The Victorian era was a period of dramatic change that brought
England to its highest point of development as a world power. The
rapid growth of London, from a population of 2 million when
Victoria came to the throne to one of 6.5 million by the time of
Victoria's death, indicates the dramatic transition from a way of
life based on the ownership of land to a modern urban economy.
England experienced an enormous increase in wealth, but rapid
and unregulated industrialization brought a host of social and
economic problems.
In the later period (1870–1901) the
costs of Empire became increasingly
apparent, and England was
confronted with growing threats to its
military and economic
preeminence. A variety of socialist
movements gained force, some
influenced by the revolutionary
theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels. The literature of the 1890s is
characterized by self-conscious
melancholy and aestheticism, but
also saw the beginnings of the
modernist movement.
The extreme inequities between men
and women stimulated a debate
about women’s roles known as “The
Woman Question.” Women were
denied the right to vote or hold
political office throughout the period,
but gradually won significant rights
such as custody of minor children and
the ownership of property in
marriage. By the end of Victoria’s
reign, women could take degrees at
twelve universities. Hundreds of
thousands of working-class women
labored at factory jobs under
appalling conditions, and many were
driven into prostitution.
Literacy increased significantly in the period,
and publishers could bring out more material
more cheaply than ever before. The most
significant development in publishing was the
growth of the periodical. Novels and long
works of non-fiction were published in serial
form, fostering a distinctive sense of a
community of readers. Victorian novels seek
to represent a large and comprehensive social
world, constructing a tension between social
conditions and the aspirations of the hero or
heroine. Writing in the shadow of
Romanticism, the Victorians developed a
poetry of mood and character. Victorian
poetry tends to be pictorial, and often uses
sound to convey meaning.
The theater, a flourishing and popular
institution throughout the period, was
transformed in the 1890s by the
comic masterpieces of George
Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. Very
different from each other, both took
aim at Victorian pretense and
hypocrisy.
Oscar O'Flahertie Fingal Wills Wilde
was born on October 16, 1854 in
Dublin, Ireland. He was born into an
interesting and somewhat eccentric
family, which would prove to be a
very appropriate backdrop for the
man Wilde would become. His
mother, Lady Jane Francesca Elgee
Wilde (1820-96), was a journalist and
poet. Wilde’s father, Sir William Wilde
was an accomplished physician who
specialized in diseases of the eyes
and ears.
Oscar excelled in academic life. He
attended Trinity College, Dublin,
where he majored in classical studies.
He then went to Oxford on an
academic scholarship. At Oxford,
Wilde was greatly inspired by John
Ruskin and Walter Pater who
influenced Oscar with their aesthetic
theories. Wilde established himself as
an advocate of the philosophical
movement aestheticism, “art for art’s
sake.”
In May of 1884, Wilde married Constance Lloyd, a rich, intelligent,
Irishwoman. She was well-educated and somewhat shy. They had
two sons: Cyril in 1885 and Vyvyan in 1886. Wilde took a job editing
Woman's World magazine. He stayed at this position for only two
years (1887-1889), until he left and focused his efforts wholeheartedly on his own work. Wilde published The Happy Prince And
Other Tales in 1888 and The House Of Pomegranates in 1892, which
were based on Irish folklore. In 1890 Wilde met success with his play
Dorian Gray, which he was later able to convert into a masterpiece
novel. His accomplishments continued with plays: Lady Windermere's
Fan (1892), Salome (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An
Ideal Husband (1895), and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).
In sharp contrast to his public
achievements, were his private
tragedies. In 1891, Wilde met Lord
Alfred Douglas, “Bosie.” Bosie was an
aspiring poet and undergraduate
student at Oxford. Wilde and Bosie
began a sexual relationship, which
was not well hidden. In 1895 Bosie’s
father, the marquis of Queensbury,
accused Wilde of being a
homosexual. Wilde sued for libel.
While Wilde withdrew from the
original case, Bosie’s father collected
vast evidence of Wilde’s
homosexuality. Wilde was arrested
and sentenced to two years of hard
labor for this “crime.”
Wilde left prison a dejected man. He moved from England, where his
wife had divorced him and he was bankrupted, to France. He
produced two more works: The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898) and De
Profundis (1905), which were much more somber than his earlier
pieces.
On November 30, 1900 Oscar Wilde died of meningitis in a Paris
hotel room. Five years earlier (the year of his arrest), Wilde wrote
the play The Importance of Being Earnest, in which character Ernest
Worthing’s death occurs in a Paris hotel room. Oscar Wilde once
stated what he considered to be the drama of his life: “"It's that I
have put my genius into my life; all I've put into my works is my
talent."
Wilde uses a mixture of social
drama; popular at the time and
other popular but less
politically engaged forms such
as melodrama and farce.
The Importance of Being Earnest was
originally produced at the St. James
Theater, London, on February 14,
1895.
In Earnest, The use of gentle parody is
probably what protected Wilde from the
more biting attacks aimed at his
contemporaries such as Henrik Ibsen and
Thomas Hardy who commented to similar
effect on the values and attitudes of
Victorian society.
None of the upper class characters have any real depth
he fills the characters language with epigrams, which
make them seem ridiculous. Because they characters
constantly contradict what basic values in their speech,
or do not base their statements on any logic at all-they
lose credibility as real-life, believable people. This
works to Wilde’s advantage because, despite what he
may or may not think about the upper class, he wants
his play to be funny and not overly offensive; they are,
after all, the patrons of his show.
To further this theme, Wilde incorporates many
mini-themes, such as the absurdity of social
life, the triviality of the wealthy, the
importance of money, and the lack of
reverence for marriage.
The primary purpose of these themes is to
provoke laughter from the audience. They can
do so because they are testing the social
values of their time.
Wilde makes the major issue of the
play marriage. Marriage is an
excellent way to poke fun at the
aristocracy for two reasons. First, it is
a traditionally sacred ceremony;
second, he can highlight the
importance of wealth and status
among the upper classes, which often
view marriage as a financial contract.
In The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde creates a mockery and
joke of the most sacred tradition in
society; marriage. Wilde's intent in
this play is to satirize and make fun
of romantic situations that are far
fetched but also contain some reality
in the conversations of his
characters. Marriage is discussed
frequently by all the characters and
the conversations are typically
normal debates on what marriage is
about, but when the characters lives
are put in a situation concerning
marriage the situation becomes far
from ordinary. He wrote of what he
felt at the time and what is around
him.
 Wilde
is showing how people say one
thing but usually act differently when
thrown into a stressful but pleasant
situation. Through these contradictions
Wilde has a way of toying with our ideals
and emotions by showing that living life in
an ordinary way is boring.
 It
is a witty and amusing comedy which
conveys real life everyday themes such as
real love as opposed to selfish love,
religion, marriage, being truthful and
country life as opposed to city life.

Critics cannot accurately name the type of this play. It is
neither “farce” nor “comedy of manners”, although Wilde
excessively makes use of both. The play is too
intellectual to be considered a farce, yet too unrealistic to
be considered a comedy of manners, even though
ridicule and exposure of the vanities and hypocrisies of
the upper class is surely the main function of the verbal
wit. However, the comedy of The Importance of Being
Earnest is not in the situations or actions for most of the
part, but in the dialogue.

Wilde’s play is a satirical demonstration of how art can
lie romantically about human beings and distort the
simple laws of real life with melodramatic complications
and improbable easy escapes from them.
"Earnest" suggests that we all lead double lives. This is
the idea that homosexual Wilde was understandably
obsessed with. “Earnest” as a name is also implicative of
being honest and responsible, even if both men lied
about their names. It turns out that the truth was told,
and this rapid twist between truth and lies shows how
muddled the Victorian values of honesty and
responsibility were.
False identities, prohibited engagements, domineering mothers, lost
children are typical of almost every farce. However, this is only on
the surface in Wilde’s play. His parody works at two levels- on the
one hand he ridicules the manners of the high society and on the
other he satirises the human condition in general. The characters in
The Importance of Being Earnest assume false identities in order to
achieve their goals but do not interfere with the others’ lives. The
double life led by Algernon, Jack, and Cecily (through her diary) is
simply another means by which they liberate themselves from the
repressive norms of society. They have the freedom to create
themselves and use their double identities to give themselves the
opportunity to show opposite sides of their characters. They mock
every custom of the society and challenge its values. This creates
not only the comic effect of the play but also makes the audience
think of the serious things of life.
Within the drama Wilde manages to satirise the values
that many still believed were the very reason for the great
triumphs of Victorian Britain on the world stage. These
were the ideas of respectability, self sacrifice, moral
rectitude and high mindedness that were closely
associated with the Victorian aristocracy. Little by little
however Wilde reveals all these to be simply elements of
an elaborate mask worn by the ruling elites, behind which
each is engaged in precisely the opposite modes of
behaviour. In short the principle characters will go to any
lengths to avoid their responsibilities and place self
interest at the top of their own agendas. Through the
literary techniques of dramatic irony parody and reversals
Wilde reveals the moral hypocrisy at the heart of the
Victorian establishment.