Timeless Message of Equality in Oscar Wildes The Importance of Being E

Timeless Message of Equality in Oscar Wildes The importance of creation Earnest Oscar Wildes The Importance of Being Earnest satirizes Victorian society. The witty epigrams of his characters provide light comedy masking the underlying theme of criticism of the Victorian direction of life. Wildes effective use of humour diffuses the tense theme of his work. In a Victorian society that emphasized progress, it was precarious for artists like Oscar Wilde to express an imperfect reading of life in nineteenth-century England. Wildes attack on the ethics of his era is an attempt to fulfill the authors prophecy that art has the power to dictate life, not merely re-create it (614-615). At a time when the world measured progress in empirical research, Wilde chose to use the English language rather than the scientific method as his mean to transform society. The Importance of Being Earnest satirizes two main social constructs social class and gender relations. In The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde makes gambol of characters from the upper class to bring about change in the social construct of the class system. Wilde satirizes the upper class? magniloquent attitude, ideas of progress, and emphasis on earnestness. Wilde identifies the pompous attitude of the upper class by creating characters with distorted perceptions of their self-importance in society. When Lane the servant says there were no cucumbers at the market, ?not even for ready funds? (8), Algernon seems surprised that his wealth has not given him a slighted chance to obtain cucumbers over the common man. Algernon?s subordinate view of Lane also symbolizes his arrogance. As the story opens, Algernon wants to talk to Lane about himself, but... ...e art impact life instead of simply imitating it. Wilde stood at the forefront of a movement by artists who deflected the frontier of the scientific method to reform society. As The Importance of Being Earnest continues to flourish many years after it was written, Wilde?s message of equality amidst the social classes and the sexes transcends generations. Oscar Wilde succeeded in transforming the landscape of art and society. Works Cited Keach, William, John Richetti, Bruce Robbins, and Carol Moulton, eds. Adventures in English Literature. Toronto Holt, Rineheart and Wiston, 1996. 599-615. Kishlansky, Mark, Patrick Geary, and Particia O?Brien. Civilization in the West. New York Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers, 1998. 839-843. Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest. New York Dover Publications, 1990. 1-54.