Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

I. Biography

how was the play instrumental in dealing with his sexuality and political issues

- powerful testimonial of what gay men had to endure at the time

- 1854 (Dublin) -1900

- 2nd son of a distinguished (surgeon dad) protestant family
- protestantism very meaningful in the plays
- mother poet and campaigner for Irish Home Rule
- father also collector of Irish folk tales
- very Irish family, very learned, very interested in literature, etc.

- boarding school in 1864

- studied the classics at Trinity College and Oxford University
- in Oxford, Wilde came into direct contact with the art and philosophy of the pre-Raphaelite
brotherhood, he ‘discovered’ poetry, studied the Renaissance.
- close contact with diff strands of
- during his years at Oxford he started writing and publishing:
- “The True Knowledge”= elegy of his father
- reviews of exhibitions
- poetry: 1878, won Newdigate prize, annual poetry competition in Oxford University with
“Ravenna”

- moved in 1879 from Oxford to London where he wrote in the satirical paper Punch

- 1880: wrote and published his first play Vera

- June 1881: self-published his first and only collection of verse Poems; in this collection one
specific poem catches our attention Charmides in which Wilde begins exploring forbidden
territories when it comes to sexuality

- December 1881: embarks on a voyage to America; he lectures on British art across America; he
became very famous for his extensive knowledge and eccentricity
- 1883: returned a celebrity in Europe and settled in Paris
- he wrote his 2nd unsuccessful play: Duchess of Padua

- 1884: married Constance Lloyd; moved to Chelsea

- worked as a journalist, as a reviewer of fiction and non-fiction and plays, for a variety of
newspapers

- 1885: first son

- 1886: second son

- 1887: editor in a monthly magazine called The Lady’s World and changed it to The Woman’s
World
- started published success

- The Picture of Dorian Gray: scandal: life, death, appearance, reality: liminal
- after that, 5 years of creativity
- he also changed in his private life: started seeing male prostitutes and initiated a relationship with
a man called Lord Alfred?

- 1891:
- Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories

- 1890s as he became a successful and prolific writer he discovered his sexuality which he
expressed in a very flamboyant way
- 1892: first big success with Lady Windermere’s fan; ensures wealth and celebrity
- 1893: produced A Woman of No Importance

- 14th of February of 1895: The Importance of Being Earnest

- at first big success, houses packed, tickets sold, etc.
- then accused of being a “sodomite” by the Marquess of Queensberry, which had Oscar Wilde
charged with criminal charges as sodomy was a crime back then
- tried to defend himself, accused her of libel but he was unsuccessful
- immediately arrested for “acts of gross indecency with a male person”
- legislation back then criminalized all acts of male homosexuality irrespective of age and
consensual status
- when he was arrested, he was refused bail and was taken to prison to await trial
- during that time, Queensberry forced a sale of Wilde’s belongings in order to cover the costs of
the trial

- the jury failed to reach a verdict and Wilde was released on bail but went back to trial later and
was convicted to 2 years in prison
- conviction is an utter disgrace for him which opened a very traumatic time: wife left him with his
son, his mother died
- when he was released he left for France hoping to find exile
- settled in Paris in 1898
- published: The Ballad of ??

- Constance died the same year

- he was still refused access to his children
- 1895-1898: collapse of his life because his sexuality was forbidden

- 1900: became ill and died of meningitis at 46

- his biography went parallel with the history of gay politics

- when gay rights became upraised, he was used as an example, he served as a role model

- Oscar Wilde was mostly forgotten in the 20th century, prior to the 1980s he wasn’t studied in
schools etc.
- in 1980s a biography of Oscar Wilde was published which renewed the interest; which also goes
along gay rights
 II. The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895

- 14th February 1895

- stopped after 83 performances
- three-act play

- often approached as a comedy but draws from different forms

- it is mostly a comedy of manners: satire of society of manners, commentary on social norms,
satire of social etiquette/norms, etc.
- also sentimental comedy, it’s a love story
- it also takes the form of the farce: the characters are exaggerated, placed in unlikely situations, fast
plot (relies extensively on action, physicality)
- but physical action is somehow displaced into language: wit, sparking dialogue, plays on words,
surprises misunderstandings, etc.

A) Plot

- action centres on the attempt of two young men, Jack Worthing (worth= value; he’s worthy) and
Algernon, to seduce/woo two young women, Gwendolyn (Algernon’s cousin) and Cecily Cardew
(Jack’s ward).

- Jack, in order to explain his different trips to London, invents an imaginary brother named Ernest
whose affairs he claims need constant attention, luckily Gwendolyn declares she can only love a
man named Ernest
- Algernon, Jack’s friend, who in order to escape social rules, also invents a friend named Bunbury
who he frequently pretends to visit.
- Algernon discovers the secret of Jack’s double life, and goes to ? Pretending to be Ernest. There,
he falls in love with Cecily who reciprocates while insisting that she could only love a man named
Ernest.
- When Gwendolyn and Cecily meet, they both believe that they are engaged to a man named
Ernest Worthing: plot-line is very unlikely
- another layer: both Jack and Algernon make attempts to be renamed Ernest lead to more
misunderstanding and add to the general confusion.
- main plot is very confusing, full of misunderstanding and double identities
- sub-plot: Miss Prism (Cecily’s governess) is also wooed by the clergyman Cannon Chasuble,
which adds to the comic because they don’t fit each other at first and their courtship is unusual
- comedy so all ends well: Jack discovers he was actually named Ernest and Jack was never his real
name

B) Title

- play might as well have been titled ‘the importance of being’

- the play deals with recognizing, acknowledging human identity
- many aspects of the play point in this direction, about the importance of being you: “Would you
kindly inform me who I am?” Act III; “it isn’t easy to be anything nowadays” Act I
- the play’s main concern in identity at large

- ‘earnest’ is a pun on the name in the play

- earnest= serious, sincere ≠ playful, light-hearted

- the original subtitle was: ‘a trivial comedy for serious people’

- points to the type of subversive inversion that characterizes the play
- ‘trivial’ because many of the comedy aspects also appear to be very trivial: very busy eating
cucumber sandwiches, or trivial activities that are treated with the utmost solemnity
- on the other hand, grave topics such as death, illegitimacy, love, are handled in an extremly
comedic way
- what should be treated seriously, is treated trivially, and what is trivial is treated in a very serious
way
- comedy of manners

- in many ways with the inversion of issues, the play can be seen or read as a parody of the
conventional dramas at the time, (parody of the stock characters (= stereotypical character,
embodies only one characteristic), the plots etc.), including the plays that Wilde wrote.
- satire on the society he came from, society which valued above anything else the value of
earnestness= defining quality of the Victorian era
- according to Wilde it was just mere hypocrisy, this earnestness was hollow, meant absolutely
nothing; to him those claiming to be earnest were taking on a convenient persona/creating a sort of
imaginary personality
- title point to the satire

- ‘Ernest/earnest’ may be a code word for homosexual, in order to communicate between

themselves homosexuals had to use passwords: “I have now realized for the first time in my life the
vital importance of being earnest”
- it was an actual coded word in the late 19th century
- possible other password: “Bunbury” as a pun for sodomy
- Wilde and his lover had had a relationship with a boy named Ernest who testified at Wilde’s trial
- Wilde also had a friend at Oxford named Bunbury

C) Main themes and motifs

- motif= an object or idea that repeats itself throughout a literary work; an image, sound, action, or
any other figure that has a symbolic significance, and contributes toward the development of a
theme
- theme= central idea or message

- comic inversion of the serious and trivial: underpins Wilde’s subversion of conventional
attitudes/platitudes

- marriage always approached as “misunderstanding”: motif; introduced in Act I; superiority of

champagne for bachelor, lead Algernon to find marriage demoralizing and unsatisfactory: “I have
been married only once, it was a consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young
person.”; generational gap, different approaches to marriage, Bracknell shocked that her daughter
should marry a middle-class man, she only consents of Algernon when she learns he has a lot of
money

- conventions and social hierarchy: very Victorian, hierarchy between the elite and the lower
grades individuals but who again are approached through inversion “if the lower orders don’t set up
a good example who on earth is supposed to?”?; it is the upper-class which is in need of moral
guidance, they have no morals, Algernon’s activities are motivated by pleasures “my duty as a
gentlemen has never interfered with my pleasures” it should be the other way around; many
linguistic inversion

- critique of class relations: serious critique beyond the comedy, something grave about the play,
the upper-society that Wilde is depicting is about idleness, superficiality, pretend, trivial values.
Lady Bracknell approves of ? when she finds out he smokes; each character is pursuing their own
objectives (the objectives being nothing)

- doubling and deception: opposition between deception and truth, it could be black or white but in
the play it’s much more complicated than this, things we and the characters thought was a lie, it
turns out to be true (Jack turns out to be Ernest all along while pretending to be Ernest)= no clear
cut between fiction and fact. Deception/lies lead to the truth when they shouldn’t, and eventually all
these characters who have been living through deception achieve their desires, they are not worthy
but they still achieve their desires, they have a happy ending although they’ve been lying to each
other the whole time: no moral of the story

- sexuality: motif; with an interesting number of euphemisms throughout the play in order to
approach sexuality and especially homosexuality in the play; motif of food and sexuality go along
together in the play, references to food in the play may indeed end up being covert references to
sexual desires; ex: when they’re talking about young women’s bodies while eating cucumber
sandwiches as if they’re consuming those bodies

- identity: the play denies that identity can ever be stable or definite, identity is a construct, identity
can not and should not be definite; identity in the play has all to do with performance, Jack pretends
he has a brother, Algernon pretends to be Ernest; very early in the play we see that nobody quite
knows who they are “would you kindly inform me who I am?”. The final act is increasingly
existential, this existential angst in undermined by a plot twist= revelation of Jack’s name is Ernest
and that the two men are actually brothers; provides them with a third identity which solves all their
issues.
The play suggests that in order to be true to yourself you have to pretend you’re someone else/live a
double life. Still according to Wilde in the play, if you pretend or argue that you have a fixed
identity from birth then you’re a hypocrite. The play is a celebration of pretens, celebration of
artifice; to the point where a critic wrote that the it is a “play which raises no principle whether of
art or morals”.

D) Language

- wit: use of the playful possibilities of language; the aim of wit is enlightenment and its appeal is
mainly intellectual; it involves words and ideas and its chief method is the effect of surprise.

- humour: a generous and amused look on the absurdities of life; no judgement is passed; enjoymet
of the entertaining side of life

- irony: underlying judgement passed on society and made by a character from a detached superior
position

Oscar Wilde as a wit (= someone who doesn’t take themselves too seriously): “would you like to
know the greatest drama of my life? It’s that I’ve put my genius into my life; I’ve put only my talent
into my work.” (1895, dialogue with André Gide)

- his chosen way of expression is the epigram; it’s the demonstration of its author’s mastery; it
expresses what passes as general truth, it was often used to flaunt his style, signature. It was also
used to choose his sophistical mastery of language. They are sprinkled throughout all of Wilde’s
play because they structure the plot.
 1. Repartees

repartees= series of very bricks dialogue, it is short, sharp, aphoristic often used in verbal duals
between characters, they appear to be fencing.

- Jack and Algernon are the perfect example as they often use very cutting remarks

2. Epigrams

epigram= witty and often paradoxical remark, concisely expresses; may be complimentary, satiric
or aphoristic; often balanced, often based on antithesis (parallel or contrast) and encapsulating a
clever or comic thought.

aphorism= a short and often shallow statement expressing a general truth

- “Forty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin and forty years of marriage make her look
like a public building” (A Woman of No Importance)
- Algernon: “more than half modern culture depends upon what one shouldn’t read” (irony)
- Lady Bracknell: “ignorance is like a delicate fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone” (humour)
- Lady Bracknell: “Thirty five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very
highest birth who have, of their own free will, remained thirty five for years.”

- There is more to these epigrams, on the vanity, on marriage, etc. It can mean that what society
considered as culture is not worth reading. Wilde’s epigrams often mark their effect by spelling out
what people already know, it rises at the exposure of unpleasant truth. Women of the audience may
recognize themselves, because most of them are over 35 and generally it is taboo

- Cecily is the only character that doesn’t ever use epigrams; maybe because she is the youngest (<
30) character is the play, all the others are older and born in the city, which is the part of Victorian
society that Wilde is tackling. She’s young enough to not be accused of the old evil that Wilde is
tackling.

3. Witticisms

- puns or play on words that are often homophonic

(ex: know as in recognize; and then knew as in nobody wanted to know her);

- uses degradation or debasement, when a moral or spiritual activity is judged in physical terms
(ex: “ignorance is like a delicate fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone”)

- comic device of repetition: witty antithesis (when the second occurrence appears to be parodic)

- comic device of inversion (paradoxes): grounded in the association of two categorically

contradictory ideas; it is meant to challenge conventions and suggest new ones; often these
paradoxes voices an absurdity within the social class
(ex: cliché and then opposite of the cliché)

4. Humour

humour= deliberate distortion of reality which emphasizes the sense of the absurd
- polysyllabic humour: extravagant formulations (pedantic, high-flown grandiloquent or emphatic
style) of very simple matters

- nonsensical humour: when a character disregards the rules of logic, sometimes a character says
something completely illogical

- paradoxical humour:

- whimsical/fanciful humour:

- there is a wide range in variety of comic devices which speaks to Wilde’s determination to stick to
the world of comedy; there might be a little bit of overkill in the play to point out the absurdity of
life. Sometimes, a character will say “this is absurd” and they may be talking about the play itself.

III. Female characters in “The Importance of being Earnest”

a) Lady Augusta Bracknell: the opponent

- during his quest for the prize, the hero has to overcome opponents,
- in many ways, Lady Bracknell embodies the role of the opponent
- she issues a great number of objections, she disagrees with everything and everyone
- she raises many obstacles on our heroes’ ways
- all of these objections and obstacles must be overcome to make it possible for the play to remain a
comedy, for it to end happily: if they weren’t, the play would end very fast with the impossibility to
marry
- the conflict of the story is actually created by Lady Bracknell herself and this conflict ensues from
her decision of the unsuitability of the two marriages
- she tells her daughter quite explicitly: "Pardon me, you are not engaged to anyone. When you do
become engaged to someone, I or your father, should his health permit him, will inform you of the
fact.”
- on another instance Jack will be placed on the list of suitable suitors only if he can pass her test,
this test is another motive in heroes’ journey: "I would strongly advise you, Mr. Worthing, to try
and acquire some relations as soon as possible, and to make a definite effort to produce at any rate
one parent, of either sex, before the season is quite over.“
- it matters not how Jack how finds parents, just that he finds them: her only aim is to follow the
requirements for suitability, he’s following conventions come what may, even though the
convictions don’t make sense
- with this impossible test she fully unveils her power over characters and the plot, she manipulates
the play, events, challenges to be overcome by the characters
- she also symbolizes the concept of earnestness, she appears as a direct opponent to the two main
characters who are the opposite of earnest
- she epitomizes something else: the Victorian upper-class society; she is extremely conservative in
the sense that she believes that the middle and lower-classes should never be taught to think, should
never be educated, she also embodies a form of social discrimination that is very clearly targeted by
Oscar Wilde
- according to her, educating the middle and lower classes would bring… it would also make it
possible for the upper-class to lose its privileges
- in this sense, she is very much an instrument of Wilde’s satirical wit, and he uses this specific
character to question everything that he sees in the Victorian upper-class: she’s powerful, arrogant,
ruthless, cruel (also to her own daughter), very proper (careful ab what society might think of her
and her family), embodies what is righteous about society, and yet she is the most unhappy
character of the play.
- Lady Bracknell represents Wilde’s opinion about the Victorian era

b) Gwendolen Fairfax: the aristocratic socialite

- Gwendolen and Cecily embody the prize of the quest

- they are the objects of affection/desire
- in acts 1 and 2 the women appear to be deceived by the 2 men
- by the beginning of the 3 everything is forgiven
- they’re in love and it is through Act 3 that they proceed to the happy ending

- she is a stereotypical character: the aristocratic socialite

- she is initially depicted as “a brilliant, clever, thoroughly experienced lady”
- she is a member of high society, a woman of fashion, very knowledgeable in the latest trends,
reads magazines; her knowledge of appearance is perceivable through her very self-confident lines
in Act1: “I am always smart!” / “I intend to develop in many directions.” / “In fact, I am never
wrong”
- inflated sense of self-appraisal, which makes her seem kinda foolish at times
- even before meeting Jack, she’s obsessed with finding a husband named Ernest whose name
“inspires absolute confidence” (dramatic irony because only the audience knows how wrong she is
about her love interest)
- she issues judgement a little too easily and a little too fast; when she meets Cecily: “Cecily
Cardew? What a very sweet name! Something tells me that we are going to be great friends. I like
you already more than I can say. My first impressions of people are never wrong.” (…) “From the
moment I saw you I distrusted you. I felt that you were false and deceitful. I am never deceived in
such matters. My first impressions of people are invariably right.”
- she contradicts herself from one minute to the next
- there’s a form of redemption: she’s very kind and forgiving, she doesn’t hold a grudge, it doesn’t
take long for her to reconcile with Cecily, and she also very quickly forgives Jack’s deceptive ways:
in the end she makes Jack a very happy man, eventually she is active in the happy ending through
her forgiveness
- she epitomizes the qualities of conventional Victorian womanhood: she has many ideals, she’s a
dreamer, but at the same time she has a thirst for knowledge, she attends lectures, she wants to be
enlightened, to learn, she’s trying hard to educate herself, she’s bent on self-improvement
- she’s very bright but she’s also very artificial and pretentious: she’s in between two eras, she
represents the changing times

c) Cecily Cardew: the hopeless romantic

- she’s the other prize

- she’s the hopeless romantic
- the first time she’s introduced, she’s introduced as: “?”, the second time she’s introduced as “ a
sweet simple, innocent girl”: she’s still a girl, not a lady
- it’s important to look at the first appearance of a character on stage, when we first meet her: she’s
watering the flower garden when she should have been studying German grammar
- she disobeys: she choses to water the flowers, thus testifying to her love of nature
- she’s in opposition with Gwendolyn who would’ve studied the grammar
- she’s a child of nature, Algernon compares her to a “pink rose”
- she she’s the most romantic character of the play
- also obsessed with the name Ernest but she falls in love with Algernon because she likes his
wickedness
- she’s primarily attracted to Algernon because he is wicked
- she falls in love with a man whose reputation is wayword (?), doubtful,
- she’s a fanatsist, she has as much imagination as Algernon and Jack put together, she has
invented/fantasized her romance with Ernest and has made it extremely elaborate, her mastery of
fantasy equals that of her male counterparts: Jack and Algernon had ? Alternate life and so did
Cecily
- she’s a fantasist so she’s the character that would be the closest to Wilde himself, she’s also a
writer
- she’s a matchmaker: she’s not only the prize she also turns into a helper and enables other
characters to start their quest; she urges Chasuble and Prism to take walks together
- she’s a problem solver, a healer
- she’s naive but benevolent, she wants to cure Jack’s brother of his wickedness and restore
harmony between the siblings
- at first she looks like a flat character but then we find out she’s much rounder than what we
expected, she’s not just the prize, there’s also an aspect of feminism, she invents her own story, she
writes it herself, she solves problems, helps characters in their quest
- opposite of Miss Prism

- Miss Prism= cardboard character, completely flat, machine to repeat what is supposed to be said
in society