House of Notes

The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People. , When asked what one could expect from “The Importance of Being Earnest”, Mr. Oscar Wilde said, “It is exquisitely trivial, a delicate bubble of fancy, and it hasits philosophy… that we treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and allthe serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.”  Indeed,his play is peopled with desperately trivial characters, manipulating andcoping with a stifling, hollow system of rules to maintain their classdistinction and privileges.  At least two of them invent alter egos to escape this hell and to pursue their dreams of love and romance.  Through parody, irony and verbal paradox, Mr. Wilde adroitly strips off what Cecily calls “the shallow mask of manner” to reveal the hypocrisy and prejudice that prevailed in a society obsessed with appearance and propriety – one that was divided by class, money, gender and generation. People have asked me

The Satire of The importance of being earnest...... The use of satirical devices such as irony, travesty, sarcasm and farce to ridicule society and the behavior of people in society is quite often successful in questioning the morals and values of the people under observation. In Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest, Wilde mocks the Victorian structure of society in Britain, and the rules it followed in the 1800s. Each character is used by Wilde to satirize the society on such issues like marriage, morality, intelligence, and the appearance versus the nature of something. Wilde usually satirizes the Victorian society that he lived in with the idea of marriage. Marriage is seen in Victorian society as a business arrangement, as shown when Lady Bracknell questions Jack to determine if he is suitable for Gwendolen, she had provided a list of bachelors that have been prearranged. in addition illustrating the attitude on marriage, Algernon’s speech criti