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More handpicked essays just for you.
Social norms during the victorian era
Women in victorian society
Social structure in the victorian period
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Throughout the story of The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, Oscar pointed out many oblivious actions done by the characters. He constantly used the characters to exaggerate actions of our society today. Wilde uses exaggerations to show how the characters were unable to be a complete individual without the face of the strict social expectations influencing their actions. Everywhere in the society, they are all unable to make their own decisions, and it is very hard for them to be truthful towards who they are without societal norms interfering causing them to lose all individuality. Wilde uses reversal to show how the characters actions were completely insane since they were trying to accommodate societal expectations.
On October 16, 1854, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born to a well respected Irish family in Dublin. His father, Sir William Wilde, MD, was a highly acclaimed doctor and philanthropist. He was the leading oto-ophthalmologic surgeon in Ireland and was later knighted for his work. Despite all the accomplishments that William Wilde had achieved, his son viewed his mother as the greater remodel, Lady Jane Francesca Elgee.
Oscar Wilde wrote his plays against the backdrop of the Victorian English society. It therefore helps to discuss the salient aspects of the Victorian society. Victorian England is known for many paradoxes -- glaring contrasts between the rich and the poor, insistence on morality on the one hand and the practice of cynicism on the other, blooming creativity pitted against blatant constriction, imperial grandeur since Britain was then ruling almost one fifth of the total surface of the earth and domestic squalor since the majority of people did not have decent means of livelihood, and finally collectivity dictated by tradition opposed to the rapidly developing individualism. The class system denied the talented members of the lower classes access to social and economic advancement. The upper classes alone had the privilege of working in the government, the armed forces, and the church, while trade was monopolized by the rising middle class.
Through this satirical writing, Wilde uses comparison of beauty and industrialism and juxtaposition between compliments and criticism to paint American social values as backwards and unappealing in order to dispel the glamour of a romantic American culture.
Oscar Wilde’s satirical play The Importance of Being Earnest, set in the late Victorian era, London, is a portrayal of British upper class society and its conventions surrounded by a strict code of conduct. In 1890’s class society, earnestness was desired; to follow the moral code and social obligations in order to keep up one’s appearance. Besides, there was a huge gender disparity between men and women. In the play, Wilde criticizes the social inequality and Victorian upper class standards. He characterizes Victorian personae making fun of their qualities; hypocrisy, arrogance and absurdism, ultimately the very vital state and lifeline of not being earnest at all in Victorian society.
In a very famous review in the conservative Scots Observer (edited by poet W E Henley) Wilde was almost accused of the crime of gross indecency, this was made illegal in the 1885 Criminal Amendment Act. Dorian Gray, “was fit for none but outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph boys” said the reviewer. This reference was made because of the ‘Cleveland Street Affair’; it was a discovery that a male brothel (a house where men can visit prostitutes) was used by aristocrats to pay telegraph boys for intercourse. This was obviously one of the big reasons why people were shocked and also because he has homosexual relationships, which was used against him in his trial.
Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of being Ernest is a pun itself because the words depict a play based strictly on benefits and advantages of being honest; on the contrary, it should have been the importance of not being Ernest. The play is mostly a satire with the name Earnest representing the fictitious brother of
This piece is derived from Oscar Wilde’s Importance of Being Earnest. In the story two main characters, Algernon and Jack, get caught up in their lies of being someone who they are not. Jack Worthing develops a method of lying about his brother who is irresponsible and needs his assistance in town often, allowing him to leave his country home periodically to live a separate live in the city. Algernon Moncrieff also has a method of lying for his own advantage, also a fake brother who is chronically ill to get out of his duties of dinner and other societal expectations. He also then fakes the identity of Jack’s made up brother in order to court Jack’s niece.
Art, artifice and identity is the theme explored through the use of the two chosen stimulus texts Grayson Perry: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl and The Importance of Being Earnest, written by Wendy Jones and Oscar Wilde respectively. Art and artifice merge as Grayson Perry uses his alter-ego, Claire, to express his creativity and identity. Similarly, the artifice of an alter-ego is part of The Importance of Being Earnest, as the play's protagonists, Jack and Algernon, deceive family and friends by lying about their identity to suit them best. The texts used to explore the theme are a review for the Guardian on the Grayson Perry memoir and an excerpt from Jack's diary set before the events in The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde’s Victorian melodramatic play The Importance of Being Earnest opened on February 14, 1895. Wilde used this play to criticize Victorian society through clever phrasing and satire. Throughout the play The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde displayed the themes of the nature of marriage, the constraints of morality, and the importance of not being earnest. One of the themes that Oscar Wilde includes in the play is the nature of marriage.
“Art for arts sake” was the motto and aestheticism was exemplified in both The Importance of Being Earnest and Oscar Wilde's own life. The usage of a dandy in the play is used to exemplify the love toward fashion during the time period, as well as to add comedic release through speaking in sarcasm and epigrams (Walker, 1). Wilde himself could be identified as a dandy in that he had an infatuation with interesting fashion and dressing well, as was he was often recognized as witty and quick on his feet in his conversations and his writing. Wilde was also known by many to be greatly interested in decoration and interior design, as displayed through his North American speech tour “A House Beautiful.” This exemplifies the Victorian eras high standards in appearance and visual
Another theme illustrated through Wilde’s use of motifs and symbols is the theme of superficiality. The theme of superficiality can be understood as a sense of the superficial view of outer beauty that is shown in the work. It relates to the concept of remaining young, which is an important factor of what is shown in the novel. This is an important part of the novel because outer beauty plays a bigger role for Dorian, than inner beauty does. In the beginning of the novel, Lord Henry and Dorian have a conversation that focuses on the topic of youth and Dorian 's outer beauty – Lord Henry mentions the fact that Dorian has a beautiful face, and later during this conversation, Lord Henry states that: “youth is the only thing worth having…”
As a writer one is greatly influenced by their personal experiences with social, historical, and cultural context within their specific time period. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray was shaped by the aspects of the world around him. The themes of the text are are influenced by morality in the Victorian Era. Throughout the Victorian Era a deeper movement was also prominent in London called Aestheticism. Aestheticism is the worship of beauty and self-fulfillment.
Though Wilde tells us that Cecily is “not a romantic girl”, the flakiness of Jack and Algernon lend us to expect her to be the opposite—and Wilde knows this. Instead of make Cecily out to be the typical damsel in love so common in romance novels, he makes her a damsel who has gone a bit loony with love. So when Wilde ends his play by both invoking its title and giving it a double meaning, he’s able to end on the same key that the play has had all along: maintaining a saccharine tone while presenting an unpredictably predictable revelation. In a way, The Importance of Being Earnest sets its audience up to understand its title. Most people would assume that Earnest is, well, about some person realizing the importance of being earnest.
Relatively all authors are very fond of creating an underlying message to criticize society. Authors do this through social commentary. The book “The Picture of Dorian Gray” is no exception. The author, Oscar Wilde, criticizes the upper class through the consistent underlying idea that people are often deceived by one's beauty and are unable to understand the poison that fills the world is corrupting it. From the beginning of this book, the social commentary towards the upper class begins with the structure of the novel.