The Importance of Being Earnest belongs to Oscar Wilde’s famous high-society comedies. The author, breaking the canons of entertainment theater, brings to the stage a satirical mockery of the mores of his contemporary bourgeois society and invites the audience to laugh at the surrounding reality. Wilde, a lover of passage and paradox, refused to take English society seriously, making fun of its manners and problems in every line of his comedies. Seriousness is the principal value and the most essential character trait of the upper classes of Victorian England. It does not allow one to see sometimes the absurdity of the lives and actions of such serious people, when each of them leads a second, hidden life, letting in it words and actions that do not correspond to their seriousness. It is this theme that the playwright has recreated with exceptional brilliance and wit, for almost every line of the comedy is an eternally relevant epigram on human mores.
The play is subtitled A Trivial Comedy for Serious People, but Wilde uses paradoxes to raise meaningful social and moral questions, making it a philosophical comedy. In this way, the author sets everything in a humorous, non-serious form, luring readers into his lighthearted game with a kaleidoscope of paradoxes. The play’s title, The Importance of Being Earnest, contains a contradiction. Earnest means both “serious” and the British version of the male name Ernest, and the name Ernest itself, in turn, translates as severe (Alber & Bell, 2019). It raises a paradoxical question: which is more important to the characters in the play, being serious or being Ernest? In the Victorian era, it was critical for a gentleman to have a reputation as a severe man if he wanted to achieve a position in society. However, the central characters, Gwendolen Fairfax and Cecily Cardew, dream of marrying not so much a severe man as a man who bears the name Ernest. Thus, one can understand that the title already sets the reader to perceive the play as a work that defies logic and common sense.
Oscar Wilde, in his play, endowed the characters with an essence that corresponded to certain types of stereotypical human behavior. It is important to note that rigid rules and class divisions characterized Victorian society. Citizens were required to adhere to strict regulations according to the class to which they belonged (Alber & Bell, 2019). This was particularly important for women, who were taught early on to have social manners and proper behavior. A woman’s only task at that time was to marry pleasingly. However, in the work of Oscar Wilde, one can see a slightly distinct situation. The main character, Gwendolen Wilde, is portrayed as a mighty woman, unlike the classical lady of the Victorian era. The idea that Gwendolen has considerable power over a man challenges Victorian standards.
However, appearance and status were the categories that determined the treatment of a person regardless of who one is. It is these traits that Oscar Wilde mocks in his play, and most of all, this manifests itself in the behavior of Cecily. The girl is obsessed with the idea of meeting a guy named Ernest, and when she meets him, she immediately falls in love with the image she has despite what qualities this person may have. She insists that her chosen one can have only such a name because otherwise, she will not be able to realize her dream. This girl’s behavior is strange and not understandable even to Algernon, but it is the primary example of Victorian satire. At the beginning of the play, the girl says, “I could respect you, Ernest, I could admire your character, but I fear that I could not give you my undivided attention” (Wilde, 1990). Concentrating on a person’s outward appearance and somewhat superficial parts was a prominent element of Victorian society.
Despite true love, Cecily’s desire to marry only Ernest follows the trend of superficiality. One of the characteristics of Victorianism is hypocrisy and constant irony rather than solemnity, manners, and seriousness. It is these contradictions that Oscar Wilde tried to demonstrate through his descriptions of various life situations that debunked many of the Victorian myths. He proved that appearances to the Victorians were a much more important indicator than what was underneath.
Thus, the satire in The Importance of Being Earnest is directed at the false perceptions associated with Victorian society. It is one of the wittiest and most exquisite plays in the world repertoire, a virtuoso situation comedy marked by brilliant, light, lively, casual, and dynamic dialogues. Besides the immediacy of the action, the play has precise moral guidelines, positioning the importance of relationships between people, which should be built on respect and consideration for one another. The humor and seriousness combined in this play is an engaging and entertaining cultural lesson for modern audiences. It teaches to pay attention to the person’s inner qualities because the judgment on the outside is always comical and ridiculous.
References
Alber, J., & Bell, A. (2019). The importance of being earnest again: fact and fiction in contemporary narratives across media. European journal of English studies, 23(2), 121-135.
Wilde, O. (1990). The importance of being earnest. Dover Publications.