Section 1: Social, Political and Philosophical Context The Victorian era was one of great change and importance. The industrialisation of England during this time forever changed how and where people lived. The shift from rural to urban work accelerated with the rise of factories and the advancement of technology. The lower classes were overworked and suffered from horrible workplace conditions. Both adults and children worked tirelessly for sixteen hours per day on repetitive, strenuous and often dangerous tasks. For this,...
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Oscar Wilde once said, “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” Lies are an easy way out but as a result, lead to harder problems. The truth for some people is never simple and is fabricated. Truth gets passed down through people and over time it fades. There is always another side to truth. In the play, The Importance Of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde Jack Worthing appears like a gentleman who loves Gwendolen, but he shows countless times...
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At the heels of the satirical Victorian morality delineated through Wilde’s play, The Importance of Being Earnest, a judiciously executed perception directed at society is apparent. To study a text 120 years on, what’s the point? At the time Oscar Wilde’s satirical view and the way which he composed his judgments on the Victorian society was thought to be quite ahead of its time. Only viewed for the admirable comedy and array of humour? Was the deeper meaning of the...
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Some people tend to assume things like “Will she like me for be the person or will she not like me cause I’m portraying this person she wants in life?” Being yourself is a true factor of being who you supposed to be. Don’t change who you are for someone who wants something else besides what they get. This also one of the traits in the play “The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde. This play is about two...
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Oscar Wilde's Critique of Victorian Society Oscar Wilde was an Irish playwright, poet and essayist who was remembered for his witty epigrams, his imprisonment and early death. During the peak of his fame, Wilde had an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas and was imprisoned for 2 years. In the 19th century, people were “emotionally frigid about sexual matters”, however there was a dark side to those who belonged in the upper-class in the Victorian era where there was a ‘secret...
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An Argumentative Analysis of the Themes within “The Importance of Being Earnest” Wilde's 'The Importance Of Being Earnest' investigates different themes of adoration and marriage, particularly in Act 1, where marriage in Victorian culture is generally negated as an 'extremely charming state,' rather utilizing different comedic devices, for example, plays on words, ironic statements and reversals to ridicule its ethicalness and profound quality. Wilde presents comedy through the introduction of Victorian perspectives on the usefulness of marriage, deriding it as...
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Contrastingly, although duality in The Picture of Dorian Gray is portrayed by dividing one’s self into two, in The Importance of Being Earnest, there are several instances of characters taking on dual identities. Jack Worthing is an especially interesting case of this dual identity because, in the end, he becomes the person he has been portraying all along. This causes many humorous lies and lavish stories to keep up the personas of his characters both by himself and Algernon Moncrieff....
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In both Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, webs of deceit are spun through various characters misrepresenting the truth. Gender is frequently used as a tool to advance the characters' ability to deceive, or in some cases, hinder it. Both authors use these two key themes to develop their contrasting storylines, one being a murder mystery, the other a comedy of manners. They differ not just in storylines and genre but era, with Oscar...
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Wilde views honesty as a crucial, underrated societal value and in turn, shows the hypocrisy of those who display contradicting actions in this play. An exemplary quote is that from Cecily stating, “ “I don’t [believe him.] But that does not affect the wonderful beauty of his answer”. In this scene Algernon defends himself and even though Cecily does not believe him she falls into his trap because of mere presentation. It is obscene for any gender to recognize a...
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Thesis statement: Wilde tries to prove that idealism in and of itself is useless, and can be based on utter nonsense. This can be supported by how Victorians are often portrayed as having the outward forms of virtue, but ignoring the basis of virtue. At the beginning of Act II, Cecily wishes not to receive the education Miss Prism offered her. She is also anticipated to marry an imaginary person out of love. When “Ernest” took too long to propose...
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The importance of Being earnest by Oscar Wilde is a play that portrays some of the experiences he was facing before his imprisonment. Specifically, through the characters Jack and Algernon who were some of the main characters in the story. Jack Worthing, also known as Earnest John Worthing, is differently expressed within the story. He and Algernon are into ‘bunburying’ which is the equivalent of putting on a false image for society. It reveals how in England’s society, you had...
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Authors use many devices when they want to express what they mean. Literary or rhetorical devices give the purpose of conveying the meaning of the text, to persuade, or evoke emotion and help tie back to the central message of the text. Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, AJD’s “Marriage - How Has it Changed Over Time,” and Marie McKeown’s “Women Through History: Women’s Experience Through the Ages” all relate to each other and use either literary or rhetorical...
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Oscar Wilde’s, The Importance of Being Earnest, creates a trivial comedy which emphasizes the absurdity within Victorian society during the 19th century. The playwright uses characters Jack Worthing, Algernon Moncrieff, Cecily Cardew, Gwendolen Fairfax and Lady Bracknell to develop a sense of humor and comments on the absurd nature of Victorian morals and values. Wilde has used the techniques of irony and character foil to evolve and build characterization of characters in the play. A play created by Oscar Wilde,...
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Call Me by Your Name, a film directed by Luca Guadagnino and the play The Importance of Being Earnest, written by Oscar Wilde follows two contrastingly different works without a common theme. Nevertheless, both authors utilise irony in their chosen genres about love in order to criticise the expectations and hypocrisy present within each society. To further aid these criticisms, both authors strongly differ in their use of characterisations when developing antagonists The use of antagonists within both pieces are...
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Shakespeare in his Othello, and Wilde in his The Importance of Being Earnest, are about realising personality through creative strategies to exploit the hypocrisy of society. Oscar Wilde’s play was first performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London. It is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae to escape burdensome social obligations and in doing so, the characters make comments towards the Victorian society and begin to reconnect with their own identity....
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Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright born in Dublin the year 1854 -1900, he is best remembered for his epigrams within plays. Wilde was born from a prominent family and was a well-educated man, he was noticed as a scholar, however, his reputation is held upon some of his famous comic masterpieces including, The Importance of Being Earnest; a comical parody with lots of linguistic techniques used to represent Wilde's morals on Victorian society; about a man named...
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Famous author and playwright Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” is a brilliant comedic play written in 1895. The play is a comedy of manners and takes place in London and the estate in Hertfordshire. The main protagonist of the play is Jack Worthing, a leading character in the play. Jack Worthing’s conflict in the play is living a double life as both Jack and Ernest. Jack pretends to others in the play that he has a brother named...
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Wilde succeeds in criticizing the Victorian era by using satire to show the reality of the society of the time. Throughout the movie, we can clearly see the characteristics of the Victorian period. For example, the desire and pressure of marriage for young women of the time and always focused on the financial side. The characters are also part of a group that seems to be somewhat distinguished from English high society, which is relevant to why the movie is...
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There is no one kind of humor: Numerous types of humor surface in The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde and The Monty Python and the Holy Grail by Graham Chapman. Looking at the texts The Importance of Being Earnest and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, it is evident that humor is demonstrated differently between both plays. Both texts significantly possess many humor types, indicating that there is no one kind of humor. Monty Python and the Holy...
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I would like to thank you for inviting me to speak at this year’s Literature Festival. Today, I am going to reflect on Oscar Wilde’s 1895 play, The Importance of Being Earnest, and the 2002 movie adaptation. The play is a satirical comedy about Victorian society and Victorian attitudes to marriage and class. My values, culture, believes, and experiences lead me to deplore the play's representation of love and its representation of women. I find the reaction to love and...
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Oscar Wilde has a tremendous reputation and impact in a satirical context all around the world. He covers his criticism in the text with humor and wit. The Importance of Being Earnest is one of his well-known plays and in that play, we can seize the criticism of the nature of marriage, the constraints of morality, and the distortion of society. However, there is a hidden narrative about the attitudes of society toward homosexuality and sexual interest, especially in 19th-century...
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Living by ideals breeds hypocrisy. This was evident in the Victorian era: the era of contradiction. The societal morality during this time placed a great value on sexual restraint, low tolerance of crime, and a strict social code of conduct. One was expected to live life earnestly. This obsession with the pursuit of earnestness made people, specifically the upper class, compromise with anything. The values that society once held turned upside down; respect, honor, and duty morphed into discourtesy, corruption,...
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Have you ever thought of what It would’ve been like to exist in an earlier era? A society riddled with inequality; where individuals were expected to have certain qualities, and if not, considered unworthy. In The Importance of Being Earnest, written by the famous Oscar Wilde, he creates a perfect example of an era that was turned upside down with such absurd ideologies. He constructs characters based on unrealistic traits from the Victorian Century, in which the traditional attributes of...
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It must be said that the power of hypocrisy in human nature is powerful. This kind of power promotes human progress and evolution. The desire for power, the yearning for money, and the pursuit of women are all brought by the power of hypocrisy. Whenever people have these desires, people will use this force to strengthen themselves and disguise themselves, so as to achieve their own goals and satisfy their desires. The play The Importance of Being Ernest and the...
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