What kind of satire is the importance of being earnest

Servants become just spectators of it. The audience can watch and laugh at their unwise behaviors. It also moralizes the audience and compels them to think twice on their attitude in case the audience belongs to the upper class. Canon Chasuble maybe is the minor character of this play but his role is important.

He belongs to the religious class and is supposed to be a serious person but he surprises us through his dialogues. Indeed, his dialogues directly come from the mouth of Oscar Wilde and he has deliberately written them to prove that not only the elite class is corrupt but also the religious class.

Religious people like Dr. Chasuble also take part in corrupting the society. Both moral and physical corruptions have been shown in the play. Remarks of Canon Chasuble about Miss Prism are full of sexuality. He always praises her physical body. Somewhere he talks about her lips and somewhere about her hairs. For instance, in a dialogue, he says:.

Although he, in the next dialogue, tries to cover his wish by declaring his statement as a metaphor yet the audience knows that he is morally and physical corrupt. The dramatist has presented the upper class and has shown their snobbery. Through farcical comedy, he has exposed the reality of so-called upper-class Victorian society.

In order to achieve his goal, Oscar Wilde freely uses artistically techniques like epigrams , humor, and paradoxes. In an interesting manner, he, in hidden words, says those things which can never be said directly to the people. He has conveyed his message to his own people and showed them the mirror.

The play is full of witty dialogues; every dialogue and each action reveal the hidden talent of Oscar Wilde. Your email address will not be published. Tags: importance of being earnest social class satire sarcasm in the importance of being earnest satire in the importance of being earnest act 1 satire in the importance of being earnest act 2 satire in the importance of being earnest act 3 the importance of being earnest as a social satire the importance of being earnest as a social satire pdf.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. What more can one desire? Furthermore, the play creates a sense of the unstable and subsequently liberating nature of performative identity, most evidently in it denouement.

Throughout the play Jack has been using the alter-ego of Ernest in the city, thus creating a performed, fictionalised identity. Wilde uses satire to ridicule class and wealth, marriage and the ignorance of the Victorian Age. Characters portrayed in the play such as Jack, Cecily, Algernon and Lady Bracknell, allow Wilde to express his opinions on the social problems during the Victorian Age. The Importance of Being Earnest is a comedy of manners that is used to parody social aspects of a Victorian society.

Wilde does this by incorporating farcical elements that would appear ludicrous to an audience and satirises Victorian social norms and values. Wilde also subverts the ideals of marriage by undermining the concept as a whole and at the same time he inverts traditional gender roles and class in society.

However, Wilde presents these ideas in a humorous, light-hearted manner by the use of farce and satire. Jack tells her about his impressive lifestyle and his success and Lady Bracknell complains that he lives on the wrong side of the street. Then Jack tells her the sad story of how he was abandoned as a child and she tells him that he needs to find his parents if he wants to marry her daughter.

With these ridiculous responses Wilde is trying to emphasize that the upper class believe that they are worthy of more than anyone else and are insensitive to the feelings of others. This wealthy woman only decides to chan Lane and Algernon have idle chatter and end up on the subject of marriage. The protagonist of the play, known as Jack or Ernest first, presents his major conflict on the matter of proposal with Gwendolen.

Gwendolen, who is so in love with Jack because of his name, Ernest longs to marry him too. Collins with comic irony and as a figure of absurdity to be mocked as a potential husband; Austen reveals Mr.

Collins had only to change from Jane to Elizabeth — and it was soon done — done while Mrs. Jane Austen uses a comic comparison to reveal how little time Mr. Collins has devoted to this change of heart. Firstly, if we take the casual meaning of character [yes, I am talking about an individual's nature, Kirdar] then this play shadows a shallow characteristic trait.

People's character in this play is not determined by their actual character, but by other socio-economic factors including cash and class. If we measure this play in terms of its characters imaginary people , satire is seen in action in every character. For instance, Algernon, an aristocrat, throws parties during every notable occasion but still proclaims to be short of money. Jack is the opposite of the gaiety found in Algernon.

He, sometimes, appears profoundly serious that Cecily tends to call her guardian "unwell". Speaking of Cecily, the girl is so enamoured of the name Ernest that she purchases a[n engagement] ring on the unknown man's behalf.

Gwendolen, another aristocratic gentle-girl, is farcically obsessed with the name Ernest, calling it "divine" which has "a music of its own". Chasuble, although he is a Christian priest but he quotes references from pagan authors. Miss Prism is portrayed as an absent-minded lady who forgets her son in a railway station. Thus such satirical follies of characters are depicted as "historical" absurdities of the prestigious Victorian Age. Manifestly, Wilde represents the satirical image of the renowned Victorian society through character s , title and marriage in The Importance of Being Earnest elegantly and playfully.