Blog the Eighth

As you could probably guess, The Importance of Being Earnest alludes to and satirizes Victorian society continually due to it being the era of both the author and play. As such one needs to study Victorian society to get Wilde's cracks at life, both subtle and the not quite so discreet. One needs to know the role of classes, gender, and even education to even hope to find the satire dispensed throughout the play. Luckily for me, we where asked to study this topic thoroughly in preparation for this comedic tale. From the roles of man and woman to the class system of the people, we were readying ourselves for the society and atmosphere of the play.

In Victorian England women were often thought less of than men, as such they were often handed of from marriage to marriage, often without the consent of the wife. This clarifies one of Gwendolen's outbursts, "...I marry someone else, and marry often...". Also with the knowledge of the classes and the large gaps between them, one begins to understand the dynamics between them. "Really, if the lower orders don't set a good example, what on earth is the use of them." Without this knowledge one can find them self lost and utterly unamused by the lack of clear cut comedy that can be seen without any prior awareness of life back then. So to truly get the play you have to immerse yourself in the facts of the Victorian way and the flaws and kinks in is.