why did oscar wilde write the importance of being earnest research

William Archer, one of the critics, wrote about the play in 1895: It is delightful to see, it sends wave after wave of laughter . Dr. Chasuble, a local Vicar is in love with Mrs. Prism, the ward of Cecily. They will also imitate a model with no origin since Ernest never existed in the first place. However, only a few weeks after its opening, Oscar Wilde was involved in the scandal that led him to prison. but as a text to criticism it is barren and delusive . The Victorian audience then laughed at itself. They staked love, sacrifice, honesty for the sake of pseudo-status. It is a reversal of stereotypes about women’s activities. The tension between the body as real and the body as discursive remains a key axis of the debate within gender studies. What if, in fact, it were a serious play for trivial people? But at the same time it resists the traditional notions that govern men’s and women’s lives and supports equality between the sexes. It is indeed an attractive and challenging notion, although Judith Butler has admitted herself that performativity does not always allow the degree of “free play” with gender that some other queer theorists have suggested.10. On the other hand, both Cecily and Gwendolen are the prey of hypocrisy. It reveals the hypocrisy, absurdity, and triviality of the upper class of Victorian society. The Importance of Being Earnest, 1992 An Australian production of the play, recorded in front of a live audience. Pilchner Jane & Whelehan Imelda (eds), Fifty Key Concepts in Gender Studies, Sage, Londres, 2004. Lady Bracknell also plays the role of a father when she interviews Jack to find out whether he would be “an eligible young man” (p. 52) to marry her daughter, “a girl brought up with the utmost care” (p. 60). The play revolves around the story of two bachelors Algy and Jack. The word “Trivial” means “unserious” or “lacking importance”. A film about Oscar Wilde’s life, featuring snippets from a production of The Importance of Being Earnest. Its first performance at the St. James’s Theater on February 14, 1895 came at the height of Wilde’s success as a popular dramatist. As the plot develops, both bachelors reveal that they have created their altered egos as their beloveds have put on the condition that their respective lovers will have the name as Earnest. Another review published in Le Figaro on 15/10/0717 focused on the star of the cast, Lorant Deutsch. Because he can’t afford to shock his audience too much and needs success for financial reasons his attack is not frontal. 7 R.W. The critic Marion Thébaud writes more about the actor’s life than about the play, concluding by saying that it is impossible to sum up the plot which relies on “fulgurants paradoxes, pirouettes et acrobaties verbales”. Photo by: Shutterstock. Université de La Rochelle, Centre d’études irlandaises Rennes II.Brigitte Bastiat holds a PhD in Media and Communication Studies from the University of Paris VIII. Butler Judith, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Routledge, Londres, 1990. This led to his early death. Lord Bracknell is blatantly absent from the play, is referred to as a sick man, almost an invalid, and plays in fact the role of the mother. The Importance of Being Earnest, 1992 A production of the play featuring an all-black cast. Thebaud Marion, “Lorant Deutsch, dandy de comédie”, www.lefigaro.fr, visited on 11/11/08. Jack and Algernon are men, but they are effeminate dandies. Exaggeration and nonsensical dialogues probably helped Wilde get away with the more troubling questions he raised. For example, at the end of the play, Jack says: “Why should there be a law for men and a law for women?” (p. 176). She is currently involved in a research and translation project dealing with the contemporary Northern Irish playwright Owen McCafferty. . 16 www.ruedutheatre.info, visited on 11/11/08. 16More recently, in September 2008, the Versailles company “L’air de rien” performed a version adapted from the play (translated by Astrid Hauschild and Magali Prompolini) directed by Astrid Hauschild at the Théâtre du Lucernaire in Paris. Connell R.W., Gender and Power, Polity, Cambridge, 1987. It can be argued that by refusing a specific genre Oscar Wilde produces a discourse on theatrical art. They actually laughed at social and sexual relationships that, as far as they were concerned, could not exist. In so doing Wilde keeps the appearances of a genre the audience is familiar with but subverts it with great subtlety. The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) by Oscar Wilde is a popular play that is still widely performed in English-language theatres and also in many other languages. Being tired of their lives and hardship both create their invalids or pretends or altered egos. These qualities are often associated with women who are supposed to be volatile and not able to experience friendship like men—women are seen as rivals, which is a conformist view. Here it has to be said that a lot of Victorian women had psychosomatic diseases—like Lord Bracknell who has little appetite and often retires to his bedroom—mostly because they were unhappy and frustrated by their assigned impotent roles as daughters, wives and mothers. 2 Pascal Aquien, “Sardoodledum Revisited, or a Few Trivial Remarks about Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband (1895),” Études irlandaises, no33.2., automne 2008, p. 9–19. For example, Cecily’s outside appearance is “feminine” but her attitude may be considered as “masculine” since she “has got a capital appetite” and “goes long walks”6—in Victorian times women were not supposed to have body functions or practise sport. 2When first performed, the play was mostly considered as a light comedy and classified as entertainment for Victorian society. "The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read" Wilde quickly became a staple of London society with his clever sayings and aesthetic flair. Instead of finding a loving person they desire the one with Earnest by name. Wilde was influenced by Walter Pater, the co-founder of the aesthetic movement in art, literature and criticism for whom all art forms are self-sufficient. In an article published in The Guardian in July 2007 Terry Eagleton wrote: “Wilde, typically perverse, challenged and conformed at the same time.”1 In this paper I will show that conformity and resistance are present simultaneously at each stage of the play. At the same time we know that she wasn’t born an aristocrat and that she became one by imitating the customs and integrating the values of the upper-class. Hence, it is a trivial comedy (having little meanings) for serious people (the people obsessed.) Judith Butler defines “gender parody” as follows: “Gender parody reveals that the original identity after which identity fashions itself is an imitation without an origin.”5 For her the origin is a myth and there is a “fluidity of identities”. This way of viewing things seems to suggest that the gender order may be disrupted and changed, and Oscar Wilde was certainly one of the first ones to do so in his life and by using theatre as a means of expression for his questioning and mockery of both the social and gender orders. For example, the “Théâtre Antoine” in Paris produced it in October 2006 (on tour until March 2008) and a Versailles company performed it at “Le Lucernaire” in September and October 2008.When first performed, the play was considered as a light comedy and classified as entertainment for Victorian society. Jack is not the only conventional satire of Victorian-era but every character is a hypocrite in one way or the other. On the one hand, she has learned the dress and language codes and the values of the aristocracy and in that way, she conforms to what the audience expects from a person of her rank. In fact, the Théâtre Antoine is a private theatre that depends on profitability: plays, actors and actresses are selected according to their appeal to the public. What is it then? Brigitte Bastiat, « The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) by Oscar Wilde: Conformity and Resistance in Victorian Society », Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens, 72 Automne | 2010, 53-54. 10He appears to have been seduced by the play but a little puzzled and unable to analyse it very well. “Earnest” in a sense (a surname for high-class people) becomes the condition for love as well as for marriage. Here again, the hollowness and hypocrisy of the people in terms of religion can be seen. Gwendolen then continues “And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not? The “dazzling conversationalist”(Norton 1720) was once reported by Yeats whom said, “I never before heard a man talking with perfect sentences, as if he had written them all overnight with labor and yet all spontaneous”(Norton 1720). The scenes would have seemed so exaggerated that they could not possibly have recognized themselves and have taken the play seriously. For example, for R.W. He befriended famous actresses such as Lillie Langtry, Ellen Terry, and Sarah Bernhardt, and in 1881 the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Patience satirised Wilde and his aesthetic movement as the character 'Bunthorne'. Wilde's death did not end the public's appreciation of his marvelous wit and staging. The concept of Bunburyism that meant the practice of a double life also refers to the concept of homosexuality in the play. It has all the elements of a comedy of manners: the title delivered as a punchline to the proceedings, the marriage problem, the foundling child, the idea of the double life, the highly-formalised style of language, the fast-moving verbal exchanges and a lot of entrances and exits. It is the performance that is emphasized, not the subversive content. 10 S. Phelan (ed), Playing with Fire: Queer Politics, Queer Theories, Routledge, New York, 1997. Jack represents this trait of age. George Bernard Shaw and H G Wells considered the play amongst the funniest that were ever written and to this day the play continues to absorb and entertain theatre lovers through out the world. By importing a popular and successful French form he could thus conceal his attack on official order and discourse while making English audiences laugh at their own values and beliefs.2 He also draws on the popular forms of melodrama and farce. After all, Wilde himself never considered it as his best work, describing it as “written by a butterfly for butterflies”. Can we then say that Oscar Wilde paved the way for contemporary authors like Frank McGuinness for example? Oscar Wilde was an established writer of the late 1800’s who had a gift of being witty. Nevertheless, some critics have argued that the playwright dared include homosexual connotations in the text. Pradel Olivier, “La constante inconstance de la jeunesse”, www.lestroiscoups.com, visited on 11/11/08. In the play, Algy and Jack are idle and lazy, but morally the women are not better than them: like them, they are idle, lie, cheat and are interested in money. Again in the end when it is proved that his real name is Earnest, she chooses him as the future husband of her daughter. Dominic Cavendish looks at one of the great theatrical moments in The Importance of Being Earnest . On February 28, the Marquis of Queensberry left a card for Wilde at his club, the Albemarle Club. 14 Jill Matthews, Good and Mad Women: The Historical construction of femininity in Twentieth Century Australia, George Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1984. It can be contended that The Importance of Being Earnest is in essence a play on morality since the major argument surfacing after its reading relates to honesty as being the best policy. Robbins Ruth, York Notes Advanced on ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, Longman, 2005. 8However, having stated that women do not enjoy the position that they deserve in society doesn’t mean that Oscar Wilde finds women superior to men and that society would benefit from their presence in the public sphere. After getting married and having children, he lost interest in his wife and began a homosexual affair with Lord Alfred Douglas in the following years. Jordan Eamonn, “Meta-physicality: Women Characters in the plays of Frank McGuinness,” Women in Irish Drama, A Century of Authorship and Representation, edited by Melissa Sihra, Palgrave Macmillan, Grande-Bretagne, 2007, p. 130–143. However, butterflies are short-lived whereas his play has survived for more than a hundred years so far, conforming to the tastes of many different people and resisting both time and analysis. 13Anyway, the play resists time and it still appeals to people nowadays. But what do we know about what men and women are supposed to do, like and dislike? However, I would argue that more generally, despite very little room for manœuvre, he managed brilliantly to challenge the social norms, sexual stereotypes and gender representations of his time while pleasing aristocratic London socialites.In this paper I will examine the way in which Wilde’s text challenged and conformed at the same time. However, it may not necessarily be better to know about the absurdity of the world because as Lady Bracknell puts it “Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone!”11 In fact, Oscar Wilde seems to say that nothing really seems to matter in life. For two generations Wilde’s name was mud. This led to his early death. The play thus looks like a comedy of manners but it is something else. However, the writing of the play relies on a creativity and richness that combine different styles. Thus in this sense, Wilde probably wants to say that the play has nothing to do with the serious people. Written by Oscar Wilde. Is Wilde “a pre-Ionesco challenger and re-interpreter of language,” as Pascal Aquien said?3 The genre is uncertain and resists characterisation. 17 Marion Thebaud, «Lorant Deutsch, dandy de comédie», www.lefigaro.fr, visited on 11/11/08. In Act III she says “When I married Lord Bracknell I had no fortune of any kind. It was assumed that they had “an occupation of some kind”. When I married Lord Bracknell I had no fortune of any kind. The subtitle of the play “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People” though seems to be unrelating to the main title yet it splendidly articulates the purpose of his play. 18On the other hand more recent critics have perhaps put too much emphasis on the subversive nature of the play and a re-appraisal might be needed. Later, why did they really turn away from Oscar Wilde? (Actually, sodomite was misspelled.) Matthews Jill, Good and Mad Women: The Historical construction of femininity in Twentieth Century Australia, George Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1984. What are men’s and women’s preferences supposed to be? Connell in socialisation theories, “the underlying image is of an invariant biological base,”7 whereas for Judith Butler “the body is not a ‘being’ but a variable boundary, a surface whose permeability is politically regulated, a signifying practice within a cultural field or gender hierarchy and compulsory heterosexuality”.8 By citing the example of drag (in which a person performs a gender that does not match his/her sex) she wants to show that bodies are not “beings” but are the effects of discourses. Wilde also plays with the illusions created by appearances and mocks the expressive model of gender and the notion of true gender identity. Maybe influenced by Ibsen’s Doll’s House published earlier (1879), Oscar Wilde wanted people to reflect on the relations between the sexes, which was also a very topical issue for his contemporaries known as the ‘separate sphere debate’. Oscar Wilde, who was well educated, had probably read it or at least heard about it. He exposes the hollowness, hypocrisy and pretends nature of Victorian people. The Importance of Being Earnest is considered to be the most famous and his most original work. 4In an article published this year in Études irlandaises, Pascal Aquien argues that 19th century French bourgeois drama exerted a powerful influence on Wilde’s dramatic works. Directed by Mark Wakeman. And I don’t like that.” So just as Gwendolen, heterosexual women are not supposed to like effeminate men (whereas homosexual men might). The marriage on the basis of status, name, and money was quite prevalent among the “serious people”. In 2006 the play was produced at the Théâtre Antoine in Paris and directed by Pierre Laville. Did Wilde ever write a more brilliantly witty put-down than this? Wilde … In an article published on the website “ruedutheatre” in September 2006, Priscilla Gustave-Perron qualified the performance as “disappointing”.16 The setting was uninteresting, built by Pace, a man who has been working for the theatre for 20 years. . He rejects the naturalist style and the traditional forms of drama of his time. Life is simply like a bubble of champagne: it makes one’s head light and makes one talk nonsense and act silly, just like the play’s characters. Algy has told everybody that he goes to the countryside in order to meet his friend Bunbury who is quite ill while Jack tells everybody in the countryside that he has his brother namely Earnest in the city and he goes there to meet him. Miss Prism and Canon Chasuble pretend to be religious, serious and pure but the former is easily distracted (she lost a baby, often quits her job as a tutor to go on walks with Chasuble) and the latter adapts one single sermon to all the different occasions; moreover, they both have sexual desires that they express awkwardly through slips of the tongue, for instance when Chasuble says “Were I fortunate enough to be Miss Prism’s pupil I would hang upon her lips” (p. 80). Algernon and Jack are two rich layabout Victorian young men with love on their minds. Cecily and Gwendolen rebel against sexual roles by mastering the language and being witty—qualities often associated with men—but in fact, they talk nonsense. For example, the 1993 production by Nicolas Hytner at the Aldwych Theatre in London brought to the surface the play’s gay subtext (in Act I Algy and Jack greeted each other with a kiss) and there have been attempts with drag casts (I have already mentioned the 2005 Abbey Theatre production for instance). Thursday 15th July to Saturday 17th July and Tuesday 20th July to Saturday 24th July 1999 . 12 Monica Charlot, The Road to Universal Suffrage (1832-1928), Didier Erudition, CNED, 1995, p. 124–125. According to Eamonn Jordan, McGuinness’s dramas, for example, “set specific challenges, especially when it comes to female characters. 6The play is subtitled “A trivial comedy for serious people”. Therefore, if it is ridiculous to state that for men, why shouldn’t it be equally ridiculous to state that for women? In 1893 Wilde met Robert Ross, allegedly the man who introduced him to homosexuality. 11More seriously, what people maybe did not understand and forgive him was that by making his “coming out” during the trial he had disrupted the social and gender order. Yet, she then adds unexpectedly: “It makes them so very attractive,” hinting that a male chauvinist may not be what women prefer. Thus Lorant Deutsch as Algy and Frédéric Diefenthal as Jack are said in this review to have failed to embody British dandies or to have conveyed the ferocity of the text, only emphasizing the “marivaudage” side of the play—perhaps to please the Théâtre Antoine’s administration and attract audiences. 9I mentioned earlier that the play was subtitled “A trivial comedy for serious people”. Indeed, there are serious themes in the play but Oscar Wilde does not treat them seriously, thus debunking the very notion of seriousness. Hypocrisy and absurdity is another common feature of the Victorians. Oscar Wilde was gay in a society stifled by social conventions and governed by very tough laws on homosexuality. The Importance of Being Earnest. However, in 2009 one of them told me that she had not actually found the play funny! They are also conceited and vain and ready to change quickly their affections, firstly to a man really named Ernest, showing that they cannot understand real passion, and secondly to one another—they call each other sisters at first, then hate each other. The setting was more daring than that used by the Théâtre Antoine since it was reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s colours, but the interpretation remained traditional, according to Olivier Pradel, who also wrote that it would have been more original and impertinent to set the play more in our present-day society, where nobility has been replaced by the jet-setters and the traders.18, 17Any writer, male or female, can find it hard to work outside the conventions, practices and aspirations of his/her predecessors. with hypocrisy for status and fame), Julius Caesar Characters by William Shakespeare, The Dear Departed Summary by Stanley Houghton, The Misunderstanding by Albert Camus Analysis. His first play was Vera, but the 1881 London premier was cancelled due to fears that his de… Though the plot of the play is not thought-provoking yet it contains hidden meanings. Here, and throughout the play, Oscar Wilde asks the following question: is biology always the framework which constrains socialisation practices, making it impossible for culture to minimise, rather than eliminate, the effects of natural biological differences between men and women? Colloques de la S.F.E.V.E./Congrès de la S.A.E.S. It was defeated by 194 votes to 73,12 showing that men were more afraid of women than of the “dangerous classes”—Queen Victoria herself was against female suffrage. Wilde displays… The other reason for this double standard is that Algy goes to the countryside in order to meet Cecily his beloved, (Jack’s cousin) while Jack visits London in order to meet Gwendolen, Algy’s cousin. Only Macha Méril as Lady Bracknell seems to have been spared by the critic. However, when she comes to know his real name, she at once rejects his proposal. 7Nevertheless, Wilde chose to tackle serious subjects such as marriage, hereditary privileges, education, the Church, sexual roles and language, and also tells us that appearances are deceitful. 1 Terry Eagleton, “Only Pinter remains,” www.guardian.co.uk, 7/7/07. He led a miserable life due to personal problems, marital issues, imprisonment, harsh criticism, and trails because of homosexuality. As the Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan said in the 1960s “the medium is the message” and Wilde uses the form to speak of the content. The choice of genre seems to say “beware of appearances,” which is one of the themes of the play. However, Paul Watzlawick, the communication theorist said that “one cannot not communicate,” therefore although there seems to be no message in the play, the message might be precisely that, that there is no message. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/cve/2717; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/cve.2717. Counsell Colin & Wolf Laurie (eds), Performance Analysis, Routledge, London, 2001. Algernon spends money extravagantly on clothes and is greedy, qualities often associated with women. Gwendolen says in Act II that ‘the home seems to be the proper sphere for the man’, which might have sounded funny and absurd to a Victorian audience, although less so to a modern one. Lady Bracknell gives her consent for the marriage of her daughter Gwendolen with Jack when he introduces himself as Earnest. it is intangible, it eludes your grasp. The Importance of Being Earnest opened on February 14 at St. James' Theatre, beginning a run of 86 performances to standing ovations. The Importance of Being Earnest was the last play written by Oscar Wilde and it undoubtedly became the most celebrated. Or did it? Wilde was also infamous for writing duplicate content. Therefore, Oscar Wilde rebels against the artificial and hypocritical social codes of his class and suggests that anybody can pass for an aristocrat with a bit of practice. Just as Gwendolen says to Cecily in Act II that cake is rarely seen in the best houses nowadays, Oscar Wilde was rarely talked about in the best houses after the trial that he lost. The direction lacked creativity and boldness, maybe because P. Laville may have understated the dimension of the play in terms of disruption of norms—or chosen to ignore this aspect. The Importance of Being Earnest is his exuberant parody of the 'trivial comedies' (his own amongst them) which the 'serious people' had established in the English theatre. Was it because they were really shocked by his homosexuality or just to conform to the new trend that was to despise him? On the other hand, nothing is trustworthy about her because she uses clothes as would an actress to fit her role, talks nonsense, however with the right kind of accent, and can utter the most cruel things but in a very proper language. In fact, he invents a new genre, difficult to imitate, combining farce, comedy of manners, social satire and, I would add, “gender parody”. Although the clergy class cannot have affairs yet Chausible is seen love-making with Prism Moreover he delivers sermons just to satisfy the moods of the audience.

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