Aladdin And The Importance Of Being Earnest

By exploring the pivotal themes cloaked in the tongue and cheek snark in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest and Walt Disney’s Aladdin, this essay will encompass the coinciding theme of personal navigation amongst different social classes as displayed through the emphasis of homogamy in society and the subsequent motivations for duplicity. The play, The Importance of Being Earnest is a comedy of manners, which focuses on two gentlemen, John Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, who both claim to be the fabricated Ernest Worthing in order to procure their chosen brides in England during the Victorian Era. The play takes viewers through a whirlwind of hilarity, as the two men try to save face after being exposed as utterly two faced. In

While Jack would be considered an “earnest Victorian,” although, in The Importance of Being Earnest, he would not be considered of a proper class to wed the woman he loved, Gwendolen, once her mother, Lady Bracknell, finds out that Jack was an orphan (Girouard 50). In light of this fact, Jack did not have the appropriate name that would raise Gwen in status, which was required to entrust her significant dowry. By the same token, Aladdin is introduced to viewers for the first time after he steals a loaf of bread; the song “One Jump Ahead” plays while he runs from palace guards, thus explaining that he is an orphan who must steal to survive, although he only takes small amounts to keep himself alive (Aladdin). Later after everything calms down, Aladdin and his companion Abu, a cheeky monkey, are drawn to Agrabah’s main street by noise from a crowd while a common bystander watches an extravagantly dressed man head to the palace he comments, “another suitor for the princess” (Aladdin). The potential suitor attempts to whip a child who ran out into the street, however, Aladdin steps in and grabs the whip stating to the Prince, “if I was as rich as you, I could afford some manners” (Aladdin).

In the country he is known as John, or Uncle Jack, Worthing and he lives off the estate that the man who adopted him, Thomas Cardew, entrusted to him; but also he “made me in his will guardian to his grand-daughter, Miss Cecily Cardew” which Jack then tells Algy, “when one is placed in the position of guardian, one has to adopt a very high moral tone on all subjects” (Wilde Act I). Upon hearing that Jack intends to propose to his cousin, Gwen, the audience is shown that while Jack is “in love with Gwendolen,” Algernon’s feelings of love are shown in contrast, “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” (Wilde Act I). This statement demonstrates how marriage was viewed amongst the upper class during the Victorian Era for “courtship was considered more a career move,” due to the fact that men married for money and status since “all of a woman’s property reverted to him upon marriage” (Hoppe). Considering this attitude among members of the higher ranks of society, such as the Moncrieffs, Jack presented himself as flippant and affluent as Algernon to become more socially accepted, to demonstrate his equality to Gwen’s family. Such a farce is epitomized in another