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2009-10-21 01:02:03
The Importance of Being Earnest is to a great extent a social critique, on which, although Oscar Wilde insisted a triviality. A good deal of typical Wildean epigrams in the play are strong evidences to Wilde’s satire and criticism on hypocrisy of the late-Victorian life and the British government.
The ideas of double sides and double identity of the main characters revealed in the play are good manifestations of people’s hypocrisy. In ACT I, Jack says “When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.” It can be cued that Jack somewhat forces himself to entertain when he is with his neighbors in the country though he is not happy about it, which shows the double sides of Jack’s personality. Besides, as the plot moves on, Jack’s being Ernest in town and being the real self in the country, together with Algernon’s Bunburying thing have added to the effect of satire on the people in the society. As Cecily defines, “I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.”
So far, this play is probably not only Wilde’s “Art for Art’s Sake” work. It is really forced to say the work was written merely for its beauty. However, it would be more proper to assume that this play also serves as a weapon to attack the times, which could be supported by the following statement. Lady Bracknell responds to Jack’s answer, “I am pleased to hear it. I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead the acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.” On the one hand, Wilde is teasing the boorish ignorance and vacuity of the British leisured classes. While on the other, he is certainly making a social and political point. Let’s say, education. Lady Bracknell implies that if the poor class are aware of anything about anything, they would surely overturn the upper or the ruling class. In terms of this, it can be inferred that Lady Bracknell has not only demonstrated the stupidity of the British aristocracy, but also made Wilde’s whip be heard.
There is no doubt that The Importance of Being Ernest is a testimony of Wilde’s aestheticism, e.g. “It is perfectly phrased! And quite as true as any observation in civilized life should be.” It is voicing the moral perspective of the typical Wildean dandy hero, who only sees the form of beauty important rather than truth. But even still, “I’ve now realized for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest” has ended the play with
a deeper meaning. Based on the social and political circumstances of the late-Victorian period, it can be concluded that the play has also acted as a socially satirizing whip to greater extent.
Critical reception
In contrast to much theatre of the time, The Importance of Being Earnest's light plot does not tackle serious social and political issues, something contemporary reviewers were wary of. Though unsure of Wilde's seriousness as a dramatist, they recognised the play's cleverness, humour and popularity with audiences.[29] George Bernard Shaw, for example, reviewed the play in the Saturday Review, arguing that comedy should touch as well as amuse, "I go to the theatre to be moved to laughter".[30] Later in a letter he said, the play, though "extremely funny" was Wilde's "first really heartless [one]".[31] In The World, William Archer wrote that he had enjoyed watching the play but found it to be empty of meaning, "What can a poor critic do with a play which raises no principle, whether of art or morals, creates its own canons and conventions, and is nothing but an absolutely wilful expression of an irrepressibly witty personality?"[32]
In The Speaker, A.B. Walkey admired the play and was one of few see it as the culmination of Wilde's dramatical career. He denied the term "farce" was derogatory, or even lacking in seriousness, and said "It is of nonsense all compact, and better nonsense, I think, our stage has not seen".[33] H.G. Wells, in an unsigned review for the Pall Mall Gazette, called Earnest one of freshest comedies of the year, saying "More humorous dealing with theatrical conventions it would be difficult to imagine."[34] He also questioned whether people would fully see its message, "..how Serious People will take this Trivial Comedy intended for their learning remains to be seen. No doubt seriously."[35] The play was so light-hearted that many reviewers compared it to comic opera rather than drama. called it "a pure verbal opera", while The Times wrote that "The story is almost too preposterous to go without music".[15]
Of the theatre of the period, only the work of Wilde and his fellow Irishman Shaw has survived, as well as the farce Charley's Aunt. The Importance of Being Earnest is Wilde's most popular work and continually revived today.[7] Max Beerbohm called this play Wilde's "finest, most indeniably his own", saying that in his other comedies Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance and An Ideal Husband "you are aware of the mechanism, you are aware of Sardou".[36]
[edit] Themes
[edit] Triviality
Richard Ellmann says that The Importance of Being Earnest touched on many themes Wilde had been building since the 1880s – the languor of aesthetic poses was well-established and Wilde takes it as a starting point for the two protagonists.[37] While Salomé, An Ideal Husband and The Picture of Dorian Gray had dwelt on more serious wrongdoing, vice in Earnest is represented by Algy's craving for cucumber san
dwiches. Wilde told Robert Ross that the play's theme was "That we should treat all trivial things in life very seriously, and all serious things of life with a sincere and studied triviality."[37] The theme is hinted at in the play's ironic title, and "earnestness" is repeatedly alluded to in the dialogue, Algernon says in Act II, "one has to be serious about something if one is to have any amusement in life' but goes on to reproach Jack for 'being serious about everything'".[38] Blackmail and corruption had haunted the double lives of Dorian Gray and Sir Robert Chiltern (in An Ideal Husband), but in Earnest the protagonists' duplicity ("bunburying") is merely to avoid unwelcome social obligations.[37] While much theatre of the time tackled serious social and political issues, The Importance of..is superficially about nothing at all. It "refuses to play the game" of other dramatists of the period, for instance George Bernard Shaw, who used their characters to draw audiences to grander ideals.[29]
[edit] As a satire of society
The play repeatedly mocks Victorian mores and social customs, marriage and the pursuit of love in particular.[39] In Victorian times earnestness was considered to be the over-riding societal value, originating in religious attempts to reform the lower classes, it spread to the upper ones too throughout the century.[40] The play's very title, with its mocking paradox (serious people are so because they do not see trivial comedies) introduces the theme, it continues in the drawing room discussion, "Yes, but you must be serious about it. I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them" says Algernon in Act 1; allusions are quick and from multiple angles.[41] Wilde embodied society's rules and rituals artfully into Lady Bracknell: minute attention to the details of her style created a comic effect of assertion by restraint.[42] In contrast to her encyclopaedic knowledge of the social distinctions of London's street names, Jack's obscure parentage is subtly evoked. He defends himself against her "A handbag?" with the clarification, "The Brighton Line". At the time, Victoria Station consisted of two separate but adjacent terminal stations sharing the same name. To the east was the ramshackle LC&D Railway, on the west the up-market LB&SCR—the Brighton Line, which went to Worthing, the fashionable, expensive town the gentleman who found baby Jack was travelling to at the time (and after which Jack was named).[43]
Wilde managed both to engage with and to mock the genre. The men follow traditional matrimonial rites, but the foibles they excuse are ridiculous, and the farce is built on an absurd confusion of a book and a baby.[44] In turn, both Gwendolen and Cecily have the ideal of marrying a man named Ernest, a popular and respected name at the time, and they indignantly declare that they have been deceived when they find out the men's real names. When Jack apologises to Gwendolen during his marriage pro
posal it is for not being wicked:[45]
While Wilde had long been famous for dialogue and his use of language, Raby (1988) argues that he achieved a unity and mastery in Earnest that was unmatched in his other plays, save perhaps Salome. While his earlier comedies suffer from an unevenness resulting from the thematic clash between the trivial and the serious, Earnest achieves a pitch-perfect style that allows these to dissolve.[51] There are three different registers detectable in the play. The dandyish insouciance of Jack and Algernon, established early with Algernon and Lane's exchange, betrays an underlying unity despite their differing attitudes. The formidable pronouncements of Lady Bracknell are as startling for her use of hyperbole and rhetorical extravagance as much as the disconcerting opinions therein. In contrast, the speech of Dr Chasuble and Miss Prism is distinguished by "pedantic precept" and "idiosyncratic diversion".[52] Furthermore the play is chock full of epigrams and paradoxes. Max Beerbohm described it as "littered with "chiselled apothoegms - witticisms unrelated to action or character", of these he found half a dozen to be of the highest order.[18]