A Trivial Comedy for Serious People Oscar Wilde mocked his audience while he entertained them. Perhaps his most loved and well-known work‚ The Importance of Being Earnest‚ satirises the manners and affections of the upper-class Victorian society. Satire is a literary tone used to ridicule or make fun of human vice or weakness‚ usually with the intent of changing or correcting the subject of the satirical attack. The play focuses on the elite‚ while making fun of the ludicrousness and extremity
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The Importance Of Being Earnest “Women’s roles are often tokenistic in dramatic comedy” To what extent do you believe this to be the case in relation to the play you have been studying? In dramatic comedy it can often be said that women’s roles are ‘tokenistic’ which essentially means: that women are there to serve a little more than the minimum‚ or may not serve much of a purpose at all‚ they may also follow social stereotypes during the era of this literary piece. In this essay I will be
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The Importance of being Earnest Characters John “Jack” Worthing (Earnest): A responsible‚ respectable man leading a double life. In Hertfordshire he is jack and pretends to have a younger brother Earnest but in London he is earnest. He doesn’t feel at home in an aristocratic society. As a baby he was found in a handbag in a cloakroom of Victoria station by an old man who adopted him and made jack the guardian to his granddaughter Cecily cardew. He is in love with his friend Algernon’s Cousin Gwendolyn
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false identity to break away from the social obligations. Being truthful‚ sincere‚ or serious could be the idea of earnestness. It will also reveal the true definition of honesty versus the Victorian definition of honesty. The comedy of this play shows several of the ways that the characters make fun of the moral strictness of the Victorian era. In The Importance of Being Earnest‚ there is false virtue and hypocrisy that shows being earnest is the greatest challenge of morality. Wilde’s characters
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The Importance of Being Earnest is a play that trivializes many things: the Victorian society‚ the nature of marriage and especially the concept of human identity. While identity is typically considered to be something concrete‚ the characters within the play are constantly in flux. This is especially evident in Jack‚ whose forms his identities as he goes through life. He transforms from a nameless baby in a handbag‚ to Jack the thriving member of the countryside bourgeois‚ then further on to become
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College of Florida The Importance of Being Earnest: A tale of Victorian mockery "Every word and every part of an individual was expected to be in accordance with the rigid moral and behavior rules‚ and each‚ even the slightest deviation from the rule was considered an offence which made the delinquent publicly disgraced. Even literature and art had its cannons which were to be respected" (Mathews‚ 2009). In Oscar Wilde ’s satirical comedy‚ The Importance of Being Earnest‚ Victorian hypocrisy is
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Webster’s impacts are noted in mankind’s unrealistic characterization of moral code as completely evil or inherently good. No gray area or in between dwellings creates an inhumane rupture of the conscious leading to moral ineptitude in both The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde and Madea by Seneca. The mental
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What good does always being earnest do you if you are not "Ernest"? Oscar Wilde’s play‚ "The Importance of Being Earnest"‚ explores exactly this notion‚ following two men who readily abandon their namesakes in order to win the affections of their respective fair ladies. The play opens in London with a conversation held between these two men‚ Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff. However‚ at the play’s origin‚ Algernon only knows his friend as "Ernest". This rapidly changes with the aid of a cigarette
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Views on Marriage The Importance of Being Earnest is a comical drama using multiple types of irony to ridicule marriage‚ death‚ and birth. In the Victorian age‚ family was a major influence in choosing one’s offspring’s mate. Lady Bracknell accepted all Jack’s characteristics except the fact‚ he had inconsiderate parents. “To lose one parent‚ Mr.Worthing‚ may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness (1.1.1421). Gwendolen was willing to marry Jack regardless of his social
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they had their first international hockey match: Wales v. Ireland; also‚ they had the lowest ever temperature of −27.2 F‚ and the premier of Oscar Wilde’s latest play‚ The Importance of Being Earnest‚ at the St. James’ Theatre‚ in London. During this time‚ social class was very important. Oscar Wilde’s explores the importance of how social class affects the lives of the characters in his play during the Victorian era. During the Victorian era‚ appearance‚ style‚ reputation‚ respect‚ and wealth were
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