Wilde also liked to play on words by switching just one expected adjective with its opposite. “Washing one’s clean linen in public.”
However after a while Wilde makes sure to include some serious points about Victorian society:-
Love/Marriage.
In the play, Gwendolen and Cecily both have the need to love someone called Ernest. “It has always been a girlish dream of mine to love someone whose name was Ernest.” This is incredibly shallow and superficial. A name should not determine whether we love someone or not. Wilde is making a point with this quote by showing just how one-dimensional Victorian Society was. Cecily shows, again, how cursory Victorian society was when she said that if Algernon was not called Ernest she could “not be able to give you [Algernon] my undivided attention.”
Women mainly got married for money, land or status. In Victorian Society most marriages were arranged by the parents or a relative. Sometimes the bride would not even meet the groom till the wedding day. “When you do become engaged to someone, I, or your father will inform you of the fact.” Lady Bracknell says this to Gwendolen when she says she will marry Jack. Lady Bracknell goes on to question Jack about how much money he earns and where he lives. “I feel bound to tell you that you are not down on my list of eligible young men.” In marriage money, breeding and reputation/status were all very important. Lady Bracknell believes this very much so. “You can hardly imagine that I...would dream of allowing our only daughter...to marry into a cloakroom, and form an alliance with a parcel?” Jack was found in a handbag at a train station so he does not know who his real parents are.
Due to arranged marriages and the marriage for material things like money I doubt that many Victorian people married for true love.
Something which links in to love and marriage is the Victorian society is their attitude to things. Oscar Wilde heavily lampoons their trivialities of such insignificant things. For example Cecily and Gwendolen’s need to love someone called Ernest. Also Gwendolen says how her brother practices proposing. A proposal should be a spontaneous act of love, not something which should one should need to rehearse. Gwendolen then says how beautiful Jack’s eyes are. At first this sounds romantic till she says, “I hope you will always look at me just like that, especially when there are other people present.”
This shows how Wilde found the Victorians very inconsequential and they had a need to look good in front of other people. Another point which is satirised by Wilde is the emptiness of the upper classes lives. Algernon: “What shall we do?”
Jack: “Nothing.”
Algernon: “It is awfully hard work to do nothing.”
English manners/Customs.
The manners of upper class English people around the late nineteenth century were very strict, there was a boundary between the classes and people outside conventional society were shunned. (Wilde himself was put on trial for being homosexual.) In an aristocratic house hold everything would be planned and held at a certain time of day.
Upper class communities believed very much in English customs. They felt things should not change at all. When Lady Bracknell said about how the lower classes should not be educated we see this ‘English custom.’ “Education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did it would prove a serious danger to the upper class.” This is a very ignorant comment. Lady Bracknell also stresses the need to be born in wedlock and the importance of breeding. When Algernon’s honesty is questioned Lady Bracknell says “Untruthful! My nephew? Impossible! He is an Oxonian.” This shows us that just because Algernon went to Oxford University, which is very prestigious, he must be veracious.
I think another English manner is to judge someone purely on something very small like their name or appearance. This is done twice, once about the name Ernest and then by Gwendolen when she meets Cecily Cardew she immediately says, “I like you already more than I can say. My first impressions of people are never wrong.” Furthermore when Cecily offers Gwendolen tea we see that the English custom is really to be as fashionable as you can.
Cecily: “Sugar?”
Gwendolen: “Sugar is not fashionable anymore.”
Cecily: “Cake or bread and butter?”
Gwendolen: “Cake is rarely seen in the best houses nowadays.”
Literature.
In Victorian society, most people, felt the need for censorship. They believed people should not be exposed to things of a distasteful manner or something they felt unsuitable. Oscar Wilde’s lover wrote a poem about this called “The love that dare not speak its name.” Which was about homosexual love, Wilde also makes a point of this. “It is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what once should read and what one shouldn’t.” While in the play Algernon and Jack are simply talking about a cigarette case, this is actually a serious point under the humour.
When Miss Prism is talking to Cecily in Act two about her novel we see the reason why Oscar Wilde felt that Victorian views to literature were very illiterate.
Cecily: “I hope it did not end happily? I don’t like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.”
Miss Prism: “The good ended happily and the bad ended unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”
Wilde makes fun of peoples ignorance to literature.
Religion.
Oscar Wilde also satirises religion. “My sermon...can be adapted to almost any occasion, joyful or...distressing.” This shows how he thought religion and religious leaders worked. Wilde probably wasn’t religious as he would have been snubbed because of his homosexuality.
Victorian Endings.
Wilde even lampoons Victorian endings of fiction, as they nearly always end in happy marriages, coincidences especially involving relatives, or the changing of money/status. For example Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.
Conclusion.
As Wilde was clearly outside Victorian Conventional society, it gave him a clear view of its hypocrisies and corruption, but I think he might have been slightly biased as no doubt he was bitter from the ignorance of people in general.
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