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Love In Oscar Wilde's The Importance Of Being Earnest

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What was Oscar Wilde most known for? Although he was raised in the upper-class of Victorian England, he often ridiculed the upper-class for their straitlaced customs through his plays using his brilliant wit and flamboyant style. The upper-class wasn’t the only thing criticised by Wilde, but also topics such as love and marriage. One of the most prominent points Wilde mocked the ideals of love was on the stage of his most famous play, The Importance of Being Earnest. In the three acts of this book, Wilde attempts to change the reader’s views and perceptions of the several different topics he criticises. Oscar Wilde satirizes love throughout the play using irony, diction, and farce.

Oscar Wilde shows his disdain towards love using an abundance of farce throughout the play. Wilde uses farce in this …show more content…

In the end, it has been shown that Oscar Wilde has satirized love using farce such as in the sentence that girls never marry the men that they flirt with, when you would expect that to always be the case. This is also an example of inverted expectation because you would believe the opposite to be true. Wilde also uses diction to criticize love throughout the play in sentences such as when Algernon said that there was nothing romantic in proposing because he likes the uncertainty of love. Ordinarily, people would show their devotion to their significant other by making it official through a proposal, but Algernon disagrees. Oscar Wilde also uses dramatic irony to satirize love such as in the sentence when Gwendolen states that she has also wanted to marry someone that has the name of Ernest, when his real name is Jack, and not even Ernest. Throughout the play, The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde successfully satirized love completely, reducing it to a fraction of the importance most people believe it

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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.

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