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Jan. 13th, 2004 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sebastienneby request:
‘In The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde does far more than poke fun at the manners of a particular class and time.’ How far do you agree? (Act One Only)
Many people class The Importance of Being Earnest as a social satire, and on the surface it appears to fulfil this description admirably. It is concerned with a certain class (society) at a certain time (the end of the Victorian era), and contains criticisms tempered with humour. This seems to me to be the precise definition of a social satire.
The play opens with immediate reference to the class system, as we see Algernon in conversation with his manservant, Lane. Here we learn that, in Wilde’s twisted version of society, at least, it is deemed impolite for a servant to listen to his master’s piano-playing, and yet ‘at a bachelor’s establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne’. This is the first of many paradoxes with which Wilde will present us in the fullness of the play. He uses this one, however, to satirise the relationship between the classes – the way in which Algernon tries to suggest that Lane was the perpetrator of his own excesses show how useful the servant class is to the upper classes, and how under-appreciated.
Virtually every line in this play is a throwaway witticism, but only certain ones amongst them contain a barb of truth that, if thought about for longer than the miniscule break Wilde gives before the next joke follows it, is actually very cutting. For example, when Algernon says ‘More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read’(p.5), and Jack replies, ‘modern culture...isn’t the sort of thing one should talk of in private’(p.5). On closer inspection, Wilde is actually making an interesting statement about literary conversations in society – and perhaps making a passing reference to the unwelcome reception his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, received. It was described by many critics as an immoral book, perhaps even having hints of sodomy – a moral and legal crime at the time – and yet he himself remained a popular figure in society.
In Lady Bracknell’s examination of Jack, to see if he is fit to marry her daughter, we see satire of the way in which a parent (normally the father) would carry out such pre-nuptial investigations. The fact that smoking is regarded is an occupation, and the absurd detail of Jack’s lineage, is an extreme example that emphasises the basic ridiculousness of trying to rationalise and justify economically the love between two people who want to be married.
Wilde is also satirising society’s obsession with appearances when Lady Bracknell and Algernon discuss music choices. Lady Bracknell likes the idea of German songs because ‘it sounds a thoroughly respectable language’, regardless of whether or not it actually is. The very idea that a language itself can be respectable or unrespectable is rather comic. She also wants something that will ‘encourage conversation’(p.12), as ‘every one has practically said whatever they had to say, which, in most cases, was probably not much’(p.12). This echoes Wilde’s fairytale, ‘The Selfish Giant’, in which the eponymous character is described with: ‘after the seven years were over he had said all that he had to say, for his conversation was limited’ . Here we see Wilde re-using near-identical witticisms to make opposite points, as the art he is creating dictates. This shows that, however satirical he may appear to be, it is not his main intention to be so. He may be following a certain train of argument on a whim, or just because a specific point fitted with the flow of his epigrams. Just occasionally, such as when he says ‘you should leave [literary criticism] to those who haven’t been at a University. They do it so well in the daily papers’(p.8), might we sense a little bitterness and intent to wound.
Joseph T. Shipley says: ‘There is no underlying thesis in this play; its social satire plays lightly over the characters as -- with integrity of taste and cultured poise, however absurd in conduct and paradoxical in speech -- they breeze through the deft and rapid movements of a farce.’ I agree and disagree with him in equal measure. I think he is missing something fundamental – the ‘integrity of taste and cultured poise’1 to which he refers is the ‘underlying thesis’ of the play.
What Wilde has created is not a satire, a farce, a romance, a drama; although it may contain all these elements, I am sure that Wilde himself would argue that what he has created here is a Work of Art. The capital letters being important, because Art was of capital importance of Wilde. The idea of a work of art having an ‘underlying thesis’ was anathema to him. He openly rebelled against the moralising of earlier Victorian writers, who often used their art to preach about issues that concerned them. Wordsworth concerned himself with the industrial revolution and the destruction of traditional country life, whilst writers such as the Brontë sisters were concerned with social reforms. Wilde suggested that Wordsworth ‘found in stones the sermons he had already hidden there’ , meaning that he simply projected his own prejudices onto the natural world which supposedly inspired him with higher truth.
From his days at Oxford, Wilde was a supporter of the Aesthetic movement – that of ‘Art for Art’s Sake’. He soon realised, however, that it was difficult to create art the subject of which was not life. However much he might protest that ‘life imitates art far more than art imitates life’(Decay of Lying, p.43), there is really little else that can exist to be art’s subject. Wilde synthesised these seemingly paradoxical concepts by representing life covered in a thick veneer of style that serves to distance it from the randomness of reality. He sums up his conclusion in one of Lord Henry Wooton’s many epigrams – ‘It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style’ .
This is what he seeks to counter through his art, which is absolutely bursting with style in every way possible. He describes his methods most succinctly in a letter to Sherlock Holmes’ author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: ‘Between me and life there is a mist of words always. I throw probability out of the window for the sake of a phrase, and the chance of an epigram makes me desert truth’ .
Style was of utmost importance to Oscar Wilde. This is evident throughout his work, but The Importance of Being Earnest provides us with many of the best examples. Each of his characters is in some way a reflection of himself, dandiacal and concerned with ‘style, not sincerity’(p.58). Their words are measured, as if they have been premeditated to perfection – and yet are delivered as if they were spontaneous. This is the way Wilde must have appeared at society dinner parties, when he reeled off pre-prepared (and often tried and tested) witticisms as if they were off-the-cuff remarks. Dandiacal characters have always appeared in Wilde’s work, such as Lord Henry Wooton in The Picture of Dorian Gray, but it is in the The Importance that he realises the possibilities of a world entirely populated by them. Even Lady Bracknell displays such qualities, with such statements as ‘ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit. Touch it and the bloom is gone… Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever’(p.17).
It was suggested that Wilde’s ‘austerity of art that never trifles with morals or realities, except in the sense that it is all trifling, is disturbing to respectable citizens’. But Wilde’s comedy did not disturb respectable citizens when it was first performed in 1895. In fact, it was met with the rare combination of both public and critical acclaim. It seems that, in the public eye at least, Wilde’s overtly absurd, superlatively stylish and above all unremittingly witty world of Art was infinitely preferable to a moralising and dull reality.
In my opinion, Wilde does far more than ‘poke fun at the manners of a particular class and time’. He offers a means of escape from the mundanity of manners and the constrictions of class – for all time.
---
went out to dinner. had chocolate cheesecake. which was nice.
‘In The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde does far more than poke fun at the manners of a particular class and time.’ How far do you agree? (Act One Only)
Many people class The Importance of Being Earnest as a social satire, and on the surface it appears to fulfil this description admirably. It is concerned with a certain class (society) at a certain time (the end of the Victorian era), and contains criticisms tempered with humour. This seems to me to be the precise definition of a social satire.
The play opens with immediate reference to the class system, as we see Algernon in conversation with his manservant, Lane. Here we learn that, in Wilde’s twisted version of society, at least, it is deemed impolite for a servant to listen to his master’s piano-playing, and yet ‘at a bachelor’s establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne’. This is the first of many paradoxes with which Wilde will present us in the fullness of the play. He uses this one, however, to satirise the relationship between the classes – the way in which Algernon tries to suggest that Lane was the perpetrator of his own excesses show how useful the servant class is to the upper classes, and how under-appreciated.
Virtually every line in this play is a throwaway witticism, but only certain ones amongst them contain a barb of truth that, if thought about for longer than the miniscule break Wilde gives before the next joke follows it, is actually very cutting. For example, when Algernon says ‘More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read’(p.5), and Jack replies, ‘modern culture...isn’t the sort of thing one should talk of in private’(p.5). On closer inspection, Wilde is actually making an interesting statement about literary conversations in society – and perhaps making a passing reference to the unwelcome reception his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, received. It was described by many critics as an immoral book, perhaps even having hints of sodomy – a moral and legal crime at the time – and yet he himself remained a popular figure in society.
In Lady Bracknell’s examination of Jack, to see if he is fit to marry her daughter, we see satire of the way in which a parent (normally the father) would carry out such pre-nuptial investigations. The fact that smoking is regarded is an occupation, and the absurd detail of Jack’s lineage, is an extreme example that emphasises the basic ridiculousness of trying to rationalise and justify economically the love between two people who want to be married.
Wilde is also satirising society’s obsession with appearances when Lady Bracknell and Algernon discuss music choices. Lady Bracknell likes the idea of German songs because ‘it sounds a thoroughly respectable language’, regardless of whether or not it actually is. The very idea that a language itself can be respectable or unrespectable is rather comic. She also wants something that will ‘encourage conversation’(p.12), as ‘every one has practically said whatever they had to say, which, in most cases, was probably not much’(p.12). This echoes Wilde’s fairytale, ‘The Selfish Giant’, in which the eponymous character is described with: ‘after the seven years were over he had said all that he had to say, for his conversation was limited’ . Here we see Wilde re-using near-identical witticisms to make opposite points, as the art he is creating dictates. This shows that, however satirical he may appear to be, it is not his main intention to be so. He may be following a certain train of argument on a whim, or just because a specific point fitted with the flow of his epigrams. Just occasionally, such as when he says ‘you should leave [literary criticism] to those who haven’t been at a University. They do it so well in the daily papers’(p.8), might we sense a little bitterness and intent to wound.
Joseph T. Shipley says: ‘There is no underlying thesis in this play; its social satire plays lightly over the characters as -- with integrity of taste and cultured poise, however absurd in conduct and paradoxical in speech -- they breeze through the deft and rapid movements of a farce.’ I agree and disagree with him in equal measure. I think he is missing something fundamental – the ‘integrity of taste and cultured poise’1 to which he refers is the ‘underlying thesis’ of the play.
What Wilde has created is not a satire, a farce, a romance, a drama; although it may contain all these elements, I am sure that Wilde himself would argue that what he has created here is a Work of Art. The capital letters being important, because Art was of capital importance of Wilde. The idea of a work of art having an ‘underlying thesis’ was anathema to him. He openly rebelled against the moralising of earlier Victorian writers, who often used their art to preach about issues that concerned them. Wordsworth concerned himself with the industrial revolution and the destruction of traditional country life, whilst writers such as the Brontë sisters were concerned with social reforms. Wilde suggested that Wordsworth ‘found in stones the sermons he had already hidden there’ , meaning that he simply projected his own prejudices onto the natural world which supposedly inspired him with higher truth.
From his days at Oxford, Wilde was a supporter of the Aesthetic movement – that of ‘Art for Art’s Sake’. He soon realised, however, that it was difficult to create art the subject of which was not life. However much he might protest that ‘life imitates art far more than art imitates life’(Decay of Lying, p.43), there is really little else that can exist to be art’s subject. Wilde synthesised these seemingly paradoxical concepts by representing life covered in a thick veneer of style that serves to distance it from the randomness of reality. He sums up his conclusion in one of Lord Henry Wooton’s many epigrams – ‘It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style’ .
This is what he seeks to counter through his art, which is absolutely bursting with style in every way possible. He describes his methods most succinctly in a letter to Sherlock Holmes’ author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: ‘Between me and life there is a mist of words always. I throw probability out of the window for the sake of a phrase, and the chance of an epigram makes me desert truth’ .
Style was of utmost importance to Oscar Wilde. This is evident throughout his work, but The Importance of Being Earnest provides us with many of the best examples. Each of his characters is in some way a reflection of himself, dandiacal and concerned with ‘style, not sincerity’(p.58). Their words are measured, as if they have been premeditated to perfection – and yet are delivered as if they were spontaneous. This is the way Wilde must have appeared at society dinner parties, when he reeled off pre-prepared (and often tried and tested) witticisms as if they were off-the-cuff remarks. Dandiacal characters have always appeared in Wilde’s work, such as Lord Henry Wooton in The Picture of Dorian Gray, but it is in the The Importance that he realises the possibilities of a world entirely populated by them. Even Lady Bracknell displays such qualities, with such statements as ‘ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit. Touch it and the bloom is gone… Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever’(p.17).
It was suggested that Wilde’s ‘austerity of art that never trifles with morals or realities, except in the sense that it is all trifling, is disturbing to respectable citizens’. But Wilde’s comedy did not disturb respectable citizens when it was first performed in 1895. In fact, it was met with the rare combination of both public and critical acclaim. It seems that, in the public eye at least, Wilde’s overtly absurd, superlatively stylish and above all unremittingly witty world of Art was infinitely preferable to a moralising and dull reality.
In my opinion, Wilde does far more than ‘poke fun at the manners of a particular class and time’. He offers a means of escape from the mundanity of manners and the constrictions of class – for all time.
---
went out to dinner. had chocolate cheesecake. which was nice.
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no subject
Date: 2004-01-13 02:13 pm (UTC)Thanks muchly for the comments on fictionpress, BTW.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-14 07:37 am (UTC)*forces self not to poke at gramatical issues*