In the Victorian Age, which encompassed the last quarter of the nineteenth century, England was at its highest point. The British Empire extended all over the world, prompting the phrase, "The sun never sets in the British Empire."

The era saw the flourishing of the English aristocracy, but much like the contemporaneous Gilded Age in America, the rise of the elite created a huge wealth disparity between the very rich and the very poor. This gap became fertile ground for many artists, particularly Charles Dickens, who made a career of examining the social conditions on the lower rungs of English society. The period also played host to a rise of new ideas, most importantly the revolutionary ideas of Darwin, whose work on evolution became extremely influential in the last part of the nineteenth century. The Victorian novelist Thomas Hardy adopted a fatalist philosophy along Darwinian lines, in which now removed from his privileged place at the centre of the world, man was viewed as moving within forces beyond his control.

Oscar Wilde, rather than focusing on the lower classes or social conditions, chose to satirize th

e life of the English aristocracy, a world with which he was personally familiar. His characters are typical Victorian snobs; they are often arrogant, overly proper, formal, and concerned with money. Lady Bracknell in particular embodies the stereotype of the Victorian English aristocrat. Wilde focuses on the easy life of the wealthy, none of whom seem to work at all. Indeed, the main concern of all the characters in the play is something that Wilde viewed as rather trivial: marriage. In basing his work on the problems and trials of marriage, Wilde deliberately adds a Victorian-era interpretation to the age-old English formula of the marriage plot. The works of Jane Austen and George Eliot alone provide multiple examples of the genre. Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, which is distinctly Victorian in tone, dialogue and characterization, adapts this traditional theme to a contemporary vision.

Also fundamental to Wilde's wit is his use of epigrams--short, witty sayings--to shed light on a given situation. Oftentimes, these epigrams express ironic views contrary to what we would expect characters to believe. We see this type of humour at work, for instance, in Algernon's pontifications on marriage in Act I. Ernest announces that he has come to town to ask Gwendolen to marry him; Algernon responds, "I thought you had come up for pleasure? I call that business." He goes on to say, "I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If I ever get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact."

One of the ways Wilde's wit manifests itself is in puns. Running throughout the entire play is the double meaning behind the word earnest, which functions both as a male name and as an adjective describing seriousness. The plays twists and turns around this theme, its characters lying in order to be "Ernest," and then discovering that because of a number of remarkable circumstances they had not in fact been lying at all. In claiming to be Ernest, both Algernon and Ernest had, unbeknownst to themselves, been earnest. Yet even as he played with his theme for laughs, Wilde saw earnestness as being a key ideal in Victorian culture. Much of British society struck Wilde as dry, stern, conservative, and so "earnestly" concerned with the maintenance of social norms and the status quo that it had become almost inhuman. In the figure of Lady Bracknell in particular, The Importance of Being Earnest lightly shows the limitations and unhappiness produced by such a way of lif

Some common words found in the essay are:
Importance Earnest, Act Ernest, Lady Bracknell, Act III, Cecily Gwendolyn, Pater Wilde, Victorian English, Algernon Ernest, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, importance earnest, lady bracknell, ernest algernon, english aristocracy, wilde believed art, algernon ernest, social conditions, act earnestly, act iii, life play, lady bracknell particular, wilde's importance earnest, love named ernest, pokes fun,
Approximate Word count = 1817
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)