How are the matriarchal figures portrayed in 'The Importance of Being Earnest' by Oscar Wilde and 'Persuasion' by Jane Austen?

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How are the matriarchal figures portrayed in ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ by Oscar Wilde and ‘Persuasion’ by Jane Austen?

‘A dominant female member of the family’ is often described as a matriarch.  Lady Bracknell in ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ and Lady Russell in ‘Persuasion’ fulfill this role therefore can be described as matriarchs, and as such they play vital roles.  They affect the lives of Gwendolen and Anne, by imposing their beliefs on them.

Although Lady Russell is not related to any of the characters in ‘Persuasion’, after Anne’s mother died Lady Russell took on the role of her mother.  Lady Russell has some control over Anne, as Anne ‘had always loved and relied on’ her and cannot believe she would ‘be continually advising her in vain’.  The matriarchs are pivotal as they are the prime reasons for the plots’ complications; Lady Bracknell tries to prevent two potential marriages between Jack and Gwendolen, and Algernon and Cecily, and she is the reason Jack finds out about his family connections.  Lady Russell persuades Anne not to marry Wentworth causing eight years of heartache and misery, as she was wrongly persuaded.  She induces further complications by trying to persuade Anne to marry William Walter Elliot, when Anne and Wentworth meet again.

Lady Bracknell’s importance is enhanced because she overshadows her husband, which is true to her matriarch ways, and he occupies a subordinate position. Lady Bracknell has taken the opposite role to that which society accepted in the 1890’s, her husband stays at home, while she goes to social gatherings.  Her husband’s role is summed up in Gwendolen’s speech to Cecily about her father.

‘The home seems to be the proper sphere for the man.  And certainly, once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties, he becomes painfully effeminate.’

Lady Bracknell has diminished the role of Lord Bracknell to the extent that he does not appear in the play, and even at home he is expected to eat upstairs if there are an odd number to dinner, as it was necessary to have an even number of men and women at the table.  Thus Lady Bracknell ensures that Lord Bracknell ‘will have to dine upstairs’, and her remark ‘fortunately he is accustomed to that’ suggests he is insignificant and is only needed at her social events when there needs to be an even number to dinner.

The roles of men and women were an important issue in the Victorian Era; the traditional view was that men were dominant, assertive and economically independent, and women were passive and dependent.  Novelist George Gissing described the late nineteenth century as a period of “sexual anarchy” because of the formal agitation by women for wider rights’.  From the mid-nineteenth century the role of men and women had caused abundant debates in newspapers, known as the ‘separate spheres debate’.  It was given its name after the main debate issue; that a woman’s proper sphere was in the home, and a man’s proper sphere was in public.  The Victorians would have found Lady Bracknell’s comments about Lord Bracknell dining upstairs comical as she reverses the usual order.  By placing Lady Bracknell in the public world and Lord Bracknell at home, a contemporary society would consider him to be effeminate.  Wilde throughout the play shows women being powerfully superior to men; it is shown that Gwendolen will be dominant in her marriage, as she tells Jack how to propose and what to do.

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‘LADY BRACKNELL: Mr. Worthing, rise sir…

[He tries to rise, Gwendolen restrains him]’.

Similarly, Lady Russell is seen to be superior to Sir Walter Elliot, he has squandered all his money, yet she is a well-respected member of society, who prevents him from bankruptcy and humiliation, by suggesting he moves to Bath and rents his house.  Austen uses Lady Russell to contradict society’s view represented by Harville, on women’s ‘fickleness’, and criticizes the social injustice women faced, denoting they were as capable as men.  

Both Lady Bracknell and Lady Russell view class as very important, so much so ...

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