Queering Artistic Function: Wilde's "Importance of Being Earnest" and Weschler's "Boggs"

By Ryan Marrinan
Wilde, the quintessential Aesthete, asserts that art should exist for the sake of beauty alone. Fascinatingly, Wilde does not firmly adhere to his ostensible artistic purpose. Wildes Importance of Being Earnest, although it showcases certain Aesthetic elements, incisively critiques Victorian society. The play is not a functionless work of pure beauty. Aesthetic beauty coalesces with function. Historically, Wilde was a stauncheven notoriousadvocate of Aestheticism: a doctrine popular throughout Europe in the late nineteenth century which held that art exists for the sake of its beauty alone, and that it need serve no political, didactic, or other purpose (Britannica). Wildes Importance of Being Earnest abounds in aesthetic grace. The plays prose exemplifies Wildes characteristic epigrammatic wit, and the sparkling banter between characters meshes so perfectly that the play reads as a delightful chainlinked whole. For instance, Algernon and Jack masterfully and humorously build on each others lines: JACK: That, my dear Algy, is the whole truth pure and simple. ALGERNON: The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility! (Wilde 301) With such masterful craftsmanship and engaging humor, it becomes quite easy to appreciate Earnest in a strictly Aesthetic sense. It stands as work of art that serves no other purpose than to be beautifula play for plays sake. In addition to the plays beautiful form,

the specific actions and utterances of Earnests characters further reinforce the plays Aestheticism. The charmingly flippant Algernon most clearly embodies the Aesthetic ideal. Significantly, he personifies a fundamental tenet of Aestheticism: the aversion to use and purpose. Similarly, Algernon affirms: It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I dont mind hard work if there is no definite object of any kind (314). Here, Algernon establishes himself as the quintessential aesthete; he praises endeavor that has no object, just as Aestheticism exalts art that has no use. Moreover, Wilde presents Algernons absolute concern for beauty in the very first lines of the play. The character explains his musical philosophy to his manservant: ALGERNON: Did you hear what I was playing, Lane? LANE: I didnt think it polite to listen, sir. ALGERNON: Im sorry for that, for your sake. I dont play accuratelyanyone can play accuratelybut I play with wonderful expression. (295) Here Algernon establishes distinctions between accuracy and expression, science and sentiment, Art and Life. Accuracy is something better left to the philistine masses; Algernon concerns himself only with the ethereal ideal of beautiful individual expression. It is interesting to note that accuracy characterizes the precise mechanical processes of Victorian industrial production that Aestheticism vehemently denounces (Britannica and Cooper 443). Significantly, Algernon claims to keep science something decidedly accurate, purposeful, and usefulout of the realm of his musical art, relegating it instead to Life. Thus, Algernon endeavors to divorce art from any practical purpose and demonstrates his Aesthetic sensibility. Lanes humorous rejoinder further separates art from the drab surroundings of practical daily life. The servant claims that he failed to hear what Algernon was playing because he didnt think it polite. In this way, Algernons piano musichis artbecomes sensually isolated from the lowly world of the servant. Its expression, sentiment, and beauty

remain separate from other concerns, just as Aesthetic art should be. Indeed, The Importance of Being Earnest passes as an Aesthetic work of art while it surreptitiously ridicules Wildes society. Wilde employs the beautifully crafted form of his play in order to tackle the important matter of inspiring critical thought about the shortcomings of his society. His art exists not simply for the sake of beauty alone, but instead, serves a definite intellectual functionto inspire thought. True, Wildes art is so subtle, comic, brilliant, and beautiful that it becomes quite easy to become caught up in the plays effervescence and dismiss it as charming but inconsequential frill (Foster 22). Indeed, Earnest could exist comfortably as a play simply for plays sake in keeping with Aestheticism. But to see it as such would be to overlook the plays deeper purpose, to ignore the function of the plays keen irony, and to continue obstinately on a somnambulistic path. For instance, when Lady Bracknell, a bourgeois social parvenu, purports to be the supreme arbiter of social decorum and even goes as far as to dictate when an individual should live or die, we, the audience, must peer behind the curtain of Wildes wit to see the pompous Victorian moralism that such irony exposes: Nor do I in any way approve of the modern sympathy with invalids. I consider it morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others. Health is the primary duty of life. (Wilde 304) Illness, like Lanes sense of hearing at the beginning of the play, is an involuntary phenomenon that can neither be encouraged nor discouraged, and as such, the irony of Bracknells statement emerges unequivocally. Wilde passes as the impotent Aesthete but endeavors through his art to evoke critical thought about his life and times. Wilde, the professed Aesthete, crafts his play in a beautiful aesthetic form but then proceeds to subtly employ this form in order to inspire a thoughtful critique of his society.

Art must be beautiful and purposefully inspire thought.