Oscar Wilde The Importance Of Being Earnest Society Essay

Life is full of decisions, but they are subconsciously influenced by society. This influence has created an unhealthy relationship between social classes. How people choose to act is in complete correlation to society’s set expectation for a certain class. These actions then become reflections of people’s moral values. In Tony McAdam’s criticism of The Great Gatsby, Ethics in Gatsby, he points out the corruption of characters morals due to society’s influence and the impact that has on decision making.

The characters in the play reveal some of the gender stereotypes through the way they are presented in the beginning of the play, “The sheriff and Hale are men in the middle life… They are followed

Irish author Oscar Wilde claimed that disobedience is a valuable human trait, and that it promotes social progress; thus, without it, social progress would not be made. Civil disobedience is to social progress as hard work is to academic success. With hard work comes academic success, and with civil disobedience comes social progress. Though some see disobedience as a negative trait, it is what has promoted social progress in history by challenging social standards and requiring new social rules to be made. Civil disobedience challenges social standards by expanding views on the current guidelines.

Societal expectations In the Regency era, the society had high demands and expectations for the way people should act. Jane Austen viewed the expectations that were placed upon her as restricting, however one would not be able to break these restrictions without creating a disturbance. This is shown throughout Pride and Prejudice and the path that each individual character takes. Austen makes her opinion of the influence of the societal expectations clear through her characterization in Pride and Prejudice.

Oscar Wilde wrote his plays against the backdrop of the Victorian English society. It therefore helps to discuss the salient aspects of the Victorian society. Victorian England is known for many paradoxes -- glaring contrasts between the rich and the poor, insistence on morality on the one hand and the practice of cynicism on the other, blooming creativity pitted against blatant constriction, imperial grandeur since Britain was then ruling almost one fifth of the total surface of the earth and domestic squalor since the majority of people did not have decent means of livelihood, and finally collectivity dictated by tradition opposed to the rapidly developing individualism. The class system denied the talented members of the lower classes access to social and economic advancement. The upper classes alone had the privilege of working in the government, the armed forces, and the church, while trade was monopolized by the rising middle class.

Through this satirical writing, Wilde uses comparison of beauty and industrialism and juxtaposition between compliments and criticism to paint American social values as backwards and unappealing in order to dispel the glamour of a romantic American culture.

Not only do individuals change to meet the higher class standards, but they also change to meet the needs of the average class. “You are my little cousin Cecily, I’m sure” (60). Algernon wanted to marry Cecily and the only way of doing that, he thought, was by making a second identity. The last example how Wilde used exaggeration to show individuals couldn’t make decisions without the impact of society is when Lady Bracknell constantly lied regarding Jack being apart her family. Jack has never known who his mother or father was.

On the other hand, Wilde explores how social relationships can influence the compatibility of marriage between individuals. Both of these factors acts as an obstacle for Jack as he seeks approval to marry Gwendolen Fairfax. Oscar Wilde demonstrates the importance of social relationships and the social status as the determining factors for the compatibility of marriage and love during the Victorian era. The Victorians valued one’s social status as it was seen at the utmost importance when it comes to marriage.

The play An Ideal Husband was written by Oscar Wilde in 1895 in England’s Victorian era. This era was characterised by sexual anarchy amongst men and women where the stringent boundaries that delineated the roles of both men and women were continually being challenged by threatening figures such as the New Woman represented by Mrs Cheveley and dandies such as Lord Goring(Showalter, 3). An Ideal Husband ultimately affirms Lord Goring’s notions about the inequality of the sexes because of the evident limitations placed on the mutability of identity for female characters versus their male counterparts (Madden, 5). These limitations will be further elaborated upon in the context of the patriarchal aspects of Victorian society which contributed to the failed attempts of blackmail by Mrs Cheveley, the manner in which women are trapped by their past and their delineated role of an “angel of truth and goodness” (Powell, 89).

arch 2018 The Importance of Being Earnest: Oscar Wilde’s Criticism on the Upper Class Using humor, cleverness, and style, Oscar Wilde illustrates the lives of the Victorian upper class in The Importance of Being Earnest. More specifically, the “Trivial Comedy for Serious People” reveals in a satirical manner the insignificant concerns of Great Britain’s aristocracy. In the introduction of The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings, editor Richard Ellmann creates an overview of Wilde’s best known work.

Oscar Wilde’s satirical play The Importance of Being Earnest, set in the late Victorian era, London, is a portrayal of British upper class society and its conventions surrounded by a strict code of conduct. In 1890’s class society, earnestness was desired; to follow the moral code and social obligations in order to keep up one’s appearance. Besides, there was a huge gender disparity between men and women. In the play, Wilde criticizes the social inequality and Victorian upper class standards. He characterizes Victorian personae making fun of their qualities; hypocrisy, arrogance and absurdism, ultimately the very vital state and lifeline of not being earnest at all in Victorian society.

Oh! It is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn’t. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read.” (Wilde 6) Wilde made fun of the Victorian idea of morality as a “rigid body of rules” whose purpose is to tell people what they should and shouldn’t do (Sparknotes, Morality) Wilde’s play offers “rather biting … criticism of the institutions and values that … made Britain the world 's greatest colonial power

The Importance of Being Earnest written by Oscar Wilde is an excellent play which has many underlying themes and suggestions especially with regards to the Victorian era, during which this was written. Many themes within the play are reflective of Wilde and his life, including his secrecy and supposed “double life,” his interest in aestheticism, his life pertaining the mannerisms and social etiquette during his lifetime. Today, Oscar Wilde is often remembered in part due to his well known homosexuality trial of 1895 (Linderd, 1), but his “second life” per se had been speculated on for years prior to it, in fact many of his plays contain subtle yet effective implications towards a possible piece of his life kept hidden from the public eye. The Importance of Being Earnest mirrored this double life through the utilization of Jack and Algernon's “Bunburying,” and their motives for lying to the ones whom they love.

Wilde is greatly influenced by the societal movements in the Victorian Era, therefore the theme of hedonism is prominent displaying the influence of Aestheticism in The Picture of Dorian Gray and further explaining the consequences of selfishness and self-pleasure. The Aestheticism movement shockingly challenged all past standards of love, pleasure, and sexuality. Specifically this Victorian movement “promotes sexual… experimentation. ”(Burdett)

While many have been familiar with the title of the play The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, one should also pay attention to its subtitle, ‘trivial comedy for serious people’. The play is a satire that ridicules the upper class to point out its fault (Kreuz and Roberts 100).The aim is to ridicule the ‘serious people’, members of the upper class in Victorian society. The characters were too attentive to social propriety and etiquette, which were as trivial as the comedy suggests in the eyes of Wilde. As they were too stubborn to alter the behaviour, the propriety and etiquette became superficial and meaningless. Their idleness and hypocrisy are other points at which Wilde recurrently mock in the play.