INSTITUTO DE FORMACIÓN DOCENTE CONTINUA
LENGUAS VIVAS BARILOCHE (A-052)
Profesorado de Inglés - Modalidad a distancia
EXAMEN PARCIAL
Mayo de 2012
MATERIA: Literatura en Lengua Inglesa y su Didáctica II
Nombre del alumno: María Isabel Knye
Dirección de correo electrónico: marisaknye@hotmail.com
Ciudad: Rada Tilly
Provincia: Chubut
Fecha: May 8th, 2012
______________________________________________________________________________
Instructions




Make sure you save this file to your hard drive before you start working.
Complete your exam on the same file you saved.
Make sure you save changes every 10 - 15 minutes.
After completing all the tasks, check for spelling, grammar and punctuation
mistakes. Then save the file again.
 When you finish, upload the file to the campus using the “Presentar
trabajos/parcial” option.
______________________________________________________________________________
Do the following tasks:
1) Write an essay in about 300 words on Oscar Wilde (Dublin, 1854- 1900) and his
play The Importance of Being Earnest. Describe the characteristics of the Victorian
Period, the use of setting in the play mentioned above (remember the elements
of duality and irony used in the play).
2) In an essay of about 300 words discuss how Edgar A. Poe (American writer,
1809-1849) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (American writer, 1804-1864) dealt with
duality, alter ego and appearance versus reality in their works The Tell Tale Heart
and The Scarlet Letter.
Task 1
Oscar Wilde wrote “The Importance of Being Earnest” in 1895. The Play can be
seen as a self-parody or an autobiography since we may see Wilde himself
represented by Algie, the dandy who pays too much attention to his outfit and a
witty character.
The play, which is set in the last times of the Victorian period, mocks the
boredom, pomposity, solemnity, sense of duty, and self-righteousness that were
the characteristics of the era and the restrictions they imposed on society.
This piece of work is a satire, a comedy of manners and also an intellectual farce.
Every character satirizes the hypocrisy of that society’s moral, showing all of them
as trivial and shallow.
Both, the main character, Jack Worthing, and the second hero in the play, Algy
Moncrieff, have an alter-ego, that is to say a second self that allows them to get
out of their social obligations and lets them do the things they would never do in
their real lives so as to keep their image of respectability intact. Jack’s alter-ego is
his supposed younger brother Ernest, whose name he used when in London; the
black sheep of the family who is always in trouble and needs Jack to solve his
problems. Algy’s alter-ego is Mr. Bunbury, a sick, invalid man who calls his dear
friend Algernon to be by his bedside every time he is in need of assistance. This
“Bunbury” alter-ego has been interpreted by some critics as a word that implies
homosexuality which was not at all accepted by the Victorian moral standards.
The female characters, Gwendolen and Cecily, have a fixation with the name
Ernest and here we get to the irony of the title of the play since “earnest” means
serious and sincere which none of the male characters are. While Gwendolen is
the perfect image of a young girl from the city, Cecily is the image of an innocent
girl brought up in the country, but they both agree that the name Ernest inspires
confidence. When it comes to Lady Brackwell and her list of possible matches for
her daughter Gwendolen, we can clearly see the preoccupations of Victorian
respectability when she asks about Worthing’s family background, social position
and incomes. The sole idea of Mr. Worthing not knowing who his parents were,
made him unsuitable for her daughter.
In conclusion, Wilde makes fun of all these moral restrictions throughout his play
using irony and sarcasm.
Task 2
Alter-ego, duality, appearance versus reality, aren’t they the same or just similar
ways of dealing with guilt?
In Hawthorne’s work “The Scarlet Letter”, I found alter-ego in Chillingworth since
this is the only character who poses himself as someone else so as not to deal with
the shame of being the husband who has been deceived, of course, it is related to
appearances versus reality as it seems, throughout the narration, to be more
important for him to be seen as a respectable man of knowledge. This duality in
Chillingworth turns him into a different man who only seeks revenge and this is
denied to him at the end because of Dimmesdale’s death and his admission of
guilt.
In Dimmesdale, I recognize duality and appearance versus reality. This duality is
shown by Hawthorne with his thorough description of how the priest’s health
deteriorates as time goes by and the inner struggle of the character between his
need to come forward with the truth and remain the holly person the town
dwellers believe him to be.
As regards Poe and his short story “The Tell Tale Heart”, duality is revealed
through the opposed feelings of the main character who on the one hand loves his
employer but on the other one he can’t stand the sight of his strange eye. Within
his madness, he cannot discern between reality and appearance. The duality, as I
see it, can also be represented by the way in which he carefully plans every step of
his crime and carries it out and how, finally, he uncovers what he has done to the
police since his guilt, represented by reality, seems to be more powerful than
appearance.