so the fact
that Jack doesn’t have any family is an insurmountable obstacle to his marrying
Gwendolen, a daughter of the titled gentry. According to Lady Bracknell’s marriage
standards, Jack has the cash, but he doesn’t have the class, so his character comes into
question.
Lady Bracknell’s scrutiny of Jack’s socioeconomic status is reflective of the Victorian
world in which she was created. Her evaluation of cash, class, and character is one that
Wilde interrogates throughout The Importance of Being Earnest, especially through the
relations between classes. In Act I Algernon comments to Lane that the lower classes
should set a “good example” of “moral responsibility” for the upper classes, otherwise
they are of little “use.” Algernon’s fixation on the morality of his subordinates actually
reveals the short-sighted outlook of the aristocratic class. This class scrutinizes the
behaviour of others so much that it fails to examine its own flaws and foibles. By pointing
attention to Algernon’s lack of self-examination, Wilde further undermines the Victorians’
criteria for character by suggesting that it is inherently faulty.
NAME AND IDENTITY

Through Jack’s search for his origins and family name, Wilde satirizes the Victorian Era’s
intense scrutiny of cash, class, and character. Wilde subversively prods this question
through the name of “Ernest,” a Christian name, or given name, as opposed to a family
name. The name of “Ernest” comes to symbolize different things for different people. For
Gwendolen and Cecily, it “inspires absolute confidence” but also symbolizes the ideal
husband/ lover. For Jack, “Ernest” is an alter ego, an identity through which he can court
Gwendolen and cavort in the pleasures of city life.

While the name of “Ernest” holds different values for each character, Wilde shows that a
name, is quite meaningless in comparison to the person who holds that name. Contrary
to the play’s title, in this dramatic world, being “earnest” is not nearly as important as
being named “Ernest”. Because Gwendolen and Cecily are so enamoured of the name
“Ernest,” they confuse the shared name of their lovers with their respective identities.
Both women believe that they are engaged to a name rather than a person. Through this
conflation Wilde shows the ridiculousness of marrying someone purely for his/her name
alone. But in Wilde’s world, it was an all too common practice for men and women to
capitalize upon an advantageous family name through marriage. Wilde’s play on the
name of “Ernest” with the quality of being “earnest,” turns this Victorian obsession with
names and their social meaning on its head.
Ultimately Jack gets the girl because he has the cash, acquires class and gains character
by taking on the name of “Ernest,” which validates his family ties and social standing.
Yet Jack’s new name only has meaning because society assigns value to it; his name is
verified in the Army List, a listing of the names of English generals. Wilde is quick to point
out that this list is merely a piece of paper, whose authority is shoddy in comparison to
Jack’s earnestness to find his true identity. Wilde’s subtle jab at the ridiculousness of
claiming one’s name from a stack of books points to the relative meaningless of names
in comparison to one’s actions and the contents of one’s character, thereby undermining
the Victorians’ marriage of class and character.
MEN AND WOMEN IN LOVE
In the game of love that Wilde plays throughout The Importance of Being Earnest, Jack

and Algernon, who strive for love, are pitted against the fickleness of the women they
desire. Even though Wilde assigns stereotypical gender roles to each sex, when it comes
to marriage and love, he places women in a position of power because they are able to
actively choose their mates and influence their partners’ behaviours. In the Victorian
world women were rarely afforded this influence, as their male elders had tight control
over the men with whom they interacted, even dated. Yet Gwendolen and Cecily wield a
great deal of power over their suitors.
Even though Gwendolen and Cecily’s engagements are restricted by a patriarchal
system of cash, class, and character, it is important to note that Lady Bracknell, is the
one who becomes master of matrimony, dictating who may marry whom. The general
absence of male patriarchs points to the diminished presence of men in Wilde’s dramatic
world, thereby highlighting women, like Gwendolen, Cecily, and Lady Bracknell in
positions of power and prominence.
Oscar Wilde is an almost insanely funny and witty writer.

Wilde's humour in The Importance of Being Earnest relies on creating absurd situations
and characters whose lack of insight causes them to respond to these situations in
inappropriate ways. For example, Lady Bracknell’s preoccupation with her own parties
and complete lack of sympathy for invalids make her react to the news of Bunbury’s
illness in a ridiculously cold manner.
The entire play runs in a similar vein—with characters responding to situations in ways
that are either too serious or too flippant. This exaggeration gives Earnest its distinctive
brand of Wildean humour.
TONE
The tone of The Importance of Being Earnest is largely satirical. This is because Wilde
is seeking to mock the triviality of the upper-class society in London. Wilde’s satire is

characterized by wit and is light-hearted. He often portrays lines that characters deliver
as quite normal (ex: when Gwendolen tells Ernest that she loves him because of his
name). This is quite ridiculous, making Gwendolen appear so by association. Wilde is
also writing from an aesthetic perspective. This movement in literature saw that art be
celebrated for art’s sake, and not concern itself with the political issues of the outside
world. Therefore, much of what Wilde write is, simply, humorous.
LANGUAGE
Language is central to this play. In many ways this play is about language: its power, its
flexibility, and the sheer joy it can produce.
Wilde uses a range of linguistic techniques to create humour. For example, when
Gwendolen first appears, she says, "Oh! I hope I am not that. It would leave no room for
developments, and I intend to develop in many directions," which suggests a double
entendre about her physical development or sexual activity.
Finally, as Jack and other characters explicitly note, Wilde repeatedly uses "nonsense"
throughout the play. While this is sometimes used for satirical purposes, it is more often
used, as Robert Jordan suggests, to develop a fantastical alternative to reality. Many of
the characters say things that cannot possibly be true, as when Jack says, "Some aunts
are tall, some aunts are not tall. That is a matter that surely an aunt may be allowed to
decide for herself." Some, especially Lady Bracknell, speak as if their words could
completely reshape reality.

The title The Importance of Being Earnest is a pun: this play is about people who learn
what it means to be earnest, and it is also about a young man named Ernest. Wilde
originally gave the play the subtitle "A Serious Comedy for Trivial People" but changed
it to "A Trivial Comedy for Serious People." He explained, "We should treat all trivial
things very seriously."
ERNEST AND BUNBURY

The two imaginary people created by Jack and Algernon might symbolize the empty
promises or deceit of the Victorian era. Not only is the character Ernest anything but
earnest for the majority of the play, but he also doesn’t even really exist. This makes
Jack’s creation of him doubly deceitful. Bunbury sounds as ridiculous and fictional as he
actually is. Both of them allow Jack and Algernon to live a lie.
Even when Jack and Algernon are caught in their lies, they never suffer any real
punishment. That they can both kill off their imaginary alter egos or friends without much
to-do, shows Victorian society’s real values. The Victorian era did not value honesty,
responsibility, or compassion for the under-privilege, but only style, money, and
aristocracy. It’s appropriate that the non-existent characters of Ernest and Bunbury show
how shallow are the Victorians’ real concerns.
HANDBAG
The handbag Miss Prism accidentally abandoned at the railway station years ago is the
only physical symbol in the play, and it appears only at the very end. There is a long
tradition in myth and fairy tale of babies who are meant for greatness who are
intentionally abandoned. Some of these babies are even abandoned in containers that
take on symbolic significance, like the biblical Moses in the basket. The handbag is a
parodic version of this tradition: baby Ernest is not abandoned because of a prophecy or
because of some threat to his existence but because his nurse (Miss Prism) is distracted.
This handbag therefore parodies the importance or significance of one's circumstances.

Thus, this commonplace container contains a baby of uncommon origin. Continuing this
theme of disguise, it is no coincidence that this ordinary-handbag-containing-a-baby is
discovered in a cloakroom. These pieces of apparel can all be worn to conceal one’s
true form, face, or identity.
The scene of Jack’s orphaning contains aspects – like the ordinary handbag and the
cloakroom – that make him seem common, but also hints of aristocracy which reveal his
true social identity.
FOOD
Every instance where food is mentioned is fraught with conflict. The fight over something
as basic as food might represents another carnal desire: sex. Because the men fight
over food the most, we suspect that food fights are their way of expressing their sexual
frustration in the face of unusually domineering women. You can’t deny that Lady
Bracknell exerts a tremendous amount of power. Even Gwendolen and Cecily put their
male lovers in compromising positions and dictate the terms of their marriages.

CHRISTENING
No one is actually christened in this play. Once the young women indicate how important
the name Ernest is to them, christening is continually referenced, and it carries
considerable symbolic weight. The rite is important in Christianity. As children are named
and baptized, they are welcomed as members of the Christian community. In this play
christening is part of the satire of social conventions. Algernon and Jack both plan to
have themselves christened to rename themselves. Adult christenings do occur, but
these are generally part of religious conversions. Jack's and Algernon's desire to be
renamed has nothing to do with joining a religious community but with joining the social
community of marriage. Both men want to change their names to please the women in
their lives. Because Dr. Chasuble is willing to go along with this endeavour, the play
mocks the practice of religious ritual by drawing parallels with social rituals.
TOWN AND COUNTRY

In The Importance of Being Earnest one’s residence is a key signifier of one’s social
standing and sophistication. Lady Bracknell’s keen interest in Jack’s address exemplifies
this alignment between class, fashion, and residence. She finds Jack’s house in town to
be “unfashionable,” and his country estate to be neither a “profit nor a pleasure,” but
sufficient, as “it gives one position”.
Through Gwendolen and Cecily’s attitudes about country and city life, Wilde upsets the
characters’ alignment of the city with sophistication and the country with poor taste.
Instead, he suggests that town and country, alike are paradoxical places—the city is
urbane, but it is also “vulgar;” and while the country lacks taste it also affords one
“position” in society. Wilde also suggests that town and country are a means of fantasy
and escape. Jack escapes to the city, under false pretences, to avoid his obligations to
Cecily in the country, while Algernon similarly escapes to the country to avoid his social
obligations to his aunt and cousin.
THE DANDY
The dandy was a figure popularized by Wilde. In Wilde’s world, the dandy is a man who
pays particular attention to his appearance, dress, and lifestyle, almost to the point of
excess, while using his wit and charm to point out society’s hypocrisy and double
standards. Algernon and Jack are examples of this figure. When Algernon dresses up
as “Ernest” and when Jack dresses up in mourning clothes, these instances show the
affected, flamboyant, and extravagant nature of the dandy. In The Importance of Being
Earnest, the dandy, symbolizes self-indulgence, as well as the revelation of truth.
• Absurd • Modern
• Ambiguity • New Woman
• Avant grade • Parody
• City • Play
• Comedy • Pun
• Darwinism • Real reality
• Drama • Time
• Incongruity • Unconscious
• Machine


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Literatura Inglesa IIi: Pensamiento y Creación Literaria en la 1.ª

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LITERATURE IN AN EVER-CHANGING WORLD

1.- WHAT IS NEW IN THE MODERN ERA?

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2.- TEXT ANALYSIS: OSCAR WILDE’S EARNESTNESS TO BREAK FREE

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Aestheticism; Victorian Era

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This is a play without a narrator or a chorus.

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THE ART OF DECEPTION: FACT V. FICTION

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NAME AND IDENTITY

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Oscar Wilde is an almost insanely funny and witty writer.

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ERNEST AND BUNBURY

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TOWN AND COUNTRY

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