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The Importance Of Being Earnest Gender Essay

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Recommended: Gender role in literature

A pertinent issue which has gained a lot of attention recently in the social media is the way people should behave depending on different factors, for example: culture or gender. Moreover, nowadays there are people who think that taking up other gender roles is overrated because these are usually determined by past generations. Therefore, they argue that in the current world people should behave the way they want without taking into account other people’s opinions. However, this issue was really relevant in England during the nineteenth century where codes of behaviour were strictly followed and taken into account by the society. This essay will examine the representation of gender in one Victorian work, Oscar Wilde’s 1899 melodrama The Importance of Being …show more content…

Both are respectable young men who consider themselves gentlemen, therefore physically and intellectually superior to women. Despite the fact that they make up fictional characters, Ernest and Bunbury, in order to use them as excuses to have a relief from their duties. For example, in the first act when Algernon asks Jack if he told Gwendolen, who is Algernon’s cousin, the truth about himself being Earnest, Jack answers ‘My dear fellow, the truth isn’t quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman!’. In this extract, Jack implies that women are incapable to handle the truth as they are inferior to them. Moreover, by doing that, he is protecting Gwendolen in some way or another as a gentleman should do because a gentleman ‘is distinguished, above all things, by his deep insight and sympathy, his quick perception of, and prompt attention to, those small and apparently insignificant things that may cause pleasure or pain to

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