A Review of Themes in The Importance of Being Earnest, a Play by Oscar Wilde

The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play written by Oscar Wilde. The most important themes in the play are: The real nature of marriage and the importance and constraints of moral values.

The importance of marriage in Importance of Being Earnest, is of more of psychological and philosophical theory, but firstly to improve the plot of the entire story. The first speculation about marriage is shown in the opening dialogue between the secondary hero of the play, Algernon and his butler, and really from this point in the play, the importance of marriage goes all throughout the play. The idea of marriage is presented through the social conventions of the Victorian society, and has the important value in social status and the income effect on it all. The real deal of the play is a debate of marriage being business or the actual enjoyment of marriage as pleasure. It is shown that marriage is an important topic in the play and that the views of the characters are changed with the importance of love. Off course, in Victorian times, society was not concerned of this question of love, but marriage was a method to get a higher social status and accomplish richness. In Importance of Being Earnest it is all represented as something that is hardly to believe when the real facts of Victorian society on behalf of marriage are taken in consideration.

Another important theme of this play is the importance and constraints of moral values in life. Morality and the constraints of importance are imposed all throughout the society of the play and through the actual dialogues in the Importance of Being Earnest. Algernon is a kind of character that is not much of moral characters when he is the one that thinks that his servants should set the moral values and standards of the higher classes, meaning that the higher class is represented on how the servants see them. Oscar Wilde is not really a writer that was concerned with the questions of morality. This play can be taken to be the satire on behalf of Victorian society with the idea of morality. What Oscar Wilde really created from the beginning of the play, even with its title, is that Earnest presents this sort of paradox on morality. Having the primary character of the play to play this “double life”, and deceive the other characters is very against moral human values. Wilde really wanted to show that no person is moral enough, and that it is all quite the opposite on the issue of sincerity taken from the Victorian society.

All in all, what really is important as the theme issues in this play is the satirical views of the real Victorian society based in already known facts, and how it is mocked in Oscar Wilde’s mind. Marriage is represented as something that comes from love, when in most cases served as social and economic status in society, meaning also that it is all based on social norms even through the issues on morality.

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