THE
IMPORTANCE
OF BEING
EARNEST
By Oscar Wilde
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JOHN WORTHING
ALGERNON
MONCRIEFF
ACT 1
LADY BRACKNELL
ACT II
GWENDOLEN
FAIRFAX
ACT III
•
•
•
•
QUESTIONS
THEMES
THE NATURE OF MARRIAGE
THE CONSTRAINTS OF
MORALITY
THE DANDY
THE DOUBLE LIFE
• Set in London, the play opens with
Algernon Moncrieff, an idle young
gentleman, receiving his best friend,
John Worthing, whom he knows as
Ernest.
• Ernest has come from the country to
propose to Algernon’s cousin,
Gwendolen Fairfax. Algernon,
however, refuses his consent until
Ernest explains why his cigarette case
bears the inscription, “From little
Cecily, with her fondest love to her
dear Uncle Jack.”
• John-Ernest is forced to admit to
living a double life. In the country, he
assumes a serious attitude for the
benefit of his young ward, the heiress
Cecily Cardew, and goes by the name
of John (or Jack), while pretending
that he must worry about a wastrel
younger brother named Ernest in
London. In the city, meanwhile, he
assumes the identity of the libertine
Ernest
Act 1 –part 1
•
Algernon confesses a similar deception: he
pretends to have an invalid friend named
Bunbury in the country, whom he can “visit”
whenever he wishes to avoid an unwelcome
social obligation. Jack refuses to tell Algernon
the location of his country estate.
• Gwendolen and her formidable mother
Lady Bracknell now call on Algernon. As
he distracts Lady Bracknell in another
room, Jack proposes to Gwendolen. She
accepts, but seems to love him very largely
for his professed name of Ernest.
• Jack accordingly resolves to himself to be
rechristened “Ernest”.
• Discovering them in this intimate exchange,
Lady Bracknell interviews Jack as a
prospective suitor. Horrified to learn that he
was adopted after being discovered as a
baby in a handbag at Victoria Station, she
refuses him and forbids further contact with
her daughter. Gwendolen, though, manages
covertly to swear to him her undying love.
As Jack gives her his address in the country,
Algernon surreptitiously notes it on the cuff
of his sleeve: Jack’s revelation of his pretty
and wealthy young ward has motivated his
friend to meet her.
Act 1-part 2
Act II moves to Jack’s country house, the
Manor House in Woolton, Hertfordshire,
where Cecily is found studying with her
governess, Miss Prism. Algernon arrives,
pretending to be Ernest Worthing, and
soon charms Cecily. Long fascinated by
Uncle Jack’s hitherto absent black sheep
brother, she is predisposed to fall for
Algernon in his role of Ernest—whose
name she’s particularly fond of.
Therefore Algernon, too, plans for the
rector, Dr. Chasuble, to rechristen him
“Ernest.”
Act 2
• Act III moves into the drawing room.
Arriving in pursuit of her daughter, Lady
Bracknell is astonished to be told that
Algernon and Cecily are engaged. The size
of Cecily’s trust fund soon dispels her initial
doubts over the young lady’s suitability, but
any engagement is forbidden by her
guardian Jack: he will consent only if Lady
Bracknell agrees to his own union with
Gwendolen—something she declines to do.
• The impasse is broken by the return of Miss
Prism, whom Lady Bracknell recognises as
the person who, twenty-eight years earlier,
as a family nursemaid, had taken a baby
boy for a walk in a perambulator (baby
carriage) and never returned. Challenged,
Miss Prism explains that she had
abstractedly put the manuscript of a novel
she was writing in the perambulator, and the
baby in a handbag, which she had left at
Victoria Station.
Act 3 –part 1
Act 3part 2
• Jack produces the very same handbag,
showing that he is the lost baby, the elder
son of Lady Bracknell’s late sister, and thus
indeed Algernon’s elder brother. Having
acquired such respectable relations, he is
acceptable as a suitor for Gwendolen after
all.
• Gwendolen, though, still insists that she can
only love a man named Ernest. What is her
fiancé’s real first name? Lady Bracknell
informs Jack that, as the first-born, he
would have been named after his father,
General Moncrieff. Jack examines the army
lists and discovers that his father’s name –
and hence his own real name—was in fact
Ernest. Pretence was reality all along. As
the happy couples embrace—Jack and
Gwendolen, Algernon and Cecily, and even
Dr. Chasuble and Miss Prism—Lady
Bracknell complains to her newfound
relative: “My nephew, you seem to be
displaying signs of triviality.” “On the
contrary, Aunt Augusta”, he replies, “I’ve
now realised for the first time in my life the
vital Importance of being Earnest.”
• Jack Worthing represents
conventional Victorian values: he
wants others to think he adheres to
such notions as duty, honor, and
respectability, but he hypocritically
flouts those very notions.
• Indeed, what Wilde was actually
satirizing through Jack was the
general tolerance for hypocrisy in
conventional Victorian morality. Jack
uses his alter-ego Ernest to keep his
honorable image intact.
• . Until he seeks to marry Gwendolen,
Jack has used Ernest as an escape
from real life, but Gwendolen’s
fixation on the name Ernest obligates
Jack to embrace his deception in
order to pursue the real life he
desires.
John Worthing
Algernon, the play’s secondary hero, is
closer to the figure of the dandy than
any other character in the play.
A charming, idle, decorative bachelor,
Algernon is brilliant, witty, selfish,
amoral, and given to making delightful
paradoxical and epigrammatic
pronouncements .
Like Jack, Algernon has invented a
fictional character, a chronic invalid
named Bunbury .
Being a “Bunburyist “ means leading a
double life just for the sake of achieving
satisfaction .
In fact Algernon is a proponent of
aestheticism and a stand-in for Wilde
himself.
Algernon is completely amoral , that is
to say he has no moral convictions at
all, recognizing no duty other than the
responsibility to live beautifully.
ALGERNON
MONCRIEFF
Lady Bracknell - Algernon’s snobbish,
mercenary, and domineering aunt and
Gwendolen’s mother.
Lady Bracknell ‘s primary goal is to
marry her daughter well.
She has a list of “eligible young men”
and a prepared interview she gives to
potential suitors.
Like her nephew, Lady Bracknell is
given to making hilarious
pronouncements, but where Algernon
means to be witty, the humor in Lady
Bracknell’s speeches is unintentional.
Through the figure of Lady Bracknell,
Wilde manages to satirize the hypocrisy
and stupidity of the British aristocracy.
She is narrow-minded, authoritarian,
and possibly the most quotable
character in the play.
LADY BRACKNELL
Gwendolen Fairfax
• Gwendolen suggests the qualities of
conventional Victorian womanhood.
• She has ideas and ideals, attends
lectures, and is bent on selfimprovement. She is also artificial
and pretentious.
• Gwendolen is in love with Jack,
whom she knows as Ernest, and she
is fixated on this name.
• This preoccupation serves as a
metaphor for the preoccupation of
the Victorian middle- and uppermiddle classes with the appearance
of virtue and honor.
GWENDOLEN FAIRFAX
The Nature of Marriage
• Marriage is in The Importance
of Being Earnest is a primary
force motivating the plot.
• Lady Bracknell’s list of
bachelors and the prepared
interview to which she subjects
Jack are based on a set of
assumptions about the nature
and purpose of marriage. In
general, these assumptions
reflect the conventional
preoccupations of Victorian
respectability—social position,
income, and character
THE NATURE OF MARRIAGE
The Constraints of Morality
• Morality and the constraints it
imposes on society is a favorite topic
of conversation in The Importance of
Being Earnest.
• . Jack thinks reading a private
cigarette case is “ungentlemanly.”
These restrictions and assumptions
suggest a strict code of morals that
exists in Victorian society, but Wilde
isn’t concerned with questions of
what is and isn’t moral.
• Instead, he makes fun of the whole
Victorian idea of morality as a rigid
body of rules about what people
should and shouldn’t do.
THE CONTRAINTS of MORALITY
The Dandy
• Wilde contributed to the figure of
the dandy, a character who is a witty,
overdressed, self-styled philosopher
who speaks in epigrams and
paradoxes and ridicules the
hypocrisy of society’s morality. To a
very large extent, this figure was a
self-portrait, a stand-in for Wilde
himself.
• In The Importance of Being Earnest,
Algernon has many characteristics of
the dandy.
• Jack echoes the philosophy of the
dandy when he comes onstage
asserting that “pleasure” is the only
thing that should “bring one
anywhere.” For the most part, these
utterances seem to be part of Wilde’s
general satire of the superficiality
of the upper classes .
THE DANDY
The Double Life
• The double life is the central metaphor in
the play, epitomized in the notion of
“Bunbury” or “Bunburying.” As defined
by Algernon, Bunburying is the practice
of creating an elaborate deception that
allows one to misbehave while seeming
to uphold the very highest standards of
duty and responsibility.
• Jack’s imaginary brother Ernest is a
device not only for escaping social and
moral obligations but also one that allows
Jack to appear far more moral and
responsible than he actually is.
• Similarly, Algernon’s imaginary invalid
friend Bunbury allows Algernon to
escape to the country, to avoid social
obligation in the town and to seem to
demonstrate Christian charity. The
practice of visiting the poor and the sick
was a staple activity among the Victorian
upper and upper-middle classes and
considered a public duty.
• Through double lives, Wilde suggests
the general hypocrisy of the Victorian
mindset.
THE DOUBLE LIFE
1. What does John Worthing represent in the play?
2. Why does John Worthing use his alter-ego
Ernest?
3. Identify the features of Algernon Moncrieff
making use of at least 4 adjectives.
4. Why can Algernon be considered a proponent of
aestheticism and a stand-in for Wilde himself?
5. What is the meaning of “being a Bunburist”?
6. Identify the features of Lady Bracknell’s character
using at least 4 adjectives.
7. What’s Wilde’s purpose in creating a figure like
Lady Bracknell?
8. Why does Gwendolen epitomize the qualities of
conventional Victorian womanhood?
9. What does her fixation on the name Ernest prove?
10.How was marriage seen in the Victorian society?
11.What does Wilde think of the Victorian morality?
12.Give a short definition of the dandy as it emerges
from the play.Who is the typical dandy in the
play?
13.Why is double life the central metaphor in the
play?
QUESTIONS