The

Importance of
being Earnest
-Oscar Wilde
(1854-1900)
THEMES, MOTIFS & SYMBOLS
 love as part of the institution of marriage?
 The Nature of Marriage (is a marriage proposal
“business” or “pleasure”?)
 Marriage institution as a societal
expectation(practical considerations versus
romantic excitement?)
 How important is honesty and sincerity (i.e. being
earnest?)
Themes and Exemplification from
the text.
 How effective is a code of rules of what people
should and shouldn’t do?
 How are women characters presented?
 Are “truly moral” characters irreverent?
 is leading a “double life” only afforded to the
“upper” classes?
The Pursuit of Marriage:Men and
Women in Love
Marriage is of paramount importance in The Importance of Being
Earnest. The question of the marriage appears in the opening
dialogue between Algernon and his butler, Lane. Algernon and Jack
discuss the nature of marriage when they dispute briefly about
weather a marriage proposal is a matter of “business” or
“pleasure”, and Lady Bracknell touches on the issue. Even her list
of bachelors and the prepared interview to which she subjects Jack
are based on the set of assumptions about the nature and purpose
of marriage. In general, these assumptions reflect the conventional
preoccupations of Victorian respectability- social position, income,
character.
The play is actually an ongoing debate about the nature of
marriage and whether it is “pleasant or unpleasant” Lane
remarks casually that she believes it to be “a very pleasant
state”, where as Algernon’s views are relentlessly cynical
until he meets and falls in love with Cecily. Jack, by contrast,
speaks in the voice of the true romantic. He tells Algernon
however, that the truth “isn’t quite the sort of thing one tells
to a nice, sweet, refined girl.” At the end of the play, Jack
apologizes to Gwendolen when he realizes he had been
telling the truth all his. She forgives him, she says, on the
grounds that she thinks he’s sure to change, which suggests
Gwendolen’s own rather cynical view of the nature of men
Morality and the constraints it imposes on society is a favorite topic of
conversation in The Importance of Being Earnest. Algernon thinks the
servant class has a responsibility to set a moral standard for the
upper classes. Jack thinks reading a private cigarette case is
"ungentlemanly." "More than half of modern culture depends on what
one shouldn't read,"' Algernon points out. These restrictions and
assumptions suggest a strict code of morals that exists in Victorian
society, but Wilde isn't concerned with questions of what is and isn't
moral. Instead, he makes fun of the whole Victorian idea of morality as
a rigid body of rules about what people should and shouldn't do. The
very title of the play is a double-edged comment on the phenomenon.
The play's central plot--the man who both is and isn't Ernest/earnest-
presents a moral paradox. Earnestness, which refers to both the
quality of being serious and the quality of being sincere, is the play's
primary object of satire. Characters such as Jack, Gwendolen, Miss
Prism, and Dr.Chasuble, who put a premium on sobriety and
honesty, are either hypocrites or else have the rug pulled out from
under them. What Wilde wants us to see as truly moral is really the
opposite of earnestness: irreverence.
Algernon and Jack may create similar deceptions, but they are not
morally equivalent characters. When Jack fabricates his brother
Ernest's death, he imposes that fantasy on his loved ones, and
though we are aware of the deception, they, of course, are not. He
rounds out the deception with costumes and props, and he does his
best to convince the family he's in mourning. He is acting
hypocritically. In contrast, Algernon and Cecily make up elaborate
stories that don't really assault the truth in any serious way or try to
alter anyone else's perception of reality. In a sense, Algernon and
Cecily are characters after Wilde's own heart, since in a way they
invent life for themselves as though life is a work of-fart. In some
ways, Algernon, not Jack, is the play's real hero.
Not only is Algdsnon like Wilde in his dandified, exquisite wit, tastes,
and priorities, but he also resembles Wilde to the extent that his
fictions and inventions resemble those of an artist.In a sense,
Algernon and Cecily are characters after Wilde's own heart, since in a
way they invent life for themselves as though life is a work of-fart. In
some ways, Algernon, not Jack, is the play's real hero. Not only is
Algdsnon like Wilde in his dandified, exquisite wit, tastes, and
priorities, but he also resembles Wilde to the extent that his fictions
and inventions resemble those of an artist.
One of the most common motifs in The Importance of Being Earnest
is the notion of inversion, and inversion takes many forms.
The play contains inversions of thought, situation, and character, as
well as inversions of common notions of morality or philosophical
thought. When Algernon remarks, "Divorces are made in Heaven,"' he
inverts the cliché about marriages being "made in heaven." Similarly,
at the end of the play, when Jack calls it "a terrible thing" for a man
to discover that he's been telling the truth all his life, he inverts
conventional morality. Most of the women in the play represent an
inversion of accepted Victorian practices with regard to gender roles.
Lady Bracknell usurps the role of the father in interviewing Jack, since
typically this was a father's task, and Gwendolen and Cecily take
charge of their own romantic lives, while the men stand by watching
in a relatively passive role. The trick that Wilde plays on Miss Prism at
the end of the play is also a kind of inversion:The trick projects onto
Earnestness, which implies seriousness or sincerity, is the great enemy of
morality in The Importance of Being Earnest. Earnestness can take many
forms, including boringness, solemnity, pomposity, complacency, smugness,
self-righteousness, and sense of duty, all of which Wilde saw as hallmarks of
the Victorian character. When characters in the play use the word serious,
they tend to mean "trivial," and vice versa. For example, Algernon thinks it
"shallow" for people not to be "serious" about meals, and Gwendolen believes,
"In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing.“
For Wilde, the word earnest comprised two different but related ideas:he
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 characters who embrace triviality and wickedness are the
ones who may have the greatest chance of attaining seriousness and virtue.
In The Importance of Being Earnest, the pun, widely considered to be the lowest
form of verbal wit, is rarely just a play on words. The pun in the title is a case in
point. The earnest‘ Ernest joke strikes at the very heart of Victorian notions of
respectability and duty. Gwendolen wants to marry a man called Ernest, and she
doesn't care whether the man actually possesses the qualities that comprise
earnestness. She is. after all, quick to forgive Jack's deception. In embodying a man
who is initially neither "earnest" nor "Ernest," and who, through forces beyond his
control, subsequently becomes both earnest" and "Ernest,." Jack is a walking,
breathing paradox and a complex symbol of Victorian hypocrisy
• The Importance of not • The Double Life
being Ernest • Satire
• Puns/Word play • Hyperbole
• Inversion • Mistaken identities
• Death • Names
• Romantic Comedy • Appearance/Deception
• Dramatic Irony
 Genre and Style
‘A trivial Comedy for Serious
People’
Life is too
important to be • Intellectual Farce
taken seriously. • Comedy of Manners
(Oscar wilde) • Romantic Comedy
• Satire
• Dramatic Irony
• Comic Timings
• Farcical Structures
Thank you
Nowruzzaman Nion
Lecturer, BAUST.
[email protected]
Classroom code: pwev6x3