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Satire in The Importance of Being Earnest After reading The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, one would possibly realize that this piece of writing is a conservative 19 th century farce. Prohibited engagements, false identities, domineering mothers, and lost children are typical features of almost every farce. However, this is only on the surface in this play. Wilde's parody always works at two levels.
On the one hand, the writer ridicules the behaviors of the high society while on the other hand he satirizes the human condition in general. The characters in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest assume false identities in order to achieve their goals. The double life led by Algernon, Jack, and Cecily (through her diary) is simply another means by which they set themselves free from the oppressive norms of society. They have the freedom to create themselves and use their double identities in order to have the opportunity to show opposite sides of their characters. They mock every custom of the society and challenge its values. Yet this is what makes the characters become the target for Wilde's satire.
Oscar Wilde begins with a joke in the title that is not only a piece of frivolity. It concerns the problem of recognizing and defining human identity. The use of earnest and Earnest is a pun, which makes the title not only more comic, but also leads to a paradox. Generally, in The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde uses paralleled irony, pun, and paradox to make characters that are in a serious type environment become really comic. Most commonly, when one thinks of a paradox, he or she thinks of such a statement that is contradictory or far fetched but somehow is true.
Still, in the play it is somewhat different. For example, when Jack returns from London and is pretending to grieve over the death of his brother, he is faced up by Cecily to the news that his brother was there. Jack then states What nonsense! I havent got a brother. (Wilde 68) This statement was actually true, but only true to Jack because he had made everyone believe that he indeed had a brother named Earnest in London.
The paradox here is that the statement is conflicting because Jack contradicts his own lies and is in fact true as far as he knew. The fact that Algernon was there posing as Earnest made his statement is even more contradictory and thus comical. Another example of a paradox is when Algernon first arrives to the country and talks to Cecily. He tries to convince her that Earnest is not wicked at all.
Cecily then replies, If you are not, then you have certainly been deceiving us all in a very inexcusable manner. I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy. (Wilde 60 - 61) In fact, this statement was true, but not for Algernon, for the fictional Earnest living a double life. The use of puns in the play is not a typical use of just humorous words. The writer de familiarizes words in order to de familiarize the world they supposedly represent. He enacts the arbitrarily of language to rediscover the arbitrariness of supposedly natural social arrangements. (Danson 151) The farce in The Importance of Being Earnest consists in the trifle that it is important not only to be earnest by nature but to have the name Earnest too.
Jack realizes "the vital Importance of Being Earnest" (Wilde 53) not till the end of the play. Algernon calls the act of not being earnest Bunburying which gives the plot a moral significance. Bunburying means inventing a fictitious character by which one can escape the frustrating social norms. Algernon says to Jack: "Well, one must be serious about something, if one wants to have any amusement in life. I happen to be serious about Bunburying.
What on earth are you serious about I havent got the remotest idea? About everything, I should fancy. You have an absolutely trivial nature. " (Wilde 50) To soothe a dying friend or to help a fallen brother is a respectable excuse to get away from the repressive convention. Bunburying is the reason for all the mistaken identities. Algernon is serious about Bunburying as the Bunburyist is serious about not being serious. The trifle is that to be serious about everything is to be serious about nothing.
The Bunburyist lives in a world of irresponsibility in which there is always the danger of causing a moral anarchy. In Wilde's opinion, Victorians who want to retain the respect of the conventional society live a double life - one respectable and one frivolous. He creates a world in which the laws of the society have no power and the double life can be revealed. Bunburyist is a way of life which offers relief from the restrictive social norms.
Wilde's characters live in a world in which order is constantly vanishing and they scorn stability and simplicity. "The truth", as Algy says, "is rarely pure and never simple. " (Wilde 13) Algy and Jack fulfill their wishes by the means of lying. They are impostors who use false identities in order to free themselves from the hypocrisy of the convention. Their tricks simply serve them as a way to achieve their moral freedom. The relationship between Jack and Gwendolen undergoes a parody. Gwendolen laughs when Jack asks how she might feel if his name is not Earnest. "Ah, that is clearly a metaphysical speculation", she says, "and like all metaphysical speculation, has very little reference at all to the actual facts of real life, as we know them. " (Wilde 18) This remark of Gwendolen exactly fits the general theme of the play, but in fact the joke is directed to her. Yet at the end of the play, Gwendolen's conviction that she will marry an Earnest and her faith in the name are justified- we understand that Jacks true name is Earnest.
The effect which Oscar Wilde achieves is to satirize faith in ideals with the help of absurdity. The relationship between Algernon and Cecily undergoes an irony too. At the first meeting between them Algernon begs her not to think him wicked, and she replies: "If you are not, then you have certainly been deceiving us all in a very inexcusable manner. I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy. " (Wilde 31) This speech upsets even Algernon. It epitomizes the central irony of the play because Algernon in his ambition to escape the hypocrisy of convention becomes a hypocrite himself by pretending to be somebody he is not in fact.
In Wilde's world truth itself is of little importance. When Jack is charged with being named John, he declares: I could deny it if I liked. I could deny anything if I liked. (Wilde 49) And he is very confused and feels uneasy when he has to tell the truth: "It is very painful for me to be forced to speak the truth. It is the first time in my life that I have ever been reduced to such a painful position, and I am really quite inexperienced in doing anything of the kind, so you must excuse me if I stammer in my tale. " (Wilde 50) He says that he has never had a brother but this turns out to be not true, because Algy is in fact his brother.
The comic effect of Jacks lies reaches its climax when he learns that what he had thought to be not true turns to be true. "Gwendolen", he says, "it is a terrible thing for me to find out suddenly that all my life I have been speaking nothing but the truth. " (Wilde 67) In comparison with their suitors, Gwendolen and Cecily do not deceive society by the means of imposture. They try to escape in a world of fantasy. They adopt identities which suit a particular occasion. For example, they invent lovers who they want to marry to.
Gwendolen explains her attitude to love and she is very firm about it: "We live, as I hope you know Mr. Worthing, in an age of ideals. The fact is constantly mentioned in the more expensive monthly magazines, and has reached the provincial pulpits, I am told. And my ideal has always been to love someone of the name of Earnest. There is something in that name that inspires absolute confidence. " (Wilde 17) Cecily's diary is her way to escape of the society's customs. It undergoes a kind of parody, for she writes everything about her relationship with an invented lover - their engagement, his love letters (which she has written by herself), the break off of their engagement, their re-engagement.
Cecily is not the natural country girl. She possesses the self-assurance of the experienced woman. Without being cynical she makes her desires clear. And when Gwendolen and Cecily discover that their Earnests are impostors whose names are Jack and Algernon they decide that love can be restored only if Jack and Algy name themselves Earnest. At the end the farce turns to be an idyll of wish-fulfillment- Cecily wishes to be engaged to Earnest and it happens so, Jack declares that he is called Earnest and he is in fact, Algy pretends to be Jacks young brother and it comes true too.
The characters fantasies are brought to life at the end of the play. Their double life is not hypocrisy. They mock the laws and the customs of the society in which they live. The characters challenge society's values, free themselves from their rigid norms and at the end of the play they manage to regain their balance and become earnest. Oscar Wilde had written this play over one hundred years ago. Yet it is still very funny.
It is hard to accept that something that is old can still be funny. However, while reading Wilde's play, one can see how advanced the writer was and how skillfully he used words. Wilde's linguistic virtuosity is so complete and so consciously flaunted that the play exists for most people as a dazzling, if insubstantial tissue of pun and paradox. (Bose 83) Depicting serious characters and then satirizing their seriousness, Wilde managed to create a comedy using parallel irony, paradox, and pun that will be memorized forever. Works Cited: Bose, Tirthanker. Oscar Wilde's Game of Being Earnest.
Modern Drama. Vol. 21, Toronto, 1978. Danson, Lawrence. Wilde's Intentions: the Artist in His Criticism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Wilde, Oscar.
The Importance of Being Earnest. London: Penguin Group, 1994.
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