Satire In The Importance Of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is regarded by many as one of the wittiest plays in the English language. However, it is not simply a “trivial comedy,” as its title proposes, but also a cutting satire appraising the conventions of Victorian society, chiefly the upper class. Much of Wilde’s social commentary is portrayed through the speech of the dictatorial Lady Bracknell, who embodies Victorian upper class conventions. Having ascended to her current high social status through a profitable marriage with Lord Bracknell, she defends her esteemed place in society. Fixed in her beliefs, Lady Bracknell criticizes education as “a serious danger to the upper classes” and blames Jack for “carelessness” for “losing” his parents, necessary family connections if he wishes to marry her daughter.
In accordance with with her zealous protection of her own elevated status, Lady Bracknell maintains that the members of her family, counting her daughter Gwendolen and nephew Algernon, wed for social and financial refuge rather than love, thus becoming the foundation of the play’s main conflicts. Pompous from her first “Wagnerian” ringing of his doorbell, Algy’s Aunt Augusta initially becomes a key problem when she intrudes on protagonist Jack Worthing’s proposal to Gwendolen
She does not ask if she may question him. Instead, she declares that she will, much as she announces that Gwendolyn will wait for her in the carriage. She also selects an oddly antagonistic set of words, “put to you,” rather than “ask you.” To “put” questions “to” a person sounds vaguely like an attack, and it is true that their interview following the passage is frustrating and volatile. In it, Lady Bracknell further exposes her desire for social and financial sanctuary in her daughter’s marriage, rather than