“The Importance of Being Earnest”, Oscar Wilde’s witty play about values in Victorian society in England, uses a variety of literary devices: irony, puns, oxymoron, and hyperbole, among others to poke fun at the characters. There are also several themes in the play, such as duty and respectability, hypocrisy, the shallowness of choices regarding marital partners, and many other commentaries on British society of the times. The most pervasive theme in the play involves the emphasis placed on the appearance of people and things over substance. The characters who adopt the name Ernest are actually completely lacking in earnestness, and display great levels of hypocrisy that Oscar Wilde clearly associated with the English society during the times. This paper will support the thesis that Wilde’s overall theme in his play is duty and respectability, and that despite the fact that “earnestness” is the most valued quality in the story, in truth, sincerity is impossible to find within any of the characters or story lines.
The word “earnestness” indicates sincerity, but in “The Importance of Being Earnest” earnestness appears to be rather boring, humorless, pompous, smug, and focused on one’s formal responsibilities and sense of duty. In the play, when people refer to the word “serious” they are typically using it to indicate something that is inane, and the opposite is true as well. For instance, Algernon expresses that he thinks it is “shallow” when people are not serious about their meals, and at the same time Gwendolen says that in matters of grave importance, style rather than sincerity is the most important thing. Victorian society in this tale reflects a very smug picture of moralism, wherein both Jack and Algernon fabricate personas in order to avoid having to abide by the more traditional ideas of decency in English society. In the play, however, one of the paradoxes is that it is actually impossible to be earnest while simultaneously one claims to be exactly that. Instead, the characters in the play who invite wickedness and silliness are potentially the people who are the best possible candidates for being legitimately virtuous as well as earnest.
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"Satire in The Importance of Being Earnest".
The values of duty and responsibility in the setting of the play are held to be the most important qualities one can have, such as earnestness, which is represented by a determination to always do the morally correct thing. However, the appearance of earnestness in the play is much more important than actually being earnest so that style over substance prevails at every juncture. Both Jack and Algernon lead double lives, invent fictitious personas to conceal their true activities, and even adopt pseudonyms in order to accomplish their duplicity. All of these activities are conducted in order for the men to appear to be respectable and demonstrate the appearance of propriety.
Gwendolen typifies this quality of appearance over substance, because for her, the emphasis is on the perfect appearances of people and activities. In order to be a valid marriage proposal, it must be presented absolutely correctly, and her family (brother) rehearses proposing correctly. Gwendolen personifies a typical woman in Victorian times, as she has many of her own ideas as well is ideals, is focused on improving herself, and educates herself by attending lectures. However, she is also shallow and false, being in love with Jack who she knows as Ernest, and is completely focused on his name. This fixation represents the play’s focus on the value of duty and responsibility; she is so obsessed with seeking a husband with the name Ernest, a name which she believes “inspires absolute confidence.” In the meantime, she herself is unable to see that the man who has adopted this name is being completely deceptive, and is actually the absolute opposite of being earnest. She demonstrates that despite her protestations about what is correct, she overlooks that which is serious in favor of triviality.
The protagonist of the play, Jack Worthing, is another character whose chief priority is to convey the appearance of propriety. He seems to be a respectable man who owns a great deal of land, is a justice of the peace, and is widely respected in his community under his name Jack. His duties include being a guardian to Cecily, and he also has other responsibilities and people who are dependent on him such as servants and tenants. Yet, he is duplicitous in that he has pretended to have a younger brother named Ernest, who is the exact of himself because, he claims, Ernest is always getting into trouble causing Jack to have to rescue him. In fact, Jack uses the idea of this phantom brother to engage in the activities that he accuses Ernest of doing. His hypocrisy, at least one of them, is that he becomes involved in the very behaviors that he professes to disapprove of. So fluid are his allegiances that eventually he is willing to formally change his name to Ernest simply in order to win the love of Gwendolen.
Algernon plays the role of a dandy, who is a likable, somewhat lazy bachelor who also demonstrates brilliance, wit, selfishness, and delivers hilarious declarations that waver between being nonsensical or else utterly profound. Just as his friend Jack has done, he has also created a nonexistent character, Bunbury, who serves to provide him with an alibi when he wants to avoid repugnant social functions. Like Jack, he uses duplicity in order to give the appearance of someone who is honoring his duty and responsibilities by being at the disposal of his very ill friend, who is constantly sending for him to come to his deathbed. Algernon, when he is discovered to be deceitful about this invisible friend, is not only not horrified at being discovered but seems to experience it as more proof of his inventiveness and cleverness. Instead of his valuing actual seriousness or earnestness, his priority is honing his quality of creativity and brilliance in which he is a type of character in a play (ironically), an artistic creation that he himself has dreamt up. It does not appear that in this play, Algernon has any moral standards at all, because he shows the audience that the only real obligation he has is to live life amusingly and creatively.
In Wilde’s play, perhaps one of his most hilarious, virtually every character in the story behaves exactly the opposite of what he or she has professed to be most important. Although the name Ernest is valued by all of the characters because of the suggestion that it means sincerity, the last thing that they demonstrate through their actions and words is seriousness or genuineness. What is actually serious is considered to be trivial, and what is actually insignificant is valued above all else, such as the “correctness” of a marriage proposal rather than the ensuing marriage. The values of Victorian society in England as portrayed in this play are focused on a preoccupation with superficial values such as wealth, family background, and family name, rather than the substantial qualities that people might have such as genuine seriousness, decency, and industriousness over birthright. In “The Importance of Being Earnest” there is simply no earnestness to be found, ultimately.
