A Transition to The Importance of Being Earnest

The Comedy of Manners studies the "forms" that make us civilized and how these forms facilitate or impede our living well as civilized individuals (i.e. individuals living in social groups). It lends itself to an examination of social identity and the relation of art and life.

According to Allardyce Nicoll, a comedy of manners usually has the following characteristics: There is at least one pair of witty lovers; the women are fully as "emancipated" as the men; the dialogue is graceful and witty; there is an air of refined cynicism; emotions are veiled; there is an absence of "crude" realism. This is a "drawing room" world where we have the "leisure" to develop ourselves. (Death, old age, sickness, poverty, psychopathology, serious evil, and large historical/economic/political forces have been temporarily excluded in order to focus on social manners and how they facilitate or impede living.) A Comedy of Manners draws attention to its own artificiality (reminding us that we are watching a play) because manners themselves are constructed (they are artifices).

Farce (etymologically from "to stuff") makes the situation overtly unrealistic, but still examines issues of self-identity ("Who am I and in what ways am I defined by various social constructs?"). It can substantially explore this question in a significant way while embedding it in a totally ridiculous and convoluted plot employing sight gags, funny props, improbable situations, and very flat characters. Importance of Being Earnest is both a comedy of manners and a farce.

Comparisons of Three Eras (WW--late 17^th C; SS-- late 18^th C; IBE-- late 19^th C.)

Late Restoration comedy (Way of the World) presents a world where art can further living well (just as a trellis can help a vine achieve its potential. We are born with intellect, but the ways in which we make use of our intellect constitute one aspect of our art. Art also helps us find a way to achieve our desires and express our emotions by utilizing the customs, traditions, and manners of our society. Art helps us mediate between our individual desire for freedom and power and the needs and expectations of the community. Since we do not exist alone on a desert island, each of us must deal with and work through the communal "forms" available (language being one of these). If an individual uses the forms successfully, we call it art: it's not natural, although it might look natural, because "natural" would mean living like an animal- living crudely. If the individual is living in a social group and trying to use forms, but not doing so successfully, we might call it artifice (the trellis isn't leading to the self-fulfillment of the vine-- it might be drawing attention away from the vine or shaping the vine in constricted loops).

Way of the World seems, primarily, to criticize individual types that do badly in adapting forms to realize their potential (or who use these forms to achieve selfish ends that do not recognize the legitimate needs of the community). The society is corrupt, but not impossibly so. The play offers considerable hope that Mirabell and Millamant will make it, as an intelligent and "in love" couple. Mirabell and Millamant are successful artists. The play also might provide a model of friendship, the friendship between Mirabell and Mrs. Fainall (though readers might disagree about whether this is friendship).

In School for Scandal, the focus has shifted from art vs. artifice (the successful vs. unsuccessful use of "forms" in realizing one's highest nature) to "seeing through" the surfaces or artifices. A "good heart" and learning to see through false surfaces (artifices) helps one achieve fulfillment. However, as a comedy of manners, the play still focuses on how social forms work to block and fulfill. It still contrasts the country (associated with lack of corruption, but no "forms") with the city (associated with forms that can improve life, but corrupting temptations). Although the forms offer less promise in this play, no one prefers the country! This play, as a comedy of manners, still focuses on social manners and customs and on how they operate in helping and hindering people from getting what they want.

In Importance of Being Earnest, there is an abyss between the forms (customs and manners) and the emotions and desires of the individual person. This play seems to criticize the society itself, with Jack being a representative of the society (and perhaps also a victim?). Although we like him and root for him to get the girl, he shows us the problems of the society as a whole. This society seems to mandate a kind of joyless moral seriousness (Joseph, in School for Scandal, displays this kind of moral seriousness, but the play punishes him for his hypocrisy and implies there is some middle ground). Importance of Being Earnest, however, implies that the whole society has become hypocritical: "being a good person" in this society means denying to oneself one's own emotional needs and desires. Since everyone has desires and needs, even nice people become "hypocritical." Jack is a pompous hypocrite: he seems to care about raising his ward well and he lectures Algy on morality, yet he himself leads a double life. He seems trapped in this double life because there are no viable options. Algy, on the other hand, does not worry about being a good person. He is cheerfully amoral. He seems amoral rather than immoral because being moral has become meaningless-- a facade.

If one thinks of forms as mediating between the needs of the community and the needs of the individual, the forms in this late Victorian society have completely failed; they have become artificial and meaningless. These forms, emptied of all meaning; become inhuman and ridiculous artifices. Intelligence, then, is directed toward manipulating these forms for the sake of appearances while ignoring your own hypocrisy. (Self-knowledge, if one aspires to "being good," would result in self-destruction and social ostracism). Even if there is no morality, however, there can still be "art": art consists of self-knowledge about the way one fictionalizes oneself, a sense that every person creates himself. Algy represents the latter.

Algy is not immoral but amoral, because morality has no meaning in this world, having been coopted by the hypocrites (embodied by Lady Bracknell). Algy is completely happy. He copes with the needs of others by ignoring these needs without making waves. He has no illusions that he is moral and feels no guilt about eating all the cucumber sandwiches (ignoring the rights/needs of others). He is honest to Jack about what he does and doesn't try to "correct" anyone. He encourages Jack to fictionalize himself as the only way of living fully in a corrupt world. We like him because he has self-knowledge about what he does. He is indeed Jack's "double" (his alter-ego or brother). At the end of the play, Jack feels himself vindicated by finding out that he is, in fact, Earnest (although he didn't know it), but the reader laughs.

Wilde 1) criticizes joyless moral seriousness and rampant superficiality masquerading as substance.

2) presents art as a "fiction" by which we create ourselves! (It's a fiction more divorced from truth than that in Way of the World). (Notice the irony of the pun on "Earnest" in the title)

JOURNAL QUESTIONS: (focus on any question you like) (no journal due Tues; journal due Thurs.)

1. Find lines pointing out the emptiness of social manners, social customs, social values. Explain.

    ("nonsense" lines in the play often indicate the non-sense or non-meaning of values in the society)

2. Find lines indicating Jack's combination of "morality" and "hypocrisy."

3. Find lines indicating Algy's amorality (his unconcern about subverting customs and manners to his own needs and desires. What makes him likable, despite the fact he does this? (The fact that Wilde makes us like both him and Jack is what makes the play so subversive.)

4. Do you see any relationship between the values Jack upholds and those espoused by Lady Bracknell? (Compare some lines.)

5. If Lady Bracknell represents the values and manners of this society, in what sense have the "forms" of this society become empty and meaningless? (find evidence to support your points)

6. Find lines about "fictionalizing oneself." Do these support it as meaningful and fulfilling (a counter to this joyless moral seriousness). What kind of dangers to the self and to happiness are involved in such fictionalizing? (Try to find evidence in the play that supports what you say).

7. Compare the two girls to see what the country vs. the city stands for in this play. (How is it similar, how different from what Sir Wilfull stands for in Way of the World or Lady Teazle in School for Scandal?)