The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde (1895)

Résumé du document

In The Decay of Lying written by Oscar Wilde in 1891, one character named Vivian asserts: "... I prefer houses to the open air. In a house we all feel of the proper proportions. Everything is subordinated to us, fashioned for our use and our pleasure." This statement proves to be true in The Importance of being earnest, especially in the passage we are going to study. It is an extract from the third Act taking place in a luxurious indoors setting. Thanks to the stage directions appearing at the beginning of this scene, we are aware of the central role Lady Bracknell is going to play: "Enter Lady Bracknell. The couples separate in alarm." She stands for the judge figure: her very presence has an impact. Lady Bracknell manages there to display her formidable influence over the other characters. In the Manor House, Jack, Cecily and Algernon endorse the role of her audience. We will see that they can be viewed as "fashioned" for Lady Bracknell's "use" and "pleasure".

Extraits

[...] The comic relief is another important element supporting this aspect. When listing Cecily's attributes, Jack plays with Lady Bracknell by adding ludicrous elements such as "whooping cough". He goes further in this direction when interrupting Lady Bracknell's monologue to insert a joke: "And after six months nobody knew her." It sounds like something said aside, as if Jack was actually interacting with the audience, breaking the fourth wall. We could say that he finds himself so lonely on stage with Lady Bracknell that he feels the need to exist somewhere else and to rely on new supporters, the real audience. [...]

[...] Through her strength of persuasion, she manages to stage reality and defines how things must run their course. Through language, Wilde empowers her and gives her the role of the saviour. It offers fluid versions of both femininity and masculinity. The play is queering each and every norm or doxa (societal, artistic, moral). The traditional dichotomy between the countryside and the city is reversed. Lady Bracknell does not see France as a corrupt and decadent place but as the place of elegance and refinement. [...]

[...] Cours de préparation à l'agrégation – The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde (1895) In The Decay of Lying written by Oscar Wilde in 1891, one character named Vivian asserts: " . I prefer houses to the open air. In a house we all feel of the proper proportions. Everything is subordinated to us, fashioned for our use and our pleasure." This statement proves to be true in The Importance of being earnest, especially in the passage we are going to study. [...]

[...] Cecily is for Lady Bracknell nothing but an investment. The money she has is transformed by Lady Bracknell's abuse of language into an inner quality, among the "solid qualities" -that is to say something she is. Deviance is not condemned, self-control is absent, even the ideal of purity, exemplified by virginity before marriage, is distorted in a playful way at the end of the passage when Lady Bracknell says: "To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. [...]

[...] She is what she performs and her language is performative: she stands for the playwright and the artistic ideal of Oscar Wilde. This extract illustrates how much classical oppositions are blurred at two different levels: artistic and social. The first being between reality and fiction, the second between normality and marginality. Where traditional Victorian plays promote reality effects and social norms; Wilde precisely blurs the boundaries to reduce these poles. Instead, he puts forward aestheticism and marginality. We could say the duet Lady Bracknell and Oscar Wilde functions as one of complementary doubles, creating a winning combination. [...]