Oscar Wilde- The Importance of Being Earnest- The Mutually Exclusive Nature of Aristocracy and Leisure

I adore Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray ...fabulous. I even chose the proposition scene from The Importance of Being Earnest as a scene to perform in an acting class in College. I also visited Pere Lachaise (cemetery in Paris where Oscar Wilde is buried) to follow tradition and leave a lip mark in lipstick on his gravestone. Love him. So, here is an essay I wrote a few years ago about his best work. I'm sure I'd edit a lot about this these days, with a better eye for good writing and analysis, but I thought it'd be fun to leave as is.

Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is largely a play surrounding the struggle of man to define himself in 19^th Century Britain. Wilde uses the two main characters, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncreiff, to investigate this endeavor. According to the play, and presumably Wilde’s, implications, a man can either align himself with the aristocracy and engage in gentlemanlike behavior of following society’s demands and stereotypes of gender, or he can live a life of dandiacal leisure replete with aphorisms. Though society desires men to follow its guidelines, men apparently desire to live lives of leisure, as apparent with Jack and Algernon in the beginning of the play. Wilde presents these two lifestyles as separate ones that are mutually exclusive because he believes they cannot coexist. Wilde epitomizes the first option of becoming a gentleman with the character of Lady Bracknell and the latter option of a leisurely life with Algernon’s fictitious creation of Bunbury. Though Wilde separates these two choices, he also indicates his preference of a leisurely lifestyle and his belief in its superiority over an aristocratic one with his parody of Lady Bracknell’s character. Lady Bracknell and Bunbury not only serve to explore the proper definition of a man, but they also aid in emphasizing other aspects of society, such as gender roles and class.

On Lady Bracknell’s first appearance, she establishes her character as a representative of Lord Bracknell and a representative of aristocratic society. She carries out the actions that fulfill the demands placed upon a father in her attempt to find a suitable husband for her daughter, Gwendolen Fairfax. Lady Bracknell has a prepared list of questions to ask any man who proposes to Gwendolen because she believes they will determine his worth. Because Lord Bracknell fails to fulfill these duties, and the reader never even meets him, despite one of the play’s main plots of Gwendolen’s engagement, Wilde seems to comment on the inefficacy of the aristocratic man. Also, as Lady Bracknell represents the aristocratic man, Wilde implies the absurdity of this kind of man with the kinds of questions she asks Jack. She accepts, and expects, clearly ridiculous answers to her questions, and she constantly speaks in humorous, epigrammatic sentences rather than express any depth. Her statement that she “[does] not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance” (Wilde, 12-3) illustrates Wilde’s opinion that people of the Aristocracy are ignorant and uneducated.

With Wilde’s integration of parallel language among different characters, he presents the theme that beneath superficial elements of dress, social status, age, and society’s subordination of one gender to another, everyone is alike. Lane, Algernon’s servant, speaks in the same elevated, aphoristic language as Algernon and Jack, as do Gwendolen and Cecily. Thus, with language, no distinction exists between different classes or genders. The Aristocracy believes good breeding and manners result from the bloodline, but they must result from training since the servants also possess these manners. Thus, if the servants are just like the aristocracy, then the aristocracy, as a class, is entirely artificial because those people are not actually superior to others in any way. 

The aristocracy has been formed based on generations of families that believe they are superior to others, so they place family origins in high regard.  Lady Bracknell’s absurd claim that Jack “can hardly imagine that [she] and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing [their] only daughter…to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel” (15) shows the aristocracy’s view of the importance of origins. Lady Bracknell, however, deems Jack to be a suitable husband until she discovers his origins, or lack of origins, at which point she believes he is as insignificant as a “parcel.” Again, origins are actually picayune, so Wilde further establishes the triviality of the Aristocracy and the superiority of the dandiacal life. Lady Bracknell explicitly addresses the conflict between aristocracy and leisure when she claims that “there are far too many idle men in London” (12). Clearly, the Aristocracy does not appreciate leisure.

Jack’s parallel of Algernon’s Bunbury, Ernest Worthing, further exposes Wilde’s view of earnestness, or seriousness or sincerity. Gwendolen’s “ideal has always been to love some one of the name of Ernest” because “there is something in that name that inspires absolute confidence” (10). Cecily, likewise, wishes to marry a man named Ernest. This again characterizes society’s obsession with the good-mannered man who embodies ideals such as earnestness. In order to become Ernest, as their loves desire, Jack and Algernon must both adopt the ideal of earnestness and, in turn, adopt the aristocratic lifestyle. They love Gwendolen and Cecily, so they must abandon their leisure to join society in their new positions as husband. In order to fully adopt this lifestyle, each acknowledges his need to end their Bunburying. Jack determines that “if Gwendolen accepts [him], [he] [is] going to kill [his] brother” (7). Algernon, likewise, “[kills] Bunbury” (45) on the afternoon that he engages himself to Cecily. This need to abandon Bunburying in order to enter society as husbands again emphasizes the inability to be earnest and a dandy at the same time. Though both Algernon and Jack enjoy their Bunburying, they are willing to stop in order to marry their loves. In fact, “sacrificing their secret identity—or murdering the thing they love—for the sake of convention and acceptance is precisely the predicament of the play’s two protagonists. The murder of a fictional friend Bunbury and an equally fictional brother Ernest is the price which Jack and Algernon pay for social normalization which culminates in their marriages to Gwendolen and Cecily” (Gurfinkel, 165). Bunbury is extremely important to this play because he represents the leisurely lifestyle that men encounter before they fall into society’s restrictions. Similarly, Algernon discusses his dislike of marriage during the days that he masters Bunburying and is proud of his accomplishments. While he Bunburies, he has no desire to be married, as he believes “the very essence of romance is uncertainty” (Wilde, 3), which marriage ruins. This further complicates the possibility of coexistence between these two personalities and lifestyles.

Because Wilde represents his characters as surface characters that have no depth beyond their words, he provides an interesting realm of analysis and interpretation for Algernon’s fictional character of Bunbury, as he cannot even represent what he says, which is nothing. The aphoristic style of the other characters’ language focuses primarily on appearance rather than truth, which is a theme within the play that Bunbury’s character reveals. The characters seem to believe appearance is more important than truth, which creates Bunbury in the first place. Algernon often wishes to escape the constraints that society has placed on him, so he uses his “invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that [he] may be able to go into the country whenever [he] [chooses]” (6). Jack, likewise, is a “Bunburyist” (6), who has “invented a very useful younger brother called Ernest, in order that [he] may be able to come up to town as often as [he] [likes]” (6). Thus, these two characters are concerned with the appearance they give to others, in their reasons to leave the town or the country, more than they are concerned with the truth. Algernon states that “the truth is rarely pure and never simple” (6), and he clearly does not wish to concern himself with this complex abstraction, as this would interfere with his leisurely life. When Jack discovers the truth about his origins, he declares that “it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth” (54). Jack belittles the importance of honesty compared to the façade he has previously donned.

Readers may consider Lady Bracknell and Bunbury as minor characters because of their limited presence in the play’s scenes, but their importance is earnest to Wilde’s opinions and views of society. They reveal the impossibility of the coexistence of dandies and aristocrats, gender reversal in the Victorian period, and the importance of sincerity compared to appearance.

Beyond satirizing the aristocratic man and, thus, the Aristocracy, Lady Bracknell’s character also reveals Wilde’s image of gender. In 19^th Century Britain, gender allegedly determined much about people, as society, and commonly the Aristocracy, had defined the appropriate gender roles. With this play, however, we see gender does not make a difference. Lady Bracknell and Lord Bracknell reverse roles, and Lady Bracknell successfully carries out the aristocracy’s requirements, even if they seem preposterous to Wilde or the reader. Thus, gender does not restrain Lady Bracknell from accomplishing a man’s goals. Gender roles are also reversed with the parallel manipulations among the characters. Lady Bracknell manipulates the seemingly fictitious Lord Bracknell in the same way Algernon manipulates the actually fictitious Bunbury, so Lady Bracknell and Algernon successfully undertake the same role. Also, language does not distinguish Cecily and Gwendolen from Algernon and Jack, as they all speak in elevated, aphoristic language, and, since Wilde’s characters represent nothing more than what they do or say, gender does not differentiate between these characters either.