Hello readers! Here i Am going to write a blog on the 'Importance of Being Earnest' written by Oscar Wilde. This task is assigned by Dilip Barad Sir. In this blog I am going to discuss the author Oscar Wilde and the character of the play 'Importance of Being Earnest'.
About Author:
Born date: 16 October 1854
Death date: 30 November 1900
Occupation: Author, Poet, Playwright
Period: Victorian era
Literary movement: Aesthetic movement
Notable Works:
- A Woman of No Importance
- Lady Windermere’s Fan
- Poems
- Ravenna
- The Ballad of Reading Gaol
- The Happy Prince and Other Tales
- The Importance of Being Earnest
- The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde was a popular literary figure in late Victorian England. After graduating from Oxford University, he lectured as a poet, art critic and a leading proponent of the principles of aestheticism.
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland. His father, William Wilde, was an acclaimed doctor who was knighted for his work as a medical advisor for the Irish censuses. Wilde's mother, Jane Francesca Elgee, was a poet who was closely associated with the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848.she is a skilled linguist whose acclaimed English translation of Pomeranian novelist Wilhelm Meinhold's Sidonia the Sorceress had a deep influence on her son's later writing.
Wilde was a bright and bookish child. He attended the Portora Royal School at Enniskillen where he fell in love with Greek and Roman studies. He won the school's prize for the top classics student in each of his last two years, as well as second prize in drawing during his final year. Upon graduating in 1871, Wilde was awarded the Royal School Scholarship to attend Trinity College in Dublin. Upon his graduation in 1874, Wilde received the Berkeley Gold Medal as Trinity's best student in Greek, as well as the Demyship scholarship for further study at Magdalen College in Oxford. At Oxford, Wilde continued to excel academically, receiving first class marks from his examiners in both classics and classical moderations. In 1878 his poem 'Ravenna' won the Newdigate Prize for the best English verse composition by an Oxford undergraduate.
He published his Faustian novel The Picture of Dorian Gray in 1890, and fell in love with the much younger Lord Alfred Douglas. He then began a double life: winning fame and fortune with three hugely successful society comedies, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), An Ideal Husband (1895) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), but secretly spending time in male brothels. ‘The danger was half the excitement’, he recalled in his great apologia, a long letter to his lover Lord Alfred Douglas entitled De Profundis.
Wilde died of meningitis in November 1900 in Paris, at the age of 46. More than a century after his death, Wilde is still better remembered for his personal life. His exuberant personality, consummate wit and infamous imprisonment for homosexuality. His witty, imaginative and undeniably beautiful works are considered among the great literary masterpieces of the late Victorian period.
Introduction of the Play:
'The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People' is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London, This play draws on elements of farce and melodrama in its depiction of a particular social world. Oscar Wilde combined disparate influences into a brilliant satire which contained hidden, progressive sentiments.
'The Importance of Being Earnest' was an artistic breakthrough for Wilde, something between self-parody and a deceptively flippant commentary on the dramatic genre in which Wilde had already had so much success.
Wilde’s genre of choice was the Victorian melodrama, or “sentimental comedy,” derived from the French variety of “well-made play”.
1)Which female character is the most attractive to you among Lady Augusta Bracknell, Gwendolen Fairfax, Cecily Cardew and Miss Prism?
John/ Earnest Worthing was the protagonist of the play. He is a responsible and respectable Young man who leads a double life. Jack is known as Jack. In London he is known as Ernest. As a baby, Jack was discovered in a handbag in the cloakroom of Victoria Station by an old man who adopted him and subsequently made Jack guardian to his granddaughter, Cecily Cardew. Jack is in love with his friend Algernon’s cousin, Gwendolen Fairfax.
There are Four female characters in the play 'Importance of Being Earnest'. These are the names of female characters: Miss Prism, Cecily, Gwendolen, and the last one is Lady Bracknell. They are incompatible as well as compatible; they are witty, trivial and absurd.
Gwendolen:
Gwendolen and Cecily are two lead female characters. They both wanted to marry a man whose name is Earnest seems to be the founding principal of their lives. Oscar Wilde made both characters very similar Because his main interest was in satirizing the society that produced women like them, not in the individuals themselves. Jack asks in the first scene of the play,
"You don’t think there is any chance of Gwendolen becoming like her mother in about a hundred and fifty years, do you Algy?".
Gwendolen is opinionated and forceful like her mother, she bosses Cecily around with ease. Gwendolen also has strong ideas about social protocol, which we see in the first scene. Gwendolen has been raised in the city and is polished and sophisticated. She enjoys this advantage over Cecily, whom she considers a country bumpkin. Gwendolen was considered a cute little girl. Not so little she was old enough to fall in love, but her mother perceived her as a little girl. She is a daughter of tyrant mother Lady Bracknell and Algernon’s cousin. She is submissive to her mother in public but rebels in private. Also, in the book, she appears as a big love for Jack.
She is in love with someone else and she refuses his love. That is why we see her as self-centered and flighty. She leads herself like Cecily, she also wants nothing else but to marry a man named Ernest. It sounds strange. It would be funny if not so sad; she is totally In love with a man called Ernest, who in reality is Jack. Gwendolen is a model of what is high fashion in the society of that time. She is demonstrative of some sophistication and confidence which existed in London socialites. That socialite believed that style is the most important thing, not sincerity or intellect.
Gwendolen speaks with a tone of authority. But it changes when she sees someone else, so her attitude changes on matters of taste and morality. After the meeting with Earnest, she keeps saying that she will not marry anyone else, especially if the person has any other name as Ernest. She is totally obsessed with that name. She has agreed to marry him even despite her mother's disapproval.
Cecily:
Gwendolen and Cecily are curiously similar in many ways. Both women are perfectly capable of outwitting their jailers. Gwendolen escapes from her dominating mother, Lady Bracknell and Cecily outwits Jack by arranging for Algernon to stay. For both women, appearances and style are most important.
Cecily loves stories. She gets super-excited when Miss Prism reveals that she has written a three-volume novel.she also loves diary writing. In her diary, she makes long entries recording romantic events that are entirely fictional. Cecily is a friendly person, who was always ready to welcome her guests. It is seen when Gwendolen comes there in order to meet Jack. Cecily very cordially welcomes Gwendolen and makes her feel comfortable in her new surroundings. But when she suspects that she comes here in order to meet with Earnest she expresses her womanly attitude towards her. However, after her doubt gets cleared, she readily unites with Gwendolen as if they are sisters. Thus, Cecily’s is a lovable character in ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’.
Lady Bracknell:
Lady Bracknell is the mother of Gwendolen Fairfax and aunt of Jack and Algernon Moncrieff. She is the true representative of the fashionable high class society of London. By nature she is dominating. It is seen in her treatment of her daughter, Gwendolen and her nephew, Algernon. When she comes to know that Gwendolen likes Jack, she thoroughly interrogates him. When she comes to know that Jack is an orphan, she refuses to accept him as her son-in-law.
In the episode of Cecily and Algernon's marriage, firstly she confirms that Cecily had a large fortune. Miss Prism had committed a grave crime by taking away the baby. But Lady Bracknell readily forgives her as she is reunited with her nephew. Thus, the character of Lady Bracknell is a successful creation of Oscar Wilde that remains in the memory of the audience for quite a long time.
Cecily is probably the most realistically drawn character in the play. Like Gwendolen, she is obsessed with the name Ernest, but she is even more intrigued by the idea of wickedness. Cecily is probably the most realistically drawn character in the play, and she is the only character who does not speak in epigrams. Her charm lies in her idiosyncratic cast of mind and her imaginative capacity, qualities that derive from Wilde’s notion of life as a work of art. In the end we can say that these elements of her personality make her perfect. Gwendolen and Cecily both characters are attractive. Their dialogues and bonding for each other catches the attraction of readers.
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