Prof. Abdelhamid Fouda
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IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST BY OSCAR WILDE
The title of Oscar Wilde's most successful playThe Importance of Being Earnestfeatures a salient pun in the form of the word "earnest", which means "honest", and "truthful" and the name "Ernest" which is the name of the alter ego that main character Jack Worthing uses to slide away from responsibilities and do as he pleases.
The reality is, however, that nobody in the play seems to be very "earnest" as it is. Algernon proudly and blatantly lies just about everything under the sun while Jack criticizes Algernon. This, he does while Jack ALSO lies about this so-called bad brother named Ernest whom he has to rescue all the time by going to the city and staying there paying for all his follies. This same "Ernest" is the man that Algernon met for the first time. Remember that Algernon only comes to find out about Jack's real name when he accidentally finds "Ernest's" cigarette case with the inscription made to "Uncle Jack". Likewise, Jack also lied to Gwendolen by presenting himself as "Ernest".
What is important, however, is that the title of the play reflects that there is something valuable and even honorable about being "earnest", or honest. However, all the while everybody in the play has lied to each other in one way or another. The end is even more ironic; all the lies that Jack said...were actually true! When he finds out about his dead parents, and realizes that his name is dully Ernest, and that he does have a brother (Algernon), and that all this time he had been speaking out things that were actually true, Jack sanctimoniously says (which is even more ironic) "now I know the vital importance of being earnest"...in other words, he is basically saying "WOW, I was right all along? Then, yay for me!"
This is a direct hit from Wilde to all those prudish and so-called virtuous Victorians whom he detested more than anything. He mocked them directly in the play by exposing them for the claccist hypocrites that they really were.
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Language - The Importance of Being Earnest
With all literature, perhaps the most important part of it is the language that is used to write it. Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is no exception.
At first glance, the play seems to be nothing more than a satirical attack on the upper classes of Victorian society. Each one of the characters are so caught up inside themselves and their problems, sharpened by the wit and sarcasm that Wilde used to tell the story, that they all come across to the reader as absurd people-- those who have complexes and character quirks so far beyond the scope of normal humans that they could not possibly be real people.
"Farce is not necessarily trivial," claims David Parker. While Wilde's characters may be teetering on the boundary between nonsensical and life-like, they actually do serve to make a point, one deeper also than just poking fun at the ridiculousness of the aristocracy of the time.
Due to the nature of the word choices make by Wilde, this play can be interpreted as a work that toys with the idea of human identity.
Uses of puns and lighthearted jokes involving the words serious, earnest, nonsense, and absurd are sprinkled throughout the play, cynically enough and with enough flair that the reader does not notice beyond a concept of vague importance. At first glance, they are simply puns-- Wilde playing with the words inside of an absurd plot with nonsense characters-- but in reality, each one serves as a paradox for the entire play, "confounds conventional notions about order, identity, dissimilarity, synthesizing new orders out of the confusion it exposes," as David Parker says. It is only by any one of the characters not being any of these that they can break free from the constraints of the Victorian sense of order, act on their own impulses, and find who they are in relation to everything and everyone else. It is a game of perception-- of truth that is "rarely pure and never simple" and the lies/fabrications that turn everything on its head that give the characters the chance to become who they are-- such as Jack's realization in the end that he is in fact and Ernest as has been telling the truth his whole life, even though he thought that they were all lies created to save himself.
Even the title that Wilde chose adds to the puns and the overall sense of the play. It has been said that in many respects, the play is just as aptly named with "The Importance of Being," as the pun on earnest and Ernest only furthers the farcical nature of the play. "Neither being earnest or being Ernest is of much help when confidence is lost in the substantiality of human identity," David Parker adds.
Wilde's Style in The Importance of Being Earnest
This play is characterized by the use of misapplied logic. Misapplied logic is similar to the old joke in which a man is asked where the second national Bank is located. He replied that he does not even know where the First National Bank is. For examine, Algernon, in Act one, cautions Jack not to eat the cucumber sandwiches, which are for lady Bracknell.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Jack points out that Algernon himself has been eating them steadily. Algernon replies: Time is quite a different matter. She is my aunt.
Paradox is the hallmark of Wilde's style. His style is frequently marked by the use of paradox. Paradox is a statement that seems contradictory, unbelievable or absurd. Lady Bracknell is questioning Jack to find out whether he is a desirable suitor for her daughter. She asks: "You have a town house, I hope? A girl with a simple, unspoiled nature, like Gwendolen, could hardly be expected to reside in the country? (Girls with simple, unspoiled natures are of course usually expected to live in the country). In another sense, Gwendolen refers to her father. She says she is glad that nobody outside of his home has ever heard of him: "I think that is quite as it should be. The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man" (This turns upside down the common saying that the proper place for a woman is in the home.)
In Oscar Wilde's use of language is a triumph of glittering, scintillating, loquacious effect. It seems Wilde's use of descriptive style is tainted with unnecessarily elaborated adjectives. Lady Bracknell describes Miss Prism as a" female of repellent aspect, remotely connected with educations" Algernon remarks about a recently developed acquaintance: "I hear her hair has turned quite gold from grief." Miss Prism describes a novel she once wrote. "The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means."
Another side of Wilde's style is recognized as the style of making an inverted parody of the stock romantic situation in which the lover's devotion alone, not their names, as meaning. The following excerpt illustrates how Wilde made use of a stylistic device of inversion and parody.
Jack: You really love me, Gwendolen?
Gwendolen: Passionately!
Jack : Darling ! You don't Know how happy you've made me.
Gwaendolen: My own Earnest!
Jack: But you don't really mean to say that you could to love me if my name was not Earnest?
Gwendolen: But your name is Earnest.
Jack: Yes, I know it is. But supposing it was something else? Do you mean to say you could not love me then?
Gendolen (glibly): Ah! That is clearly a metaphysical speculation, and like most metaphysical speculations have very little reference at all to the actual facts of real life, as we know them.
This scene is an inverted parody of the stock romantic situation in which the lovers' devotion alone, not their names, has meaning. Other inversions of such romantic clichés are found in epigrams and certain conversational exchanges constructed on the principle of the reversal of our expectations. A simple example is represented by Algernon's views on marriage proposals: "I really do not see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal why, one may be accepted." Wilde's constant reversal of our romantic expectations in stock situations and epigrammatic speech represents one of his methods of constructing a play based upon the principle that in art, form style is higher than representation
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