Satire in The Importance of Being Earnest
The most important role of any work of fiction is not simply to entertain its readers but to teach some moral lesson or convey a message. Each writer seeks to improve bad side of humans’ nature, presenting all their shortcoming and inappropriate behaviour in the images of the main characters of their stories. The best way to do it is definitely by using such genre of literature as satire. It does not only ridicule different vices and faults of particular individuals or society in general, but aims to construct social criticism and lead to further improvement.
The Importance of Being Earnest written by Oscar Wilde is perhaps one of the best examples of social satire found in literature. This short play with rather deep meaning managed to skilfully criticize the people of the Victorian age simply using irony and paradoxes. Oskar Wilde succeeded to throw a satirical spotlight on the Victorian Era as a whole by pouring scorn on its false ideals (Tydeman 414). The pinnacle of all the virtues at that time was considered to be the idea of earnestness. People fell in an impassioned love with it, that’s why the primary ideal of the entire Victorian society was to live in an earnest possible manner (Freedman 64).
The most interesting thing lay in the fact that representatives of the Victorian Era did not at first have the haziest notion that they actually were the ones being criticized. This proves that Oscar Wild was a very gifted and intelligent man who could trick human’s minds in quite elusive way. Any other writer in fact was not able to turn the English language around to fit his sarcastic themes as consummately as Wilde did (Raby 44). In The Importance of Being Earnest the author one more time accomplished that to a highest level. It served to be an ingeniously undermining criticism of the audience it was meant to amuse.
The delirious and frantic thirst for the fake ideals of earnestness pushed individuals to live a double life of dealers. Everybody’s private life and their behaviour in the public were then extremely separated. Nothing could stop people from achieving that cherished dream because they were ready to pay any price for the earnest life. As a result, in the late nineteenth century British society was gradually transforming into highly hypocritical one in its extravagant pursuit of gaining the ideals of earnestness.
Furthermore, the blinded rush for the earnest life deprived people of their common sense and forced to compromise with different evil things they could not even think about. From charmed and unspoiled human beings, the representatives of the Victorian society turned into dangerous criminals with ugly souls and callous hearts, in addition to their excessive haughtiness and fallacious sense of self-worth.
The Importance of Being Earnest made an attempt to demonstrate that one could not evaluate anything just for its cover. Though the Victorian society seemed outwards perfectly organized and flowery, it failed to be so ideal inside. In reality, under the cover of its distinguished titles and sophisticated manners were hidden the true artificiality and hollowness. According to Sara Freeman, people of the Victorian Era were mostly known to be “moralizers”. The whole play, in fact, strived to illustrate “the demolition of convention within a world in which society’s edifice held strong enough to guarantee immediate and satisfactory, if arbitrary, resolution” (Freeman 358).
Oscar Wild thoughtless cynic was first of all an attack on the fashionable morality of Victorian society. Birmingham’s repertory theatre with Nicholas Barter's direction, for example, set itself the aim of proving inability of British people at that time to be responsible for their actions as well as perceive life as seriously as the Victorian sense of power and duty expected from them (Conolly 121). Though they managed to lie all the time, the day when everything was going to be revealed was up to come.
This successful play cruelly critiqued the unnecessary pride and arrogance nature of the middle class and the upper class. The master of satire showed that people of the Victorian age were not even good enough at lying and concealing their real characters.
There appeared hundreds of cases when someone disclosed their secrets, as well as unveil different conspiracies. The only thing they were able to do in such situations was just objecting the obvious truth and finding some way to make away. The reason for doing those flippant actions was people’s irrepressible desire and sense of urgency to save their reputation.
Oscar Wilde in The Importance of Being Earnest deliberately satirized all Victorian society as well as the viewers who were expected to watch his play. The main purpose of it was to show the audience its bad traits of character and stimulate them to begin some actions for improvement. The author aimed to teach everybody different moral lessons and prevent them from living in the world where reality followed from language instead of language following from reality (Siebold 52).
Lady Bracknell’s haughty nature, for instance, presented all mothers of that time who tried to find the most successful and wealthy partner for their daughters. They did not take into consideration love feelings or temper of those who were qualified to be future sons-in-law.
The only thing that really mattered was the content of men’s wallets. To the utter shame of the readers, Lady Bracknell controlled all the candidates for her daughter’s hand and dismissed those who proved to be unqualified suitors (Siebold 75). It was completely wrong to dispose the girl of any rights to choose a life friend for herself. In the character of Gwendolyn’s mother Wilde was striving to demonstrate the haughty trend, inherent to all representatives of upper middle class.
Wilde did not aim to insult the audience or just ridicule all its faultiness and imperfection. His first and foremost mission was simply to stimulate the change of the behaviour of the whole society. A good criticism is in fact much more useful than any praise and compliments. Being flayed once, people then became aware of their mistakes and at least endeavoured not to repeat them in the future. Wilde managed to create some kind of mirror where everybody was able to find themselves in the images of some of the characters described.
In conclusion, The Importance of Being Earnest is verily an impressive work of Oscar Wilde and one of the cleverer and at the same time most subversive book ever existed. Totally diappointed by double-faced and hypocritical Victorian Era society, the author decided to solve that problem somehow. Using felicitous literary style and hidden symbols in his characters, the author succeeded in criticizing the audience he had to entertain and evoke in it a deep longing for improvement.
Works Cited
Conolly, L. W. Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. 28, No. 1.The Johns Hopkins, University Press, 1976. Web.
Freedman, Jonathan. Oscar Wilde, A Collection of Critical Essays. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996. Print.
Freeman, Sara. Theatre Journal, Vol. 58, No. 2.The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Web.
Raby, Peter. Oscar Wilde. New York: Cambridge University Press,1988. Print.
Siebold, Thomas. Readings on The Importance of Being Earnest. San Diego, California: Greenhaven Press, 2001.Print.
Tydeman, William. The Review of English Studies, Vol. 48, No. 191.Oxford University Press,1 997. Web.
