The Importance Of Being Earnest Satire Analysis

While many have been familiar with the title of the play The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, one should also pay attention to its subtitle, ‘trivial comedy for serious people’. The play is a satire that ridicules the upper class to point out its fault (Kreuz and Roberts 100).The aim is to ridicule the ‘serious people’, members of the upper class in Victorian society. The characters were too attentive to social propriety and etiquette, which were as trivial as the comedy suggests in the eyes of Wilde. As they were too stubborn to alter the behaviour, the propriety and etiquette became superficial and meaningless. Their idleness and hypocrisy are other points at which Wilde recurrently mock in the play. This essay illustrates how Wilde reinforce his criticism of the upper class at a satirical tone with his writing style at three levels: inter-scene, intra-scene, and within a word.

Satire at the inter-scene level

The use of fake identities is one of the motifs of the play. The use of motif is important to

Among all the characters, Algernon represents the characteristics of a Dandy the most. Algernon demonstrates his over-obsession with his appearance. He refuses Jack to buy him outfits as ‘he has no taste in neckties at all’ (323). Caring about one’s own clothes is how a Dandy spends most of his time doing. Wilde ridicules the idleness of a Dandy in wasting his time. Wilde mocks at the superficiality of a Dandy in the mouth of Algernon, ‘I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them’ (303). The apparently absolutized tone on expressing his hatred unveils Wilde’s intention to mean the contrary: it is food that is not a serious matter, and people who are solely serious on food are so shallow of them. However, members of the idle upper class members were interested in nothing else