Notesale: Turn your study into money

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The Importance of Being Earnest is simply an example of the Comedy of Manners and nothing more
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The Comedy of Manners was deeply
popular at the time of Wilde’s writing, as it represented the upper classes in a truthful yet also
comedic style, which they identified with and also laughed at
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In some ways, The Importance of Being Earnest is a
Comedy of Manners – the Comedy of Manners focuses on love intrigues of cynical and sophisticated
young aristocrats and relies on verbal wit, not slapstick and reflects the life, ideals and manners of
upper class society in a way that is true to its traditions and philosophy
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Wilde’s work is also so much more than a simply Comedy of Manners – his
ingénue is actually worldly-wise, he includes farce and slapstick and represents a dandy in Algernon,
a literary construct of himself almost, a sexuality that would have been persecuted in society at the
time
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Originally, Wilde hesitated in submitting the play, as the audience were used to serious plays and
Wilde knew his was farcical, and his characters and situations were constructed to be trivial – he
explained that The Importance of Being Earnest was a response to a request for a play with ‘no real
serious interest’, however, Wilde’s play was actually full of social criticism and ridicule
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Wilde’s critics often received his work well yet still complained it was empty
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He also said the play could not be criticised as it ‘lacked substance’
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One example is Lady Bracknell’s line “I do not approve of anything
that tampers with natural ignorance…the whole theory of modern education is radically unsound …it
would prove a serious danger to the upper classes” – Wilde not only mocks the boorish ignorance of
the upper classes but makes the disputable point that if good education was effective in Victorian
England, it would threaten the precarious class system of the time, implying that if the lower classes
were educated, they would overthrow the aristocrats and “lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor
Square
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Another example of this is when Algernon says “if the lower orders don’t set us a good example,
what on earth is the use of them?” – Not only does this suggest that Lane, despite his position as a
gentleman’s butler, has no morals, but is also a thinly veiled implication that the upper classes are
secretly wild and out of order, thereby needing a good example, however in typical Wildean style
this is treated as a joke and therefore subverted from being a serious criticism of the classes’ morals
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Wilde has created Dr
Chasuble, somewhat of a comic fool, the local reverend who repeatedly preached his “sermon of the
manna in the wilderness” “at harvest celebrations, christenings, confirmations, on days of
humiliations and festal days” implying that the religious upper classes are shallow and that church
has become a show – Wilde is attacking religion, insinuating that Chasuble has a ‘one size fits all’
approach to sermons and preaching, and that religion is for convenience now, even whilst the upper
classes were supposedly steeped in biblical morality, which trivializes it
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Wilde included in The Importance of Being Earnest his feelings and thoughts on aestheticism, a
movement Wilde was heavily interested in, ‘art for art’s sake’ – the character of Algernon also
appears to be an aesthete, unsurprisingly as he is a literary representation of Wilde
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It also reflects on Algernon as a hedonistic character – his
life is shallow and empty, he does little to nothing and he is going slowly bankrupt but in his opinion,
this doesn’t matter, as long as it is all with “wonderful expression”
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Algernon says of literary criticism “you
should leave that to people who haven’t been at a university
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Since Algernon is a literary allusion to Wilde, this is almost Wilde saying that all literary critics are
uneducated and therefore suggesting they should not be commenting on the art of literature
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Wilde had made Algernon a literary construct to represent the wasteful upper classes, who trivialize
serious problems and treat silly fanciful ideas with gravitas – one example being when Algernon is
“greatly distressed” over the lack of cucumber sandwiches, which he ate; they become a motif for
hedonism, as Algernon “ordered them specially for Aunt Augusta” but he cannot resist eating them
himself, epitomising the lavish, excessive lifestyle the upper classes led
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They are
both Algernon’s family members and whilst Lady Bracknell is older and married, Gwendolen is young

and single therefore Jack is given the chance to eat her bread and butter but “not as if he was going
to eat it all”, as Algernon chastises him, because it looks as if Jack is behaving like he “were married
to her already”
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