UNIVERSITY OF NIS
FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
TERM PAPER
The Importance of Being Earnest-
A social comedy revealing the hypocrisy of the Victorian society
PROFESSOR: STUDENT:
Milica Zivkovic Dragana Mikic
INDEX NUMBER:
2254
PHONE:
063 188 53 55
Oscar Wilde, celebrated playwright and literary provocateur, was born in Dublin
on October 16, 1854. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and Magdalen College,
Oxford before settling in London. During his days at Dublin and Oxford, he developed a
set of attitudes and postures for which he would eventually become famous. Chief among
these were his flamboyant style of dress, his contempt for conventional values, and his
belief in aestheticism- a movement that embraced the principle of art for the sake of
beauty and beauty alone.
This play’s setting is the late nineteenth century, the Victorian period in England.
The Victorian period was marked by rigid moral principles, the conservative and
conformist atmosphere, with social prestige as the most important aim, and hypocrisy and
mannerism as the means of achieving it. Matthew Arnold said that the roots of the
Victorian hypocrisy were in Puritanism, which, after reaching its most brilliant moments
in the works of 17
th
century intellectuals- in the eighteenth century was nothing more than
the enthroned ethos of the middle class. Puritanism was losing its force for inspiring new
ideas, and became increasingly preoccupied with the issues of social mannerism and
moral, and considerably less with the gratification of spiritual needs of the time. That is
how the society became full of prejudices and conventionality. Every word and every part
of an individual was expected to be in accordance with the rigid moral and behaviour
rules, and each, even the slightest deviation from the rule was considered an offence
which made the delinquent publicly disgraced. Even literature and art had its cannons
which were to be respected.
1
The culture full of dichotomies in its spiritual milieu inspired Oscar Wilde to
reveal its conformist and conservative nature, with a process which put accent on
contradictions, but was also overcoming them by the struggle for beauty. He succeeded in
this a great deal and mainly in the eyes of unprejudiced critics of the later generations.
1
Dragana Masovic, “Divlja harfa”, Matica srpska, Novi Sad, 1996, p. 285
2
name, Jack, and he is respected as one of the pillars of society. He is also a guardian to
Cecily Cardew, and has other duties and people who depend on him - tenants, servants,
clergyman, and farmers. Jack Worthing stands for conventional Victorian values more
than any other character in the play. In fact, while pretending to be strictly adhering to the
notions such as duty, honor and respectability, none of these can be ascribed to his
personality.
The play opens in the morning room of Algernon Moncrieff’s flat in the
fashionable Mayfair section of London. Algernon is the character who is closest to the
idea of dandy in this play. He is a charming, idle, decorative bachelor. The opening scene
of the play establishes a highly stylized, unrealistic world in which no one talks in
ordinary way, and very little seems to matter to anyone.
After playing the piano badly, Algernon enters the stage talking about his
playing, but his butler, Lane, says ironically that he didn’t feel it was “polite” to listen.
Algernon briefly defends himself and asks Lane about some cucumber sandwiches he has
ordered for Lady Bracknell, his aunt, who is expected to come to tea along with her
daughter, Gwendolen. He casually notices the inaccurate entry in the household books,
asks Lane why servants invariably drink champagne in bachelors’ homes and they touch
on the nature of marriage.
Algernon and Lane, as well as most of the other characters in the play, are literary
constructs, devices made to say particular things at particular moment. Their language is
sharp, witty, elegant, and full of ironic remarks. One of them is Lane’s insult regarding
Algernon’s playing, which is pronounced in polite and elegant language. The lack of
realism is also seen in Algernon’s carelessness about Lane’s stealing, as well as Lane’s
calmness at the fact that he has been discovered. The purpose of this scene is to lay the
foundation for the incident with the cucumber sandwiches. During the scene with Lane,
Algernon absentmindedly eats all the sandwiches himself. This is the first scene where
food is a source of conflict and a substitute for the idea of sex. Algernon’s insatiable
appetite, his preoccupation with food, and his tendency for indulging himself hint at other
kinds of appetites and indulging.
The butler enters again to announce the arrival of Mr. Earnest Worthing, whose
name soon turns out to be Jack. Algernon is delighted and greets Jack asking him whether
4
it was business or pleasure that brought him to town. Jack says it was pleasure and when
he hears that Algernon is expecting Gwendolen and Lady Bracknell, reveals that he came
to town for the purpose of proposing to Gwendolen. Algernon ridicules Jack’s view of
marriage as romantic, and says that if he ever gets married he’ll try to forget the fact.
These are one of the first instances of Algernon using his witty remarks to undermine
statements supportive of the conventional world view. He tells Jack: “Divorces are made
in Heaven”
4
. By saying this he inverts the cliché about marriages being “made in
heaven”. This is the instance of the inversion of the common notion of morality or
philosophical thought which Wilde also uses in other parts of the play order to reveal the
“shallow mask of manners” by showing that things are often not in accordance with
conventions and prescribed behaviour and that people have to be hypocritical in such a
society to preserve their status. During the conversation, when Jack reaches for the one of
cucumber sandwiches. Algernon reprimands him saying that they are for Lady Bracknell
and that only he, as her cousin is allowed to eat them, suggesting that Jack takes bread
and butter prepared for Gwendolen. Here, Algernon interprets eating as a sort of social,
and even sexual presumption, for when Jack demonstrates too much enthusiasm for the
bread and butter, Algernon reproaches him for behaving as though he were “married to
Gwendolen already”. He reminds that that he isn’t and he doubts he ever will saying that
before that Jack “will have to clear up the whole question of Cecily”
5
. When Jack
pretends not to know anyone by that name, Algernon asks Lane to find “that cigarette
case Mr. Worthing left in the smoking room the last time he dined here”
6
. The case bears
the inscription which says “from little Cecily” to “her dear Uncle Jack”
7
Jack at first
pretends that is his aunt, but than gives up and reveals that he is a guardian of Cecily
Cardew, a grand-daughter of Mr. Thomas Cardew who adopted him when he was a little
boy. He admits having a double identity and that his name isn’t Earnest at all, but Jack,
but that he was using a false name in town so as to be able to behave as he likes. In
country, on the other side he pretended “to have a younger brother of the name of
Earnest, who lives at the Albany, and gets into the most dreadful scrapes”.
8
Algernons
4
Oscar Wilde, “The Importance of Being Earnest, Act I, Part I
5
Ibid.
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
5
