The Importance Of Being Earnest

By stating that he did not know anyone by the name of Cecily, Jack initiates his own debacle. He has to clarify that Cecily is actual his ward. Nonetheless, Jack bears no anguish to dissembling to his closest companion. Jack’s morality has been impaired by his lies and it implies that his animalistic qualities control him. Yet, he falls in love and he must tell Gwendolen, his sweetheart, of his morally wrong character. In order to do so Jack has to disclose that Ernest was not in fact his real name but a mere alias created to cover up his dastardly ways. He can think of no other way than to “kill” his brother. Wilde shows how Jack’s urbane nature begins to be marred by his animalism since he was willing to kill a man, fictional or not. Ensuing in the play Jack is speaking with Algernon and he begins to ponder on how to commit the murder. He states “My poor brother Ernest is carried off suddenly in Paris, by a severe chill. That gets rid of him” (Wilde 16). Though fictional, Jack’s murder of Ernest still seems to carry the same implications further into the book. This murder eventually skews his reputation once his lies become known. Wilde proves how Jack’s lies soon catch up to him and flaw his esteemed moral persona. Later in the play Algernon sets off on a trip to Jack’s country estate and claims he is Ernest Worthing. Later when Jack arrives Cecily informs her caretaker that his brother Ernest is in his room. Jack replies

Oscar Wilde’s play entitled “The Importance of Being Earnest” illustrates the concept of dual personality, fantasy, love, and lies. Jack, Algernon, Gwendolyn, and Cecily all live in lies. They are manipulated by their fantasies and desire for perfect relationship and love. Jack, the protagonist in the play, is the root of lies because of his imaginary brother named Earnest. Algernon uses the name to win Cecily, while Gwendolyn and Cecily are both fascinated by this name because it expresses strength and perfection of manhood. Due to their search and desire to have Earnest, the male and female characters escape from the reality. Therefore, Wilde in The Importance of Being Earnest portrays a gender doubled

In The Importance of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde portrays a relationship between two men, Algernon and Jack, which is filled with constant arguing and disagreement. Their first dispute over a cigarette case is presented early in act one, leaving the reader with a lasting impression of the flaws in their relationship. Algernon and Jack disagree over who holds ownership over the cigarette case leading Algernon to remark “I think that is rather mean of you, Ernest, I must say” (Wilde 462). Being that both of these men are members of the upper class, the case clearly does not have true monetary value to them except to use an a manipulating factor. Algernon eventually trades the case in order to receive an explanation from Jack about why he is “Earnest in the town and Jack in the country” (464). The trivial nature of this strife shows the weak bond between Algernon and Jack. This weakness is reinforced when Jack and Algernon meet again in the middle of the play. After returning from town, Jack finds Algernon at his house and is forced to listen to Algernon lie about being his brother. In response, Jack says “nothing will induce me to take his hand. I think his coming down here disgraceful. He knows perfectly well why” (498). This is another example showing the poor relationship between Algernon and Jack. Jack’s distrust of Algernon due to his habitual lying goes hand in hand with several of their disagreements, further preventing a successful friendship between them.

Algernon’s stances on marriage, relationships, and self accurately describe his selfishness. Not only does Algernon destroy his own sense of reality, he destroys everyone else’s concept of the truth. The Importance of Being Earnest is meant to make people laugh; unfortunately, Wilde’s characters are so rude and condescending that the reader can have trouble finding the humor. This play is so full of unhealthy relationships that one has to assume that nothing will work out in the end. Algernon is an egomaniac, and there is no doubt that his attitude will rub off on Cecily, Jack, and

A power struggle often arises as aspects of society change. With feminism entering the limelight, one predicts there to be uproar from the male gender. Unexpectedly, In Act II, the cattiness is unleashed when Cecily and Gwendolen discover they share lovers. As one of the most comedic events in “The Importance of Being Earnest,” this scene contains hidden symbols. Drama climaxes as snacks are being served with these statements:

“The Importance of Being Earnest,” a satirical play written by Oscar Wilde, discusses a vast variety of criticisms regarding the late Victorian societal period. In this comedic drama, focusing on and analyzing certain minor characters leads to a more effective interpretation of the messages attempting to be portrayed to the audience. For example, through the persona of Lady Bracknell, Wilde effectively mocks the concept of marriage for social status rather than love. Additionally, interpreting the roles of the lower class servants allows the readers to internalize the desperate need for social reform that the author felt at the time period. Finally, the entire concept of Bunburyism, or masquerading as an alternate persona, satirizes the hypocrisy of the Victorian Era.

Jack uses his alter-ego, Ernest, as a escape from his boring and prude life, however as duty starts to call append itself and Jack seeks to marry a woman he met,Gwendolen, and he now wishes to rid his alter-ego but not without consequence. As, Gwendolen’s fixation on the name Ernest and Ernest alone, Jack has to choose between his two worlds, and his lies eventually become his undoing. Wilde’s play and the character Jack Worthing was meant to expose the Victorian Era’s repressive and suffocating norms, The classes care so much about being respectable that they are willing to lie about it, The Importance of Being Earnest reveals the differences between the behavior of the people and the

The Importance of Being Earnest is about a man named Jack Worthing who works several jobs in his town servicing other people. For many years, Jack has pretended to have a brother named Ernest who is supposedly off living a life on the edge on the pursuit of happiness, while managing to get into constant trouble. What Jack’s community doesn’t know, is that Ernest is just a made up person whom Jack uses as an excuse to leave work anytime he wants and to visit his lover Gwendolen. In the beginning, no one else knows that Ernest is actually Jack’s secret identity, until later in the play when Jack meets Algernon, who becomes

It is as though Wilde, through the vehicle of Algernon, is trying to make a point about the difference in severity between the two cases of dual identity. Algernon never once tries to deceive others into thinking he is Bunburry, whereas Jack literally embodies a different persona depending on his location.

It was highly moral for a man to have a family and to be current in marriage; it boosts up his image and role in society. A man, who has been out of marriage for too long, is seen as idle. Wilde presents two characters, Algernon and Jack, who have a dispute whether marriage is silly or not. It suggests that not every Victorian man were keen on the idea of marriage. In the Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde displays a

Viewing the play of The Importance of Being Earnest from a feminist perspective portrays the men in the Victorian Era to be misogynistic. A perpetuated stereotype in this play is that women should be protected from the truth. “Jack:[In a very patronizing manner] My dear fellow, the truth isn't quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman”(29)! The belief that women are fragile and unable to handle anything serious is present. Furthermore, when Algernon discovers that Cecily is convinced that they had met before and had had many romantic encounters, she is presented as mentally insane. This perpetuates the belief that women depend on men and could not be satisfied without one in their life. In addition to this, Gwendolen and Cecily are the ones being deceived by Jack and Algernon. This shows that women are stereotypically submissive to men and can be taken advantage of. Through evaluating The Importance

Oscar Wilde's, "The Importance of Being Earnest" revolves around the dichotomy of the true definition of honesty versus the victorian definition of honesty. It is apparent that Wilde's opinion is that true honesty is expressed through being genuine to one's self as opposed to putting on a front as is important in victorian ideals. In this work, Wilde uses humor to off-set the seriousness of the theme of the story. One who has studied this work can also clearly see that Wilde is using sarcasm to say things that would not have been accepted by society if they were said bluntly. For example he exemplifies in a very sarcastic manner the hypocracy that victorian society represents by the very fact that they pretend to uphold honesty above all

One thing that Jack and Algernon have in common is that they both have these false faces. Algernon’s alter ego Bunbury is a version of himself used in the country but he uses Ernest to marry Cecily. The story deals with Ernest, this immorally imaginary man that both Cecily and Gwendolyn become engaged to, it exemplifies the irony within the name. Most of the irony comes from this character. One of Wilde's satiric targets is romantic and sentimental love, which he ridicules by having the women fall in love with a man because of his name rather than more personal attributes. Gwendolyn said “No, there is very little music in the name Jack, if any at all, indeed. It does not thrill. It produces

Wilde's characters live in a world in which order is constantly vanishing and they scorn stability and simplicity. "The truth", as Algy says, "is rarely pure and never simple."(13) Algy and Jack fulfil their wishes by the means of lying. They are impostors who use false identities in order to free themselves from the hypocrisy of the convention. Their tricks simply serve them as a way to achieve their moral freedom.

For Wilde, the word earnest comprised two different but related ideas: the notion of false truth and the notion of false morality, or moralism. The moralism of Victorian society—its smugness and pomposity—impels Algernon and Jack to invent fictitious alter egos so as to be able to escape the strictures of propriety and decency. However, what one member of society considers decent or indecent doesn’t always reflect what decency really is. One of the play’s paradoxes is the impossibility of actually being either earnest (meaning “serious” or “sincere”) or moral while claiming to be so. The