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Brittni Shoup-Owens

Professor Berry

ENG 332

16 October 2017

A Leather Handbag and Immaterial Lineage

Throughout the world the different levels of social classes are noticeable. There is high

class, middle class, and lower class. High class people have all the riches and luxuries of the

world; they dine, shop, and travel as if money wasnt something to worry about. Middle class

people get by comfortably, however, they are self-aware of their finances and most spend it

diligently. Lower class people are at the poverty line or below it, and sometimes struggle to make

ends meet. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde provides us with two characters

from different levels of these classes, and my meme of a black leather handbag with the caption,

For the mother-in-law who loves immaterial lineage, provides readers with a two-layer

message.

In the first act of the play, readers learn that Jack was found in an abandoned black

leather handbag. Lady Bracknell, who is categorized into high class, learns of Jacks upbringing,

she comes to the assumption that he is unfit to marry her daughter. Lady Bracknell is

flabbergasted and in disbelief. She states, To be born, or at any rate bred, in a handbag, whether

it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of a family

life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution (443). This supports the

fact that Lady Bracknell assumes Jacks family values are going to be unorthodox because he did

not have a normal upbringing. This provides us with the first layer of my meme: the leather

handbag in which Lady Bracknell doesnt approve of.

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The second level: his social class will never reach a good position in society. Lady

Bracknell states,

The line is immaterial, Mr. WorthingAs for the particular locality in

which the handbag was found, a cloakroom at a railway station might serve

to conceal a social indiscretionbut it could hardly be regarded as an

assured basis for a recognized position in good society (443).

Basically, Lady Bracknell is telling Jack the basis on which he was found doesnt matter

because he wont be accepted into their social class level. Lady Bracknell goes on to tell Jack, I

would strongly advise you, to try and acquire some relations as soon as possible, and make a

definite effort to produce one parent of either sex (443). Jack will never be accepted because he

started off as a low-class member of society, with parents who are deceased. However, this quote

does provide Jack with a sense that even though the

members of high class might not accept his story,

they might accept him if he at least had one family

member alive. In summary, Jack needs a different

upbringing story, and living parents if he wants to

marry Lady Bracknells daughter; providing us with

the second layer to my meme.

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Works Cited

Digital image. Etsy. Etsy, n.d. Web. 11 Oct. 2017.

<https://img0.etsystatic.com/146/0/9799518/il_340x270.1193615210_ab8s.jpg>.

Jacobus, Lee A. The Importance of Being Earnest. The Compact Bedford Introduction to

Drama, 7th ed., Bedford/St. Martins, 2013, p. 443.