The Importance of Being Earnest

In class, we have been reading Oscar Wilde's play, "The Importance of Being Earnest". In the play, Jack Worthing, the play's protagonist, is the guardian to Cecily Cardew. He was found adopted when he was a baby. In the town of Hertfordshire, Jack is a major landowner. He has also pretended to have a brother named Ernest, who allows him to disappear for days at a time and do as he likes. Ernest is the name Jack goes by in London. Algernon, Jack's close friend, has also created his own version of Ernest, named Bunbury. Oscar Wilde uses comedy, witty conversations, and satire, to reveal the shallowness and deceitfulness of these characters. His writing style provides insight into how Wilde perceives the privileged upper class. The most ironic part of the play is the title. "Earnest" means honest and truthful, however, no one in the play is either one of those things. Everyone is either superficial or full of deceit. Wilde also satirized the fact that men had power over women during that time, when in reality, women were doing all the sacrificing.

Part of the success of the play comes from Wilde's incorporations of epigrams. Epigrams are sayings or remarks that express an idea in a clever and amusing way. A few examples in the play are, "Divorces are made in heaven" and "It's only the intellectual lost who ever argue." With marriage, Wilde was making the point that divorces are a way to attain happiness than marriage.