This shows that Jack is not very interested in having tee at the right time, or having tee at all. He does not when it is time to eat in the upper class. Also he does not mind eating bread and butter after Algernon forbade him to take some cucumber sandwiches, while taking two himself, and telling him that Gwendolen is devoted to bread and butter. Bread and butter is what lower class people eat.
(Jack puts out his hand to take a cucumber sandwich. Algernon interferes at once)
“They are ordered specially for Aunt Augusta.” (Takes one and eats it). Here have some bread and butter. The bread and butter is for Gwendolen. Gwendolen is devoted to bread and butter.
(Advancing to table and helping himself) “And very good bread and butter is it too”
Jack is very much influenced by Gwendolen, as she is a strong character and he loves her and has “come up to town expressively to propose to her.”
Jack is a quite serious character. He is serious about things. For example discussing. He doesn’t like doing it, however if does he takes it serious. The only thing Jack is not serious about is his meals. He does not mind if it is not quite as acceptable to eat cake or that bread and butter is consumed mostly by the lower class. He says that one has to adopt a very high moral tone on all subjects.
They both have completely different views on marriage. Jack is delighted by only the idea of marriage and is going to propose to Gwendolen. He marries for love and not for money. So is Gwendolen however she is a fatalist and has fallen in love with the Christian name Ernest. She is completely mad about Jack because he says he is called Ernest.
“The moment Algernon first mentioned he had a friend with the name of Ernest I knew that I was destined to love you.” Jack is some what taken back by this, and decides not to tell her about his real identity. He thinks that she is so good and pure that the truth of a lie that would totally spoil her.
“My dear fellow, the truth isn’t the sort of thing to tell a sweet, refined girl. What extraordinary ideas you have about the way to behave to a woman!”
“The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she pretty and to someone, else if she is plain”
This is a very famous line in the play. It is Oskar Wilde’s own opinion which he often expresses in the play through the characters.
Algernon is straight away interested in Cecily after he read the inscription of Jacks cigarette case and demands information about her from Jack. He wants to know more about her especially after he realizes that Jack is keeping her secret and trying to block her throughout the semantic discussion. He realizes that she is precious, so must have a lot of money. However he will not tell him where his house in the countryside is because he does not want him to meet Cecily because he suspects him on money grabbing as she is very fortuned.
We can see Algernon's ideas towards love and marriage throughout the first act and from this knowledge can straight away conclude that he is probably money grabbing.
From quote we can however not figure out whether he is really in love or if he is money grabbing. He might love her in a preoccupied way after he realised that she must be fortunate.
We are not told how Jack and Gwendolen met, but we know that she was in love with him straight away.
I this esay I will compare and contrast the characters of Miss Prism and Lady Bracknell.
I will do this by looking at their attitudes and beheivour towards Social class, food, education, marriage and men.
Lady Bracknell:
Lady Augusta Bracknell is one of the most important characters in the play. She opens up a floodgate of problems and creates the main conflict of the play: the blocking of the marriage between Jack/Ernest and Gwendolyn on the grounds that Jack/Earnest has no proper family, having been left as an infant in a handbag at a railway station.
She believes that Cecily must learn to behave like a lady and to accord to the conventions of Victorian society
She sees marriage as a financial arrangement. She embodies all the streo Victorian beliefs; she does not allow Gwendolen to marry Jack when she finds out he was an orphan, and she dislikes Cecily as a mate for her nephew Algernon until she learns Cecily is quite rich.
Lady Bracknell appears to be a rather comic person, but she is far from being a boring stereotype Victorian lady who stresses good breeding above all other matters.
Wilde gives her some of the wittiest lines of the play.
Her tone of language is always earnest and serious. She seems to be the only really adult persons in this play. She speaks in commands, judgements and pronouncements, imposing rules and authority. So much she says is so absurd, hypocritical and self-contradictory that the reader simply has to laugh at her like the other persons in the play do. She is exposed as typical Victorian snob who is arrogant, overly proper, formal and concerned with money. Her first name Augusta, means majestic and elevated just as Wilde presents her in play
Miss Laetitia Prism is the governess of Cecily at Jack's country house. She clearly loves Chasuble and somehow tries to make him marry her. She urges him to get married, especially to a mature lady.
Miss Prism and Dr. Chasuble are a more rational counterpoint to the rash romances of the younger couples. Miss Prism suggests a solution to the problems of so many marriages: one should marry only when one has gained some maturity. Except for Miss Prism, all the women in the play have hidden motives when it comes to romance.
By the wildest of coincidences, Miss Prism turns out to be the absent-minded nurse who had misplaced Jack as an infant, putting the manuscript for her novel in the baby carriage and the baby into her handbag, which she left in the railway station.
Lady Bracknell and Miss Prism are both mature women. However, Lady Bracknell is a member of the so-called upper class, whereas Miss Prism is a member of the lower class (governess). Miss Prism is a character who is not in the centre of the story who becomes important in the third act, becoming a vital key to the destinies of Jack, Algy, Gwendolen and Cecily. Dr. Chasuble and Miss Prism are minor and older characters of the play, both unmarried, both longing for romance.
prism and Lady Bracknell share a secret from the past, which everyone gets drawn into.
I think that if Lady Bracknell would not have married she would probably be something like miss Prism if she would have not married Lord Bracknell.
wendolyn Fairfax, who is intent on marrying someone named Ernest, because the name inspires with her confidence and produces "vibrations."
It is being earnest that the play mainly focuses on, as may be assumed from the title. The characters lie and are rewarded with love, and are later shown to have not been lying at all. Jack, in saying that his name is Earnest, is found to be telling the truth at the revelatory end of the story, and Algernon’s lie of being Jack’s brother is also found to be true when they find Jack’s real parents. In this way, the ‘earnestness’ of these two men is shown.
So in this plays lies become the truth and some truths are lies. Lady Bracknell´s sudden liking of Cecily, after learning that she is rich, is a lie.
The various conflicts from lies are finally resolved when it turned out not to be lies at all, because Jack truly is Ernest and Algernon truly is his brother.
This makes Jack say “ It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking bothing bot the truth.
Gwendolyn Fairfax
Gwendolyn is the daughter of Lady Bracknell. She wants to marry Jack but her mother will not allow her to marry him because of his improper background.
Gwendolyn´s idea of marriage is a romantic one. She dreams of being married by a knight in shining armour whose name is Ernest.
Both Gwendolyn and Cecily are sure that they could not possibly love someone whose name was not Ernest, which both Algy and Jack are not. (until Jack discovers his real name and family at the end.)
The two women both say that the main reason they are marrying the men is they are named Ernest.
“It has always been my ideal to love someone by the name of Ernest”
Gwenddolyn admires Jack for his name (Ernest). She thinks it is fashionable to marry someone whose name is Ernest. She says It is a divine name. It has a music of its own. It produces vibrations. The only really safe name is Ernest
Cecily Cardew, Jack´s ward
It is Cecily who states the major them of the play when saying Algy “ I hope you have not leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy”. Gwendolyn and Cecily are attracted by the wicked and disreputable backgrounds of Algernon and Jack and are not really interested in who they really are, as long as their name is Ernest.
Cecily keeps a diary and in her diary she is already engaged to Algernon(Ernest) months before he has asked her to marry him. On the 14th of February last.
“Worn out by your entire ignorance of my existence, I determined to end the matter one way or the other, and after a long struggle with myself I accepted you under this dear old tree here…”
Cecily hates education. She does not want to learn and so this shows that she does not want to use or waste it. This can also be shown, as she writtes a diary and says that she does not trust her memory. She likes reading and writing her diary which is like her memory.
