Examples Of Advocacy For Change In Victorian Culture
Wilde’s Advocacy for Change in Victorian Culture
People have the tendency to judge situations and matters according to how society judges the same situation. Oscar Wilde, the playwright of The Importance of Being Earnest, takes these preconceptions in and inverts the practices that we perceive to be true in order to advocate social and political change. By emphasizing these discrepancies in marriage and the social aristocracy, Wilde satirizes Victorian traditions and ultimately advocates change. The Characters in The Importance of Being Earnest melodramatize unlikely matters concerning society and class, which illustrate Wilde’s advocacy for change in these areas of Victorian culture. When Algernon, for example, becomes upset with his servant …show more content…
Algernon tells Jack that if Jack and Gwendolen were ever to get married, Jack will “... be very glad to know Bunbury” (36). Algernon is alluding to the purpose of using Bunbury, which is to escape tiresome occasions. Normally, friends would congratulate each other with marriages, but Algernon is pessimistic and assumes there will be a time during the marriage when the spouse will be unfaithful to his or her spouse. Therefore, Wilde criticises European marriages for lacking the faith and integrity that true marriages should have. When Cecily mentions to Algernon that they have already been engaged, she states the engagement was broken off, and, “It would have hardly been a serious engagement if it hadn’t been broken off at least once” (75). In order for her engagement to be serious, Cecily wants her marriage to be broken off, though most people would want their engagements to proceed without interruption. Cecily holds the role of a young and naive stock character in the poem, and so she is lead to believe that her marriage with Algernon will have no troubles, because of her idealistic approach to such situations. It is this naivety that Wilde accuses people, especially in young people, of. He belittles Victorian marriages by portraying such an important issue as though it were something that can be dallied by an inexperienced
People have the tendency to judge situations and matters according to how society judges the same situation. Oscar Wilde, the playwright of The Importance of Being Earnest, takes these preconceptions in and inverts the practices that we perceive to be true in order to advocate social and political change. By emphasizing these discrepancies in marriage and the social aristocracy, Wilde satirizes Victorian traditions and ultimately advocates change. The Characters in The Importance of Being Earnest melodramatize unlikely matters concerning society and class, which illustrate Wilde’s advocacy for change in these areas of Victorian culture. When Algernon, for example, becomes upset with his servant …show more content…
Algernon tells Jack that if Jack and Gwendolen were ever to get married, Jack will “... be very glad to know Bunbury” (36). Algernon is alluding to the purpose of using Bunbury, which is to escape tiresome occasions. Normally, friends would congratulate each other with marriages, but Algernon is pessimistic and assumes there will be a time during the marriage when the spouse will be unfaithful to his or her spouse. Therefore, Wilde criticises European marriages for lacking the faith and integrity that true marriages should have. When Cecily mentions to Algernon that they have already been engaged, she states the engagement was broken off, and, “It would have hardly been a serious engagement if it hadn’t been broken off at least once” (75). In order for her engagement to be serious, Cecily wants her marriage to be broken off, though most people would want their engagements to proceed without interruption. Cecily holds the role of a young and naive stock character in the poem, and so she is lead to believe that her marriage with Algernon will have no troubles, because of her idealistic approach to such situations. It is this naivety that Wilde accuses people, especially in young people, of. He belittles Victorian marriages by portraying such an important issue as though it were something that can be dallied by an inexperienced