Oscar Wilde - The Importance of Being Earnest

I thought Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest was hilarious. It’s amazing that this brilliant piece, written in the late 1800s, is still so funny today. The play is literally filled with great one-liners, puns, reversed meanings, and absurdities that are the opposite of reality. Wilde flippantly portrays members of late Victorian society as one-dimensional and superficial, while blatantly mocking Victorian values and moral standards. On the surface the play is simple, but underneath lies deception, delusion, self-righteous moralism, and hypocrisy. The ostentatious characters believe that appearance and elegance, rather than accuracy or truth, should dictate human behavior. These self-absorbed characters do and say the opposite of what would be considered acceptable or normal. Wilde goes out of his way to contradict conventional thinking. This portrayal of popular culture demonstrates the anti-Victorian movement of aestheticism and the belief that art need not provide direction or usefulness, rather it need only be beautiful. Wilde said that “Life imitates art far more than Art imitates life” (pg. 839).

Wilde relentlessly turns reality upside down, such as when Gwendolyn remarks that “the old fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.” Jack proclaims “I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.” Algernon goes off about how “perfectly scandalous” it is when women flirt with their own husbands. “That is not very pleasant. Indeed, it is not even decent... and that sort of thing is enormously on the increase.” “It is simply washing one’s clean linen in public.” In describing her friend whose husband had died, Lady Bracknell said “She looks quite twenty years younger” and seems “to be living entirely for pleasure now.”

The play takes aim at marriage, morality, aristocracy, hypocrisy, and death. The debate over whether marriage is pleasant or unpleasant recurs throughout the play. In the opening act, Algernon and Lane, his butler, briefly discuss marriage. Lane remarks that he thinks marriage is a pleasant state, but doesn’t know a lot about it because he was only married for a short time as a result “of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person.” Algernon finds it annoying that Lane has no sense of moral responsibility, and wonders what good servants are if they don’t set a moral standard for the upper class.

The connection to Wilde’s actual life is seen in the secrets and double-identities of Algernon and Jack. At one point Cecily says to Algernon: “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.” On another occasions Jack warns Algernon: “If you don’t take care, your friend Bunbury will get you into a serious scrape some day.”

Algernon and Jack (Ernest) are constantly going at it with clever banter and bickering. Ernest is pleased to announce that he is going to propose to Algernon’s cousin, Gwendolyn. Ernest and Algernon disagree on whether a proposal should be considered business or pleasure. Algernon says it’s not pleasure, because once Gwendolyn accepts, the thrill will be gone, and argues that the uncertainty of romance is what makes it appealing. He adds that he will try to forget that if he ever marries. Ernest quips that divorce courts are made for people like that. Algernon remarks that “divorces are made in Heaven.” (An inversion of the saying “marriage made in Heaven.”)

Ernest is aggravated when he learns that Algernon has the cigarette case that he has been looking for and says that he was just about to offer a reward for it. Algernon says he wishes Ernest would, because he could use the reward. Of course there is no use in issuing a reward now that the thing is found. The repartee between Algernon and Ernest is hilarious. Ernest declares that Algernon talks like a dentist and says it's vulgar since Algernon isn’t a dentist – “it produces a false impression.” Algernon retorts “well, that is exactly what dentists always do.” This stuff kills me! In addition to the obvious dentist joke, it is ironic because both Algernon and Ernest are giving false impressions of themselves.

Jack notes that high moral views are not conducive to health and happiness as he pretends to be his unfortunate brother, Ernest – and states that “is the whole truth pure and simple” (even though he is living a lie). Algernon responds that “the truth is rarely pure and simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!” Jack’s comeback is “that wouldn’t at all be a bad thing.” Algernon tells him to leave literary criticism to people who haven’t been at a University.

Throughout the play, we see the double-meaning of the word “earnest” as Algernon and Jack struggle to be "Ernest" by lying. Wilde irreverently makes his point about earnestness being a highly desirable character trait in Victorian culture. Gwendolyn tells Jack “my ideal has always been to love some one of the name of Ernest. There is something in that name that inspires absolute confidence.” It seems that all you need is the name “Ernest” in order to be “earnest.”

When Lady Bracknell learns of Gwendolyn’s engagement, she states “An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be. It is hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself…” As Lady Bracknell interrogates Jack, she states “a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing. Which do you know?” When Jack replies that he knows nothing, Lady Bracknell responds “I am pleased to hear that. I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance.” When Lady Bracknell learns that Jack does not know who his parents are, she advises him to “try and acquire some relations as soon as possible, and to make a definite effort to produce at any rate one parent, of either sex, before the season is quite over.” Appearance is everything to these people. In talking to Jack, Gwendolyn says “What wonderfully blue eyes you have, Ernest! They are quite, quite, blue. I hope you will always look at me just like that, especially when there are other people present.”

Jack tells Algernon that “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!” At the end of the play, Jack apologizes to Gwendolyn saying “it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking the truth. Can you forgive me?” Gwendolyn reassures him with her cynical view of men and marriage: “I can. For I feel that you are sure to change.”

I love this play! Wilde’s epigrams are nothing short of genius and the wonderful dialog full of deception, manipulation, illusion, and artifice provides non-stop amusement with the play on words, double-meanings, and unending barrage of puns.