Fabrication of reality can lead to reality. In Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” Jack Worthing, the play’s protagonist is a respectful landowner who is a sculpt image of Victorian values. He is caught into a pretense or a restriction of being of notions such as honor, respect, and responsible. This mold is supposed to be filled for conventional Victorian morality but Wilde satires this construct by using Jack to represent hypocrisy of the Victorian World. Jack fabricates an alter-ego, Earnest, to break through his Victorian image and allow himself to express himself through lies. This gets in the way though of his love for Gwendolen, a female character that represents the qualities of conventional Victorian womanhood. Gwnedolen is fixed on the name Earnest, and Jack must reconcile his two worlds to fully understand who he is and what exactly he wants.
Fate undermines Jack’s efforts with his lies catching up with him. He tried to come up with a romantic relationship but it was based on lies and he must confront those lies to Gwendolen. He even is willing to change his name and live his lie to get Gwendolyn’s hand in marriage.
At the end of the story, Jack runs into his long –lost mother, Miss Prism, and figured out that his fabricated story was true all along. I took this is Jack showing his true side and figuring out who exactly he was rather than what he was supposed to be.
This play was hilarious and showed me a theme of how being Earnest can be hypocritical and boring to ones true feelings of one’s self.
Fate undermines Jack’s efforts with his lies catching up with him. He tried to come up with a romantic relationship but it was based on lies and he must confront those lies to Gwendolen. He even is willing to change his name and live his lie to get Gwendolyn’s hand in marriage.
At the end of the story, Jack runs into his long –lost mother, Miss Prism, and figured out that his fabricated story was true all along. I took this is Jack showing his true side and figuring out who exactly he was rather than what he was supposed to be.
This play was hilarious and showed me a theme of how being Earnest can be hypocritical and boring to ones true feelings of one’s self.
1 comment:
You're right, Mike. Jack uses Earnest as an alter-ego. He creates this alter-ego so that he can escape his stuffy, uptight, law-abiding, rule following self. Earnest allows him that freedom to be someone else, and to have a little fun while doing it.
Of course, it all falls apart at the end. Liars do get found out eventually, and it happens to Jack. Yet it doesn't seem to bother Gwen much. She's only concerned with his name. She likes the name Earnest. Well, it all works out in the end when we find out his name really is Earnest.
A quick note: Miss Prism is not Jack's lost mother. She's the one who misplaced him in the train station.
I guess the question is: What does it mean to be earnest? Is it the name, Earnest? Or is it being earnest? And why is it important?
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