Hello everyone!
It’s been a while since my last post. So here after several
weeks of rushing over tests, assignments and presentations, here comes another
page of wonder for you guys. Let’s hope I’ll make a good one here.
Oscar Wilde? Have you guys heard of him?
Before I continue further, just so you know that he’s
actually one of my favourite prominent literature writers. His witty writing as
well as his language captured my attention from the beginning of my journey as
a literature student. Despite his reputation, he did manage to put himself as
noticeable Victorian playwright and I found his plays very humorous! Sounds like
a fan, am I?
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854 - 1900) was born to Sir Robert Wills Wilde and Jane Francesca Wilde in Dublin, Ireland. Wilde was a poet, fiction writer, essayist and editor.
Oscar Wilde is often seen
as a homosexual icon although as many men of his day he was also a husband and
father. Wilde’s life ended at odds with Victorian morals that surrounded him. He died in exile.
His early education included attending Porotra Royal
School in Enniskillen (1873) Trinity College in Dublin (1874-1879), and
Magdalen College in Oxford. He excelled in his studies.
More crucial to his later fame, Oscar Wilde began to
practice his aesthetic mode of life. Wilde kept his hair long and affected a
highly stylized dress and manner. His rooms were well appointed. His collection
of blue china was famous. In 1181,Wilde met his future wife—Constance Mary Lloyd.
Wilde continued to use his style as a way of advancing his
reputation. However, his aims were harder to hit in the city. Yet Oscar Wilde
wearing knee-breeches and a velvet jacket while carrying a single flower became
iconic.
On his return to England, Oscar Wilde continued cultivating
his relationship with wealthy and influential members of society. His income
from his Irish properties were infrequent and could not cover his
extravagances. During this period, he see financial difficulties that would
plague him intermittently throughout his life.
In 1883, Wilde traveled to Paris and met Paul Verlaine,
Victor Hugo, Stephane Mallarme, and Edmond de Goncourt. On returning to London,
Wilde continued his relationship with Constance Lloyd. In August, Wilde
returned to the New York for the opening of his first play Vera.
The show only ran for a week and received mixed reviews. He became engaged to
Constance.
In 1884, he married Constance who had some money ending his
early cycle of impoverishment. The young married couple moved to Tite Street in
the Chelsea neighborhood of London, which at the time was known for its
artistic character. Constance and Oscar Wilde’s first son Cyril was born in
June 1885 and his second son Vyvyan was born in November 1886. He would also
meet the Canadian art critic and journalist Robert Ross. It is widely held that
Robert Ross was Oscar Wilde’s first male lover. In 1891, Oscar Wilde would meet
Lord Alfred Douglas—the lover whose troubled relationship with Wilde would
dominate his life before Wilde’s arrest and imprisonment on charges of sodomy.
Tired of his intermittent financial difficulties, Oscar
Wilde committed himself to writing.
1886 was also the year that Wilde began
regularly contributing to thePall Mall Gazette. From 1887 until 1889,
Oscar Wilde was the editor of Woman’s World. His fiction also began
to receive regular publication. In 1888, Oscar Wilde published The
Happy Prince and Other Tales, a collection of children’s tales.
In 1889, Blackwood’s Magazine published The
Portrait of Mr. W.H.. This literary endeavor straddled the genre of essay
and short fiction. In this work, Oscar Wilde argues that William William Shakespeare’s sonnets were
written to a young male actor. True to his intellectual project, Wilde’s
argument does not require facts to support its legitimacy.
The following year Lippincott’s
Magazine published The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde’s
longest work. At the time, many viewed this work as obscene. However, it has
became a standard text when looking for homosexual subtext from the Victorian
period.
Throughout this period, Oscar Wilde also published a range
of essays includingThe Critic as Artist, The Decay of Lying,
and The Soul of Man Under Socialism. Each of these works is wrought
with humor and intelligence and frames Wilde’s concepts of aestheticism. His
intellectual prowess is tempered with a playfulness that resembles his fiction.
In 1892, Oscar Wilde encountered his first legal
difficulties when his play Salomewas banned in England. The
following year Wilde circumvented this censorship by publishing a French
version of Salome. In 1893, Wilde would return to the English stage
by mounting his play A Woman of No Importance.
In 1894, Lord Alfred Douglas’s father, Marquess of Queensberry,
witnessed his son and Oscar Wilde eating at Café Royal. This would mark the
start of a conflict that would end in Wilde’s imprisonment. The Marquess would
visit Wilde’s home and threaten the poet and his family. Oscar Wilde continued
his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglass—traveling to Europe with him in
1894, and to Algiers in 1895. The French colonies in North Africa had become a
haven for sexual tourism. It was during this second trip that Wilde met Andre Gide. It is commonly held that Wilde
spiritually (but not physically) seduced Andre Gide into discovering the pleasures
of homosexuality. Wilde tried to persuade Andre Gideto follow him in search of more
angelic boys.
On returning to England, Wilde’s play The Importance
of Being Earnest opened. This play, which concerns creating alternate
social postures, is viewed as Wilde’s greatest work. It carefully straddles the
line of celebrating and ridiculing Victorian society. This work insured Wilde
was viewed as a preeminent artist.
Unfortunately, the success that The Importance of
Being Earnest seemed to promise was short lived because of the
worsening feud with the Marquess of Queensberry.
During his imprisonment after losing the case against Marquess, Constance Wilde (with Cyril and
Vyvyan) fled to Europe. She changed their last name to Holland in an attempt to
shield her sons from Oscar Wilde’s infamy. In 1898, she died after
complications to a spinal surgery, which was performed in Italy. Her family
took legal recourse to prevent Oscar Wilde from ever seeing the children again.
In 1897, Oscar Wilde was released from prison. He exiled
himself to Europe and lived under the name Sebastian Melmoth, a pseudonym
derived from the Saint Sebastian and his great uncle Charles Maturin’s novel, Melmoth
the Wanderer. He lived with Robert Ross during this period. Later in that
year, Wilde renewed his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas. Their
relationship ended after a few month when their families threatened to deprive
the two men of their allowances.
Wilde’s life ended in Hotel d’Alsace in Paris. In 1900,
Wilde contracted cerebral meningitis. Some virulently homophobic critics
maintain this was a result of syphilis, but the original medical report does
not suggest this. He sent for Robert Ross and was conditionally baptized into
the Catholic Church. He died on the thirtieth of November. Wilde was originally
buried in Cimetière de Bagneux, but in 1909 his body was moved to Cimetière du
Père-Lachaise.
A SUMMARY OF THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
Jack Worthing, the play’s protagonist, is a pillar of the
community in Hertfordshire, where he is guardian to Cecily Cardew, the pretty,
eighteen-year-old granddaughter of the late Thomas Cardew, who found and
adopted Jack when he was a baby. In Hertfordshire, Jack has responsibilities:
he is a major landowner and justice of the peace, with tenants, farmers, and a
number of servants and other employees all dependent on him. For years, he has
also pretended to have an irresponsible black-sheep brother named Ernest who
leads a scandalous life in pursuit of pleasure and is always getting into
trouble of a sort that requires Jack to rush grimly off to his assistance. In
fact, Ernest is merely Jack’s alibi, a phantom that allows him to disappear for
days at a time and do as he likes. No one but Jack knows that he himself is
Ernest. Ernest is the name Jack goes by in London, which is where he really
goes on these occasions—probably to pursue the very sort of behavior he
pretends to disapprove of in his imaginary brother.
Jack is in love with Gwendolen Fairfax, the cousin of his
best friend, Algernon Moncrieff. When the play opens, Algernon, who knows Jack
as Ernest, has begun to suspect something, having found an inscription inside
Jack’s cigarette case addressed to “Uncle Jack” from someone who refers to
herself as “little Cecily.” Algernon suspects that Jack may be leading a double
life, a practice he seems to regard as commonplace and indispensable to modern
life. He calls a person who leads a double life a “Bunburyist,” after a
nonexistent friend he pretends to have, a chronic invalid named Bunbury, to
whose deathbed he is forever being summoned whenever he wants to get out of
some tiresome social obligation.
At the beginning of Act I, Jack drops in unexpectedly on
Algernon and announces that he intends to propose to Gwendolen. Algernon
confronts him with the cigarette case and forces him to come clean, demanding
to know who “Jack” and “Cecily” are. Jack confesses that his name isn’t really
Ernest and that Cecily is his ward, a responsibility imposed on him by his
adoptive father’s will. Jack also tells Algernon about his fictional brother.
Jack says he’s been thinking of killing off this fake brother, since Cecily has
been showing too active an interest in him. Without meaning to, Jack describes
Cecily in terms that catch Algernon’s attention and make him even more
interested in her than he is already.
Gwendolen and her mother, Lady Bracknell, arrive, which
gives Jack an opportunity to propose to Gwendolen. Jack is delighted to
discover that Gwendolen returns his affections, but he is alarmed to learn that
Gwendolen is fixated on the name Ernest, which she says “inspires absolute
confidence.” Gwendolen makes clear that she would not consider marrying a man
who was not named Ernest.
Lady Bracknell interviews Jack to determine his eligibility
as a possible son-in-law, and during this interview she asks about his family
background. When Jack explains that he has no idea who his parents were and
that he was found, by the man who adopted him, in a handbag in the cloakroom at
Victoria Station, Lady Bracknell is scandalized. She forbids the match between
Jack and Gwendolen and sweeps out of the house.
In Act II, Algernon shows up at Jack’s country estate posing
as Jack’s brother Ernest. Meanwhile, Jack, having decided that Ernest has
outlived his usefulness, arrives home in deep mourning, full of a story about
Ernest having died suddenly in Paris. He is enraged to find Algernon there
masquerading as Ernest but has to go along with the charade. If he doesn’t, his
own lies and deceptions will be revealed.
While Jack changes out of his mourning clothes, Algernon,
who has fallen hopelessly in love with Cecily, asks her to marry him. He is
surprised to discover that Cecily already considers that they are engaged, and
he is charmed when she reveals that her fascination with “Uncle Jack’s brother”
led her to invent an elaborate romance between herself and him several months
ago. Algernon is less enchanted to learn that part of Cecily’s interest in him
derives from the name Ernest, which, unconsciously echoing Gwendolen, she says
“inspires absolute confidence.”
Algernon goes off in search of Dr. Chasuble, the local
rector, to see about getting himself christened Ernest. Meanwhile, Gwendolen
arrives, having decided to pay Jack an unexpected visit. Gwendolen is shown
into the garden, where Cecily orders tea and attempts to play hostess. Cecily
has no idea how Gwendolen figures into Jack’s life, and Gwendolen, for her
part, has no idea who Cecily is. Gwendolen initially thinks Cecily is a visitor
to the Manor House and is disconcerted to learn that Cecily is “Mr. Worthing’s
ward.” She notes that Ernest has never mentioned having a ward, and Cecily
explains that it is not Ernest Worthing who is her guardian but his brother
Jack and, in fact, that she is engaged to be married to Ernest Worthing.
Gwendolen points out that this is impossible as she herself is engaged to
Ernest Worthing. The tea party degenerates into a war of manners.
Jack and Algernon arrive toward the climax of this
confrontation, each having separately made arrangements with Dr. Chasuble to be
christened Ernest later that day. Each of the young ladies points out that the
other has been deceived: Cecily informs Gwendolen that her fiancé is really
named Jack and Gwendolen informs Cecily that hers is really called Algernon.
The two women demand to know where Jack’s brother Ernest is, since both of them
are engaged to be married to him. Jack is forced to admit that he has no brother
and that Ernest is a complete fiction. Both women are shocked and furious, and
they retire to the house arm in arm.
Act III takes place in the drawing room of the Manor House,
where Cecily and Gwendolen have retired. When Jack and Algernon enter from the
garden, the two women confront them. Cecily asks Algernon why he pretended to
be her guardian’s brother. Algernon tells her he did it in order to meet her.
Gwendolen asks Jack whether he pretended to have a brother in order to come
into London to see her as often as possible, and she interprets his evasive
reply as an affirmation. The women are somewhat appeased but still concerned
over the issue of the name. However, when Jack and Algernon tell Gwendolen and
Cecily that they have both made arrangements to be christened Ernest that
afternoon, all is forgiven and the two pairs of lovers embrace. At this moment,
Lady Bracknell’s arrival is announced.
Lady Bracknell has followed Gwendolen from London, having
bribed Gwendolen’s maid to reveal her destination. She demands to know what is
going on. Gwendolen again informs Lady Bracknell of her engagement to Jack, and
Lady Bracknell reiterates that a union between them is out of the question.
Algernon tells Lady Bracknell of his engagement to Cecily, prompting her to
inspect Cecily and inquire into her social connections, which she does in a
routine and patronizing manner that infuriates Jack. He replies to all her
questions with a mixture of civility and sarcasm, withholding until the last
possible moment the information that Cecily is actually worth a great deal of
money and stands to inherit still more when she comes of age. At this, Lady
Bracknell becomes genuinely interested.
Jack informs Lady Bracknell that, as Cecily’s legal
guardian, he refuses to give his consent to her union with Algernon. Lady
Bracknell suggests that the two young people simply wait until Cecily comes of
age, and Jack points out that under the terms of her grandfather’s will, Cecily
does not legally come of age until she is thirty-five. Lady Bracknell asks Jack
to reconsider, and he points out that the matter is entirely in her own hands.
As soon as she consents to his marriage to Gwendolen, Cecily can have his
consent to marry Algernon. However, Lady Bracknell refuses to entertain the notion.
She and Gwendolen are on the point of leaving when Dr. Chasuble arrives and
happens to mention Cecily’s governess, Miss Prism. At this, Lady Bracknell
starts and asks that Miss Prism be sent for.
When the governess arrives and catches sight of Lady Bracknell,
she begins to look guilty and furtive. Lady Bracknell accuses her of having
left her sister’s house twenty-eight years before with a baby and never
returned. She demands to know where the baby is. Miss Prism confesses she
doesn’t know, explaining that she lost the baby, having absentmindedly placed
it in a handbag in which she had meant to place the manuscript for a novel she
had written. Jack asks what happened to the bag, and Miss Prism says she left
it in the cloakroom of a railway station. Jack presses her for further details
and goes racing offstage, returning a few moments later with a large handbag.
When Miss Prism confirms that the bag is hers, Jack throws himself on her with
a cry of “Mother!” It takes a while before the situation is sorted out, but
before too long we understand that Jack is not the illegitimate child of Miss
Prism but the legitimate child of Lady Bracknell’s sister and, therefore,
Algernon’s older brother. Furthermore, Jack had been originally christened
“Ernest John.” All these years Jack has unwittingly been telling the truth:
Ernest is his name, as is Jack, and he does have an unprincipled younger
brother—Algernon. Again the couples embrace, Miss Prism and Dr. Chasuble follow
suit, and Jack acknowledges that he now understands “the vital Importance of
Being Earnest.”
**I think the ending was really really really funny though.
and here's a little excerpt from an article I found on the net:
The article was written during Utah Shakespeare Festival, copyrighted in 2013. It basically writes about Wilde's famous use of wit, defiance as public attitude and other essential elements. The article also inserts Wilde's comments on this play and here's one of them:
When asked what sort of a play to expect with The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde replied, “It is exquisitely trivial, a delicate bubble of fancy, and it has its philosophy . . . that we should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.”
Here's another excerpt from the first 3 paragraphs that comments on Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest:
This play is Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece. The Importance of Being Earnest is wholly dedicated to wit; it is written in Wilde’s best style, and directly comments on the drabness of ordinary speech and the real world. The play, in fact, represents the full embodiment of Wilde’s lifelong assault upon what he deemed to be commonplace life and commonplace values. It is pure farce in which paradox and artificiality reign supreme and the preposterous becomes the norm.
Wilde termed Sin an essential element of progress, believing that without it the world would stagnate, grow old, or become colorless. His fiction and drama invariably tend to give prominence to some secret sin, and The Importance of Being Earnest is no exception. Both its heroes assume false identities to sow their wild oats, although Wilde apparently felt sufficiently carefree about secret sin to be here lampooning the idea.
Defiance was always part of Wilde’s public attitude, but only in this play was he so bold as to make this defiance plain from the beginning to the end. The Importance of Being Earnest shares some traits with plays belonging to the great Restoration period of English high comedy, including the two country boors Miss Prism and Canon Chasuble, both of whom know nothing of fashion and whose wit is invariably unintended. Jack and Algemon are obviously dandyish masters of wit and fashion; both are foppish. Algernon tells us, “If I am occasionally a little overdressed, I make up for it by being always immensely overeducated.” Likely both Wilde and his work would have been more accepted in the roistering days of Charles II than they were in the England of Queen Victoria.
Citation:
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