The Importance of being earnest

A detailed Summary of The Importance of being earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest is a play of childlike innocence and nonsense. In order to present this to the audience, Wilde had to be simple and therefore he uses seven main characters in the play, which are indistinguishable more or less, except if you were to contrast them. There are also a number of serious themes. Opposing traits form the contrasting groups. Initially, Wilde's approach is not easily identified until Act 2 when all the characters have been introduced to the audience. It is here, where the audience could begin to contrast the characters.

Wilde contrasts Jack, Gwendolen, Algernon and Cecily against Miss Prism and Dr Chasuble. The first group are all young, childish, pleasure seeking and unafraid to express their feelings. In contrast, the second group follows a strict moral code, are religious, have high standards and are embarrassed about showing their feelings. Jack is 29 years old yet still acts like a child playing adult game. Gwendolen does not act in an adult way. She only wishes to marry Jack because of his name. Cecily is indeed a child in her playful, irresponsible attitude towards life as is evident to the audience from her first appearance as the pupil of Miss Prism. Cecily behaves like

Another theme of the play is that people narrow their choices and trap them into a restricted mind set. The main female character of the work does this. She sets it in her mind that she will only love a man named Ernest. This mindset causes the men to lie and deceit the poor girl because he has fallen in love with her. She finds out in the end that his name is not Ernest and that she will love him after all but she would have not given him another look had he not lied.

It is also possible to contrast Jack, Cecily and Gwendolen against Algernon, Miss Prism and Dr Chasuble. The former group being childish in behaviour and wearing masks. The latter group being gay and pleasure seeking and nonsensical in dialogue. In Act 2 Dr Chasuble says Jack "is not one of those whose sole aim is enjoyment", and in contrast, in Act 1 Jack tells Algernon, "Algy, you always adopt a strict immoral attitude towards life." Jack, Cecily and Gwendolen are characters who can be said to wear masks of Victorian morality because they only behave morally when their social environment forces them to. For example, Jack's real personality emerges when he goes to London on pleasure trips. In Act 3, Algernon makes it clear that he puts happiness first: "I don't care two pence about social responsibilities." In addition, Miss Prism's name Laetitia means "joy" or "happiness" in Latin. Throughout the play Algernon says many nonsensical statements: "It is awfully hard work doing nothing."

Wilde contrasted his characters to achieve simplicity and create an atmosphere of nonsense and innocence. He wanted focus to fall on dialogue and the play's main plot. Many characters and complex dialogue would have drawn t

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Approximate Word count = 1144
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History