Satire In The Importance Of Being Earnest By Oscar Wilde

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The Importance of Being Earnest, a hysterical comedy but also a serious critique of Victorian society, Oscar Wilde's last and most brilliant play. The Victorian upper classes are presented as “enclosed characters more intent on social surface in a world where form replaces emotion. Victorian [pomposity] and hypocrisy in marriage, education, and religion are all critiqued, but always through the sparkle of Wilde's biting satirical wit” (“Wilde, Oscar”). In The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde creates a frivolous atmosphere through hilarity, sarcasm, and irony to portray the superficiality of the upper class in Victorian society.
In the late nineteenth century, the European aristocracy valued astheticism above all else and fixated on …show more content…
Wilde utilizes this literary device frequently throughout The Importance of Being Earnest. For example, when speaking on the subject of marriage, Lady Bracknell says, “to speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable” (Wilde 78). The fact that Lady Bracknell considers it never advisable to give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character before marriage reveals that high society has made the institution of marriage more about politics and less about love. A politically or socially respectable marriage has nothing to do with chemistry between the couple and everything to do with each individual’s bloodlines and credentials. Through his use of sarcasm, Wilde lets the audience know that he does not agree with this view of marriage and finds it detrimental. Also on the topic of marriage, Algernon thinks to himself that “Lane's views on marriage seem somewhat lax. Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility” (Wilde 2). Algernon thinks lower classes should set a moral example for the upper …show more content…
The real is never simply that. “The establishment and policing of the border between the real and the fake, the sincere and the flippant, the detailed and the abstract is at the very least a sign of Victorian anxiety” to be accepted (Waldrep). The Victorians found it acceptable to lie, and embraced falsehood. The best example of this superfluousness occurs where Gwendolen and Cecily fight over who is actually engaged to the man with the name of Earnest. Satire is evident because of the superficiality; how they really only pursue the man with the name Earnest rather than the man for himself. True love evades everyone in this play. They appear to fall in love so quickly and easily and without hesitation. They lust for the name rather than the person. The ladies only really want the title that he has claimed rather than for himself. The fact that Cecily admits to this white lie—concealing her true age—conveys her lack of shame at telling a fib in the first place, feeding into the stereotype that many women might try to seem younger and more beautiful in social situations. Here, Cecily wants to create the illusion of appearing more mature, worldly, and perhaps more suitable as a prospective wife. So she lies. Twisted thinking, lying and falsehood, was the centre dogma of the Victorian upper
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